Doors had lead her here, to nothing. Stairways had carried her to nowhere. Where does one go when the lights go out? When the world goes quiet? When the soul convulses and rages and screams to be let out of the sorry prison of skin and bone that holds it. When the spirit demands to be let loose and find it's own place, to find it's own freedom hidden somewhere beneath the rocks and fronds of a forest.

The edge of the world had pressed in on her, squeezing the breath from her lungs and pinning those beautiful wings to her sides. Breezes had felt less like the caress of the wind and more like the unwelcome touch of an unwanted lover. The land had turned from nurturing mother to demanding suitor; it had chased her from the borders, leaves rustling their whispers as she fled from penetrating stares and knowing smirks.

They had left her tainted and they knew it.

And now they would find her here, a waterlogged angel with broken halo floating about her in a rust red pool of remorse and fear. Cherubic and pink, she ripped the invisible stains from her skin, knowing that no matter how hard she scrubbed or beat or sobbed, there would be no relief from the tint of dishonor mottling her heart. She could taste the dishonesty on her own breath each time her lungs had pushed the air from her chest; the lie that she told herself continuously, endlessly, relentlessly, that she was worth something here. That she was worth anything here.

The pale, winged woman had resigned herself to a fate in this pool. A shroud of loneliness and a mantle of undeserved shame, she would pray to her deaf gods and she would whip her own back and she would beg for dominion at the feet of oblivion.  

Then maybe, just maybe there would be a place for her at the table of existence. Maybe she wouldn't have to beg for the scraps anymore, maybe maybe maybe something could come of this.

But now, beneath the blanket of stars and the cries of night raptors, the stain could not be removed and the tears could not cease their flow. She choked on the hands that wrapped around her throat, she sobbed over the sound of her own sputtering heart, she struggled as her hair floated around her in a bastardization of purity. The water reached to the base of her neck, lapping at her skin and weighing down her wings with its cool reassurance.

The flowers at the base of her tail had floated across the pool and the petals in her mane were wilted and bloodstained - just as she.

Just as she would always be.

A low moan laced with agony accented the tears spilling from pupilless eyes, a high keen filled with mourning pierced the night air;

There was nothing left there was nothing left there was nothing left -

of that once-hopeful heart
of that sweet smile
of that sunshine melody in her veins

There was nothing left of her.

Ashes to ashes, dust to ex-whores.

From the gaping void in her chest loomed a darkness so complete that it could not be pierced by the flames of her furious regret. Out from that depthless cavern groped the hand of her demise, conductor's wand waving about, needle-tipped and razor sharp, it snagged and sliced at the bedraggled memory of the creature she used to be and the false hope of what she could have one day been.

Gone, all gone, snipped and severed and burned away into ash and smoke and the fleeting heat of rage. She had thought for so long that she could escape that singular truth within her soul, that she could forge something new here in this land of opportunity. She hung her head as the weight of fate rested upon her skull, lips wetted and breath stirring the waters into delicate ripples. Shame, palpable and cruel, lashed at her, ripping that beautiful flesh to shreds with the frigid blade of reality.

She had been so stupid to believe anything would come of this or come of her.

A wretched grin clawed it's way to the surface, forcing through the wracking sobs and finding purchase upon parted lips. Why was she hiding? Her past and her present had merged to meet her here, chilled to the bone and soaking wet beneath an empty sky coupled with an empty purpose. The ripples she had made in the waters had vanished, the pool had stilled, any mark of her influence, her existence, had vanished beneath a mirror surface.

What a blessing.
What a curse.

She looked nothing like her mother, this she knew, but as her mind wandered, pulling thread after thread from the tattered tapestry that was her past, Orithia knew she looked everything like her mother. Like the whore begat from whores, the grinning face of death at the door, the slow acceptance of a fate within a gilded cage. In those days she had slowly grown silent, loving the moon for her silvery company and hating her for the terrors that rode upon the back of her nightly ascent.

Orithia blamed the moon for the blood that flowed from bite marks, hoof marks, raw skin rubbed away at the behest of primal pleasure. She blamed the moon for the blood that dripped down her legs and the pain that radiated from within her belly, her heart, her soul.

She blamed the moon for the wolves that came knocking on her door.

But blame was a living thing, fluid and flexible, dripping down her throat and tasting of tears.

The ripples had returned, emanating from the chest of a King, the bass of his voice setting her bones to trembling. He spoke the name the devil had given her and he spoke the name he had gifted her with, the smooth notes and rounded vowels of his mother tongue brushing over her skin like the softest caress. He pleads with her, that beautiful mountainous brute, to come out of the water she had stained with blood - whether it was hers or another's she could not remember.

"Do you remember being born, mfalme?" Voice as soft as a lover's first kiss, "Do you remember shattering her hips and escaping that deep velvet, the darkness within your mother?"

...Drinking the wine and drinking the blood, crossing yourself before the edge of oblivion and crossing between two worlds in a spray of agony. The same agony begat from your mother's mother.

And her mother...

And her mother before her, on and on toward eternity....

...But for what?

"Are you thankful?"

Eyes that had remained trained to the surface of the water, to the distorted reflection floating there, made their way to the face of that titanic figure, creased in worry and pain, understanding a fickle mistress that had escaped his grasp. The only mistress that would escape his grasp. An empty stare and a blank grin, head cocked to the side like a child's, words floating over a frigid pool to gather and curl about a plainswalker stallion.

"There is no future for me, nothing may be sown from me that will not wilt and die. There is nothing here for me or you or anything. What you are searching for cannot be found, it has died long ago."

Silence, deafening silence.

"Can't you tell? I should have died long ago."

His eyes flit over her, ever the vigilant guardian, ever the benevolent King.
Her wings are sodden and heavy, hollow bones laden with feathers and muscle threatening to drag her down, down down, into the cool depths. Down into silence eternal and the promise of peace. What she would give to allow that to happen, what she would give to not have to fight anymore.

If only there was enough of her left to give to make a difference.

The water rippled and attention snapped back to the towering form of her King, muscles tense and rippling beneath damp flesh. His eyes were clouded, his face drawn and steps hesitant. The dove blinked, a small sort of confusion blossoming over pained features. What had him in such a state? Had Mauja… Had Rexanna…? Had someone else hurt her mfalme? Had she left them? Had she failed him yet again?

But his eyes stayed glued to her, to her soaked skin and her shuddering sides.

At last he reached her, his valiant dove turned waterlogged wraith, his massive bulk crowded her, ensnaring, protecting. There he held her, once again a King and his dove, embracing in a desperate plea for absolution. His lips are gentle, mane tugged and wing lifted, all at once soothing and mandatory; she would not find what she was looking for beneath the waves, she would not descend into that endless night, no, and that was a direct order. Yes, that was a command, sovereign to soldier, caregiver to patient, lover to loved.

Orithia risked a glace down at herself, a silent gasp parting her lips as she took in her rawness, her crazed vulnerability in the face of one she cared for so deeply. Any confusion she had at his worry evaporated, grim understanding taking its place upon her shoulders. The blushed mare could feel his voice in her chest, the deep vibrations of his words pressing against her heart. I am thankful for you. Her eyes slid closed, delicate skin pressing against the onslaught of tears, and the precarious sense of self that she had built up against and again – only to be shattered against her own self-doubt.

Again. Again. Again.
Oh, please, not again.

Rose tinted eyes flew open at the soft pressure of Tembovu’s lips against her own, a pressure she had refused to admit had haunted her dreams and lingered behind her breath. She wanted to fall into him, to live in the space between his heartbeats and witness the lights in his eyes. But the silence was short, and the echo of words she had spoken fill an empty space; a promise she had made once upon a time on an icy shore. She couldn’t help it; she snorted softly, a dry laughter budding behind lips that were slowly remembering how to smile. Damn him, the beautiful beast with his stubborn loyalty and his depthless heart. Damn him for proving himself as her savior yet again.

In his eyes she sees promise and she sees pride and she sees hope. In his heart she knows she would see truth.

He lifted her chin, yet her gaze remains downcast, watching his battle-scarred chest lift and compress with each breath -  the courage to meet his eyes  had faded with the realization of her folly. Had she truly thought that she could just leave? Just like that? Had she thought that she could leave in such a way and not hurt him?

Fury, cold and cruel and aimed at herself, slithered into the mare’s stomach. How could she? How could she be so consumed with herself? With a shake of her dished skull and a stubborn set to her jaw, Orithia pulled away just enough to meet Tembovu’s gaze. With a solemn nod, she began to slowly extricate herself from his grasp and make her way toward the shore. “Mfalme,” her words were low but steady, any trace of the shattered woman she had been was gone,”I am sorry for worrying you… For hurting you in this way.” She emerged from the pool with water running from coral skin in rivulets. Her hooves sunk into the damp sand as she turned toward him the gentle giant that, against every possibility, had found a home within her bruised heart.

“I met my mother,” it was best to get to the point, she reasoned, best to admit to him the truth behind her existence, “In a vision from a sorcerous child of death. She betrayed her clan for the sake of my birth. Yet my father was no what he seemed, as you know. He destroyed her once I was born, raised me into the history you’ve already heard.” Her gaze lingered on the sharpened tip of Tembovu’s horn, “It seems I did not take the news well. Again, I am sorry. I was not myself.” She found herself yet again drowning in the blue of his eyes, memories of their short time together stoking the embers in her belly to light.

To hells with it. To hells with all of it.

With a breath, she loosened the stringent control she had over herself, crushed the walls she had built and let herself feel. She let him in.

The truth flooded her, washed over her in a wave that was all at once overwhelming and peaceful. At last, absolution. At last, love. Her lips pull into a wry grin, revelations filling each crack and crevice through which pain had invaded. His touch, she sighed, it had always been the same to her, burning in a way that was anything but painful. From the moment they had met – he the suspicious king of a glass-spattered forest, she the sullen bride of massacre – he had engulfed her. His presence consumed her, setting her to dance upon plains of magma and splintered dreams.

But he could heal those dreams. She knew that now just as some small, secret part of her had known it all along. Together, they could create hopes and futures built from the remains of their pasts. They could forge empires between their passion and knit one another back together. Back to whole. Back to good.

He could help her heal and she could give him the world.

“I have seen your son, Tembovu - Sweet Hawezi – and I have committed the crime of loving him.” Oh, how her soul shook, terrified and glorified beneath a sky open to possibility, “I have committed the crime of loving you. I know this is wrong, I know you are a King with two Queens and two children – memory and present. Yes, I know.” She took a steadying breath, breathless before the plummet from a cliff she could not see the bottom of, “but late at night, what is left of my heart’s hope tells me that you are mine, Tembovu, and I am yours.” She sighed, her expression torn between sorrow and joy, agony and relief, “I do not have a choice in loving you as I do, beautiful mfalme, you have given me no choice.”

Eyes alight, she turned her head, raising a sodden wind and proffering her warmth, her body, her soul to him, “And if you would have me, I would like to know what it feels like to love.”

Pale, perked ears twitch at the short, bitter snort of amusement that pushes past her delicate nostrils. And, with darkened eyes, he watched the lost despair wilt from her face, replaced by her confidence— but also with something cold… something cruel. It licked the back of her rose-kissed eyes, gave an edge to the slight shake of her head, placed hardness in the set of her jaw and movements out of the pool.

He let her pull out of his hold—only because he saw her moving towards the shore. Though eh was close behind her, great bulk quick to place himself between her and the water she had toyed with slipping beneath. And he watched her, ears listening to her apology as he rose from the red-stained waters. In another circumstance, he would have noted the rivulets of water tracing the dip of her flank or the curve of her chest. But now he saw only chafed skin, teeth marks on ivory that was once kissed by rose rather than blood. “Do not give me your apologies. Give me your promise that you will value yourself… and your life,” was his quiet rumbling return to her apology.

“I met by mother.” His disturbed gaze of her wounds rose back to her face and silences his low voice. And he watched, felt her eyes sweep up to the tip of his horn and he tensed—but then her words wove a reason for her sudden shredding of skin and collapse of spirit. So, he did not interrupt, letting her bleed off the poison and right herself amid her revelations of the past.

And his silence was rewarded with a smile, a small and wry grin spreading across delicate, blushed lips that had been contorted in wretched pain when he had first found her in the pool. But her next words—the crime of loving Hawezi? His great skull cocked slightly in confusion even as his eyes warmed at the thought of his son (living and breathing), for indeed who could not love his boy?

”I have committed the crime of loving you.” His brows raise as her breaths steady her words; though a shield partially shuts his soul from his eyes as she speaks of his ghosts; the dead demons of Mara and Faxr whose haunting was kept at bay only by the beat of Hawezi’s heart— “But late at night, what is left of my heart’s hope tells me that you are mine, Tembovu, and I am yours.”

And his shields dropped, the whispers of demons swept aside as his eyes widened at her raw, honest words. His own, thick lips part slightly, gaze finding her raised eyes before tracing the line of now-exposed flank beneath her lifted wing. He blinked once, eyes traveling back to her face as she spoke again, “I would like to know what it feels like to love.”

In the face of her chafed skin, her bloody teeth marks, her raw eyes staring straight through to his soul he would have denied her. He would have wanted to wait, to hold and soothe and calm and heal; to make sure that, given her past, this was what she truly wanted; not a desperate grasp onto a reality that, in the wake of her vision and confession, was tilting and spiraling away from her.

But he was a man. A man whose mind had been cast in the shadow of his deeds, only to be brought to the light by the open honesty of those he loved. And this woman, proud and broken, had shown him nothing but truth and trust. What else was love built upon? It was so different than any of his other relations—except Mara…


And her words, “And if you would have me, I would like to know what it feels like to love.” Those were not words he could deny. They were a plea and a promise, entwined on the breath of oblivion—a denial could bring that breath gusting out, leaving ruin in its wake. But acceptance (sharing of souls, of skin) could give absolution from the torture left as red staining the pool’s waters.

So, still silent, his legs moved forward while his neck stretched out. His muzzle tracing along the sharp angle of her shoulder, beneath the delicate curve of her wing joint. His lips paused at particularly raw skin— they did not caress the tender flesh, but merely hovered to mark and note the places of wounded cream.

And he paused at her haunches, chest pushed against her tail, his head laid lightly against her hip with eyes closed, low voice rumbling, “I will show you love, Orithia.” And he rose on hind legs, black lips gently sweeping aside strands of her silken mane, quiet murmurings of “Njiwa,” fading into the sounds of shared skin.


—fade to black—


His thick neck slipped over her slender one, holding her to his chest. Part of him wanted to look at her face, to look into her eyes and see that she was good, that sharing herself with a man once again had not ruined her or brought her back to the days of the pleasure houses. But another part of him, the part that won, wished to hold her tightly and feel that she was okay. And, if need be, contain any aftershocks of all that his dove had been through.

Tembovu & Orithia

an Elephant and his Dove

He pressed against her, her gentle King, her sweet savior in his sovereign skin.

Their breaths mingled together, sweat mixing in the memory of joined bodies, a seamless profession of love. She could feel the bass drum beat of his heart, echoing the steady pulse of her own, thudding along to the same rhythm, the same lifesong that connected them to the universe.

On and on their spirits twined through stars and souls, reaching nirvana through actualization and confession.

So this is what love was.

It tasted of dew and a dawn yet unbroken by the majesty of the sun, of fragile moments stolen between breathless laughs and of the soft whisper of a receding tide against sand. It felt like everything she had never known and all that she had never deserved.

She turned her head, faintly dished skull a pale silhouette against a backdrop of silent earth and slumbering fates. Her cheek, still damp from the ruddy pool and her own tears, pressed against his chest, the wholesome beating of his heart now thundering its way beneath her skin. It had not felt like any time before, no, it had felt like release and like rainfall; thunderstorms and ocean furies, all at once, she had felt whole.

Orithia had never known what it was like to feel whole.

A sigh slipped from between pastel lips, eyes closed against the tide of night.

Whispers of "Njiwa" echoed about the forest, murmured by the rustling of leaves and held close by the arms of memory.

"Thank you," Her voice was gossamer soft, "You have given me a gift, Mfalme. You have given me such a gift. I promise, Tembovu. All of my promises, you may have them, all of my heart is yours. Thank you."