Topic: Dream Again

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-17 14:02 EST
She wanted as she hadn't wanted in so very long.

Weeks of accepting the inevitable, the way things were, weighed her down. A familiar path she'd walked before in some ways. The same path different in, entirely too many ways. Too intriguing, too inviting to stall the journey, though she felt entirely too certain of the outcome to let hope kindle.

In many ways she'd been surprised when a chance encounter revealed the same heat-branded want she'd allowed to be thwarted years before. In other ways she'd been frustrated. As before, what she wanted, who she wanted, was beyond reach. Just as unattainable now as before, though for vastly different reasons.

Before she'd been too wary, too unsure of an offer made through subtlety and classic maneuvers. Too easily warded off perhaps. Too gun-shy from reading what'd been plainly written, only to have the story twist in a manner that'd helped her tear down her own foundations.
Now, now there was the same temptation, and though the lines were more easily blurred and the want was so much more, she held firm. As firm as she could.

Before the path had been relatively clear, until he'd made his interest known. A roadblock thrown up by another, had squelched the possibility before it'd gone beyond simple flirtation. Now the path was blocked from the jump, and she could no more stop the progression than she could stop the want and the guilt born of that want, from taking hold.

And gods did she want. Only his belonging to another stilled her tongue and softened her actions. Her reactions to his presence could not be made completely innocent, no matter how she tried. Not down deep where few could see. It didn't help that he was either unaware of his influence, or enjoyed the dance too much to care.

Even with the guilt of wanting something, someone, that belonged to, with, another, couldn't temper the ache and the silent wish.

Hard enough when she was awake and he was near to keep her mind and thoughts where it should be. Impossible when her sleeping mind took hold.

And the sweat soaked images that played there made even her routine visits to Sigil pale. The strength it took to kneel, to bend knee and accept another over her, the strength to submit, she found only when it was skin-to-skin, heat-to-heat. Needs and wants tearing the air as surely as lust soaked moans and husky-voiced demands. When flesh slapped and hands held hard, so many possibilities arose.

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-26 12:20 EST
She'd gone home with the vain hope of letting the tail end of a conversation slide over her and keep going.

It'd begun innocent enough, though the irony of it was not lost on Thorn. Within the span of a few weeks she'd given two separate people roughly the same advice. That she was the who'd been asked for the advice, was where the irony came in. Neither of Thorn's actual relationships, all two of them, had been very successful, and they'd both ended in pain and heartache, and loneliness.

Toward the end of the evening however, there'd been a shift, and she'd found herself dancing lightly around a subject she'd rahter had been left alone.

She was starting to fall asleep against Thorn. Not that she meant to. Thorn was just that warm. "Is there a guy you like? Somewhere..?"

It took her a moment, a slight hesitation that spoke volumes for those that caught it. "Yeah. Yeah there is." Wistful in a manner that spoke of a child climbing a ladder in an attempt to touch the stars. "Y're fallin' asleep sweetness."


The last who'd held her heart, the last man who'd accepted what she hadn't even been aware of giving. Roan. Ancient as only one who measured their life span in the thousands of years could be. And still with the countenance and form of a warrior in his prime. Father of the most ambitious, adaptable, and feared, clan the Abyss had ever known.

She'd never felt the fall, had been robbed of the head long rush of possibilities. And knowing she was in love with him had come hand in hand with knowing that he was, in essence, dying.

She'd spent every moment she could bear with him. Watching him fade away bit by bit. And having to fake being alright when she wasn't there beside him. And knowing that at the end of their last day, he'd give himself over.

Sacrifice his very essence to fuel the spell, the covenant, that had allowed the first of their kind to survive what would later be called the Offering.

In the end, she'd surrendered to the inevitable, had bowed her head and bent her knees to something she'd never had a hope of fighting.


"Why don't you ..why haven't you told them?" She yawned, knowing Thorn was right but she didn't want to leave yet.

There was a sharp, diamond edged wish for a glass of water riding hard and high. The faintest of grimaces crossed her face before she answered, soft and low, barely above a breath. "Because I have no right to. And I won't, not so long as I do not have the right." For all her ways, the redneck had a slew of lines she would not intentionally cross.

And it was not having the right that stilled her tongue, that kept her from stepping forward to offer, whatever he'd have from her. The possibilities, the maybes, the what-ifs, were endlessly complicated and temptingly simple. However there was at least one might be that she'd not tempt. Part of the self-imposed penance to assuage her growing feelings of guilt, was to keep her mouth closed on her own desires, and take what was offered.

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-26 12:21 EST
Instead of sleeping, she'd tossed and turned until the sheets were a tangled mess. The third time she'd banished the all-too-clear and all-too-appealing fantasy of being ridden to madness across the expanse of her bed, she'd given up even the slightest hope of sleep. All hope of not thinking about what it would be like. What might have been.

She'd pulled on comfortably broken in jeans and a plain white wife-beater, slipped her feet into a pair of skate-shoes, and headed through the house for the front door. Shrugging into a leather jacket she'd slipped out into the night, leaving her dogs behind. Where she was going, a pack of Akitas would likely not be a good idea.

Between one step and the next she traded the comfort of her own territory where the night was silent and the air carried a hinted threat of snow for somewhere else. The air was thick with the scent of the docks, ripe with the edgy feel of sea-folk on shore. An odd mix of knife edged boredom, anticipation, and frustration. Anyone who did the same thing day after day, and lived under the threat of dying tended, on the large part, to play in a manner that reflected that.

With her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, Thorn strode along in an unconsciously confident gait. Here, had she been looking for it, she could have found every bit of the trouble she usually sought out to clear her mind. Tonight however, her heart wasn't in it. Frosted amethyst eyes looked off into the middle distance, tracking left to right almost lazily.

Even in the bubble of personal space and seeming oblivion she'd created for herself, the little blonde was well aware of being measured, weighed, noted. The bruising that marked the left side of her face from cheek to jaw, coupled with seeming as though she belonged there, likely went a goodly distance toward keeping that bubble of space, and her skin, intact.

Through parts of the sprawling behemoth that was Rhy'din city, she wandered, thoughtful and silent. The occasional greeting thrown her way, wary or cheery, met with an upnod and the firefly flash of a smile.

When the clouds split and rain sent the night owls and people whose lives were lived in the dark and shadows to ground or shelter, she tipped her face up and let the chill downpour wash over her. Past the bar where she'd met her match not four nights before. Moved from dark to light to dark again, quiet to raucous cacophony when she crossed in front of a bar that was still open.

She'd had no destination in mind when she'd set out, though she wasn't truly surprised to find herself at the end of a disused pier, well off the beaten path.

There, with the rain falling from above and the sound of the waves crashing and lapping below, she settled down for a time. Mindless of the wet, she sat on the pier, legs and feet dangling off the edge, her back leaning against the single lamp post. Frosted amethyst eyes looked out over the black expanse of water.

And there she let herself wonder. Let herself imagine what might be, rather than what might have been. What could be, instead of what couldn't. Allowed herself the selfish luxury of remembering the dreams she tried to banish.

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-26 12:22 EST
The taste of his mouth, hot and hungry on hers. Sharp arousal pulling such sounds from her throat as her hands buried themselves in his hair. That quivering, not-quite languid heat snapping out from her core at the rasp of facial hair against her skin.


An exultant moan when he dragged her head back by her hair. The tender line of her throat bared to the maddening torment his mouth promised. Held in place by the arms bracing her back, she could only hold on and enjoy. Wallow in the sensations of it.

Fierce, blinding need fanned high by the slide, that damnably teasing hint as they moved, a hair's breadth apart. No soft, tender sighs, only growls and snarls, flooded with rising impatience and command. The helpless, stunned catch of breath when he found her, as ever, ready and quivering for him.

Indulging now, thinking about these continued dreamings, these flights of fancy, she frowned. Always, always that sense of familiarity laced through their frantic couplings. The feeling that they each knew what the other wanted, needed, at just the right moment. That this was neither the first, nor the last time.


And that troubled her, brought the sharp talons of guilt crushing down. Bad enough that she could no more squelch her waking rsponse to him than she could banish the painfully arousing dreams that made even the paltry few hours she allowed herself to sleep at night a bitter-sweet torment. That she couldn't keep herself from giving when he made even the slightest request of her, from accepting what he offered, was so close to the edge of a line she' set that her guilt was a very real thing.

A real thing compounded by the knowledge that, while she knew what she wanted, it was also a certainty that she'd never have it.

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-30 12:41 EST
Sometimes wishes came true. And sometimes they broke apart in shatter-shard moments given life with soft spoken words.

In that moment, all she could do was swallow against the sickening drop of her stomach and the rise of sweet disappointment and speak the words that were foremost in her mind and heart.

"I'm so happy for you both."

What else could she do? Especially when slicking over the tainted wish, she felt just that. Near joy that two who were matched, mated, would have the chance to find and explore the horizons stretching before them. With their partner beside them, or at the very least within a moment's reach. That loneliness could be banished for one she cherished and one that she might come to feel the same for, were blessings. A gift from whomever granted such boons.

And one that touched something she'd thought buried, if not stamped out completely. An emotion, an ugly feeling she'd tried to reassure another of the naturalness of some months back.

Down deep the redneck knew that changes were coming, some large and some small. They'd already begun in soft, subtle ways that were more of an easing than the razored tear and dislocation she'd encountered before.

And as she sat in the center of the nearly wall-less meditation labyrinth that'd drawn her to her home from the start, Thorn could only be grateful. Could only thank whatever Powers were listening that this cherished one was enjoying the wide-eyed wonder of a wish granted, of a love uninterrupted.

The Redneck

Date: 2012-04-30 13:16 EST
With afternoon sunlight filtering through clouds scudding over head, Thorn slowed her breathing. Counting out with an exhale, and in with the inhale. A technique she'd found that worked when she needed or wanted to center herself and meditate. When that lovely and warm feeling of being disconnected from her physical being shimmered into place, the redneck turned her attention inward.

In a forest more wild than any on Arvandor, moonlight touched everything below with a silvered wash. Stars wheeled over head, diamond strewn across black velvet. Ghosts moved, flickering memories projected against the very air in jerky vignettes that ended before they could be pinned down and recognized.

A fire-circle set in the center of a thickly green glade. Hard packed, heat soaked earth surrounded by overgrown grasses and sprigs of wild flowers' color. Rough hewn logs laid out to form a circular boundary between the wild, and the ordered. Stone lined and circled, the fire-pit cast light that was both cheery and ominous within the wooden barrier. Without, only moonlight and starlight.

Off center and to the left, held in clear cubes, two globes of what might be rose quartz. One, dull and lifeless within its cage, the other filled with an amber light that gave the very distinct impression of sleeping deeply. Further beneath the surface than a coma, closer than death. And as far away as the stars.

And now, one more. One more perfectly round, absolutely smooth globe of rosy hued stone created with a though, lit with a breath. Its clear-sided cage forming beside the slumbering-one's a moment later.

"Hold this from me that it may be kept safe. Hold this from me that I may be kept safe. Hold it sweetly, hold it gently, until such time as I may touch it again, or until it fades away and sleeps forever. Hold this from me until it is safe for me to have it once more."

Here, in this circle, she was triumvirate. What she had been, what she was now, what she might one day be should she choose to take up that mantle, all overlapping. And here, deep within, where once the scarred veterans of the First Born's battle for survival and Reality had once stood to be heard, to be felt and seen, here she reigned supreme. Here, in the very center of her mind, she was a Power in her own right. And here what she willed, would be done.

What she created, would be made as real as a mind could make it. What she needed to put aside, whether for a time or for evermore, would be put aside. Held safe as safe could be until a later time. Buried deep where no one else could find even hints of its keeping.

The globe settled, nestled within its impossibly cushioned confinement. Fire light flared, flicking out to seal the bargain, and the one-who-was-now, turned to sprinkle sage and lavender in payment. Then stepped out of Fire's Reach, to begin the slow climb to consciousness.

Behind her, resting in firelight and shadows, the newborn globe flared, restless and fretful, pushing against transparent walls, and the one-who-would-be smiled in far off anticipation. Not now, but the future was written in sand and smoke.

And won't that someday-maybe be an interesting possibility.