Hello friends and lovers!
MAPPY CHAPPY DAY!!!
WELCOME TO ARC 3 EVERYONE!!!
CW:
SpoilerDescriptions of death and torture, memory loss, betrayal. And curses. Comparing things to eye torture. Losing agency due to the head you share brain smushes in.
[collapse]
Within the Dream, I find Her weeping so hard it floods the ashen wastes all around us. Even brings the water up to my knees.
I slosh through the incredibly salty smelling mess to kneel beside her. This sobbing song is one of horrid contradictions that are laid plan in the reflections around her.
Black and writhing Rot, horrid fury and blood-curdling wroth, and deep and unbearable pain blighting all the happiness she might otherwise call to herself.
“Ina, I… I’m so sorry.” She digs wonderfully cerulean scaled talons into her face as her head tendrils writhe in such a mess of anger and pain. “It… the… we can’t just…”
I sigh and wrap my arms around my beloved soul partner. Offer Her soft coos and affections as I focus on the pulsing… things around us.
Find her song that Reaves Her and this Dream we share.
And I… I can’t help but grimace at what I find. Such… pain. So much that even focusing on it I struggle to find a harmony or rhythm.
Which is just… so odd for Her.
Over the six months after we lost our leg we’d grown close, and She taught me the foundations of the musical magic we’d used that night. And then… over these past few weeks I’d seen our Dream laid bare and stricken. All façade and pretense stripped away to the raw soul beneath.
Sure, She’s still this massive ancient person of terrifying proportions. But… still a girl. And this girl has experienced something that broke a Goddess. Or more likely… a great many things. Traumas that shattered Her heart and soul and mind into countless shards of despairing spirits.
I know this because as I sit here trying to give Her every ounce of my love and care, the grand song that always seems to wiggle through our shared Dream has fallen into so much rank saltwater around our ankles. And its gurgling stillness screams to me the things that torment my lover.
She can’t break the command. It’s too much a part of Her own soul. To change or break it She’ll have to change herself. Alter how She feels about them or… or hurt us both so much that we may not recover.
This… is why the first command hurt so much to remove. Its link to me was this… sort of chain hooked into both our souls. To even carefully extract its talon we both had to like… Fuck it’s so weird to explain this way… but we had to sort of stop believing it.
Kind of.
I just… most of my memories of it felt like She was pulling literal hot wires out of my fucking eyes as I had to focus really really hard on my certainty that I was, in fact, a little stupid and useless.
And to Her? It was way fucking worse.
A thing of ancient power and a TON of years to consider had to believe that her lover, the woman whose body she had woven with fire and song, was at least a little stupid and a little useless.
I only got flashes, but it seems to be like pouring hot alchemical acid into her own eyes.
Fucking OW. We had to weave a healing song prior to the task. And still slept about twenty hours to recover enough to even Dream well.
I chew on my lower lip as I pull Her closer… considering… Everything. All of this. How do you help a traumatized girl of this… this size!?! How do you tackle this much pain and self-hatred and fury and…
And… Huh.
You don’t. Not all at once. That would be stupid. I can’t even imagine my lovers trying to fix all my nonsense the day I stumbled into their lives. Or like… even now. I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to shake the random little lurches of dread and panic that hit me when I’m reminded of my life at the temple.
So… we’ll have to take this slow. Figure out exactly what happened to Her and how I can help. But She’s such a mess right now. So… Distraction time!
“Have you picked one out yet?”
That jerks my lover from Her blubbering sobs. She echoes such confusion and she tries to suck in the broken parts of her soul that lay scattered about us like so much sea-trash. Tendrils flubber about to mimic her mood so well.
“C’mon. Use words please. I’m still getting used to all this Dream-reading nonsense.” I giggle.
She sighs… and takes a big breath. “Picked what out wh–”
An audible plop should have echoed as She suddenly understands my question.
I kiss Her on the head.
She leans into me and reaches out to return the affection. Wrapping me in arms and tendrils that seem to adore playing with my hair. “No.”
But even my stupid brain can see the extra things behind that answer!
“Buuuut. You have a few ideas, don’t you?”
She sort of… growls. But it’s honestly only so big because of the power around us She’s dropped. Just… more of a rumble of… hm… Well isn’t that so perfect!
I place a few kisses on a tendril that wanders to nuzzle my face, “You have a couple you really like.”
She huffs, eyes downcast on the waters. “Apologies, Your mind is…”
I tilt my head, and decide to let Her lead us down a second path of distractions.
“Our mergings change me, as much if not more than they change you.” She whispers. “And… and I’m not… It…”
I brush some wriggling tendrils from Her downcast eyes, then take her hands. But don’t press.
“I’m forced to compare all my past actions, each and every one, in the framing of your mind.” More of the sludge around us seems to… to soften. Disperse and… and clear a bit as She focuses Her will and thoughts. “And because you’re such a gentle fucking spirit I’m finding myself more and more disguised by who I was, and what I still want to be.”
“Well…. Fuck.” I settle into the still draining waters. “That’s… not good. Horrible actually.”
A long pause settles upon us for what seems like a few eternities as she slowly draws Her form and thoughts together.
“Is it?” She whispers. “Is it so horrible to have what I’ve become be whittled away until only a kinder thing remains?”
“Of course it is.” I gift her my softest smile. “I… I don’t want to like… change you into what I want you to be or carve away at who you are. I want you to heal and find happiness.”
She snorts so horribly, and glares off into the horizon. “What little happiness I hoped for was bled from my body like–”
She clicks Her teeth shut, hard. Cutting off the words and a rising tide. I look down, find the liquid around us filled with writhing nonsense things again.
Memories of pain and horror and worse things still.
Taking a deep breath, I reach down to touch the pool. To begin to feel and understand Her–
A wretched claw of terrible fury snatches my hand, and when I look up I see the Her gaze hard and arm twisted into a mangled shape as She looms over me.
Don’t. Her will rolls out like some radiant blaze.
I give her my best smirk, “It’s the best way, love.”
She growls as tendrils writhe, but… it’s the thing of one who is scared and knows She can’t stop me from wrenching this memory up from Her if I set my will to it.
So I stop and pull back. “If it’s my… sort of mind. My perspective that’s changing you, then this is the best way to help. Let me see you. Let me understand this amazing girl who’s been through so much.”
She just… stares, tendrils settling into an anxiety filling sway. You’ll hate me.
I reach out, touch her cheek. Pull her face back to mine. “Never.”
She growls, and I sense Her disagreement.
But it’s not a logical feeling. Not something born of careful consideration of Her past and my personality. It’s a thing born of such deep fear.
Fear of losing her Inamatorii again.
So I lean down and kiss the blighted hand. Wanting to just show her that even her scars are things I can love.
But then I feel… A flash, a wave of fury and rage and SUCH howling cruelty. An eternity devoted to bitter slaughter, no matter the cost. All are simple tools beneath her gaze. Things to be used and discarded and–
I know I’m trembling, feeling the Dream literally quake at my sudden and incredibly painful contact with even this little part of Her.
By the time I’m lucid She’s cradling me again. Sobbing apologies as the waters rise. Now up to our waists. Her body once again the twisting shadow thing. Tendrils a mass of dark silhouettes while her eyes are vibrant violet hues that weep molten starfire.
“I’m oke.” I murmur, reaching up to touch her face. “Sorry I… I didn’t mean to do that. To… to see that. I want you to choose what to share or keep.”
She trembles, wants to close her eyes but… can’t. Is as unable able to break our gaze as I am to fly outside this Dream.
“Just… let’s take it slow.” I grin up at her as those shadow tendrils squeeze me close. “Little steps. We’ll take all the time you need. Years and years and years if that’s what it takes. We can worry about the command later.”
Her eyes widen. Both in surprise and… and more fear.
But… our lovers. I promised–
“I’ll explain things.” I caress her cheek. “They’ll understand.”
They’ll HATE me.
I pull up to wrap Her into such a full hug, “They’ll be upset. But… I think they’ll surprise you. It’s a brave thing you did. Admitting you can’t keep a promise.”
Not for something like me! It’s… It’s too dangerous. I’m so Blighted and Broken and–
I drag Her into a kiss to stop the wash of such self-hatred She starts to cultivate, warm and loving and so soft. Feel her surprise and sudden rolling of desire and overwhelming love.
“Let me handle them.” As I pull back I allow the tittering giggle to escape me as her form has shifted back to the little cutie she was before. Face the dizzy confusion of one kissed suddenly and very well. “I need you to keep being brave, and focus on something else.”
Confusion from Her then…
“I need you to find a name we can use. Something new. Something that’s yours.” I lay a few pecks on her nose. “I guess… That seems to be a good first step. If you want to heal, then let's start there.”
She huffs and looks down. But I can tell she’s found it. That my final words have laid clear the name She should pick.
“Aceso.” She finally murmurs, tendrils flubble about in little worries.
I don’t recognize the name. Don’t recall it from any of my books or studies.
“It’s really pretty.” I smile at her. “Is it Arudian?”
I know the answer to both my questions, I think.
Aceso shakes Her head. “No. I will not share a name with another. At least no one living. It’s from an old dead people within a different Dream."
I can’t help but turn my smile into a smirk at how much that fits her. “What’s it mean?”
She huffs, embarrassed but… smiling a bit too. “Healing.”
I pull up her newly finned talons, kiss each one. “I adore it.”
Aceso fights what I can tell is such a wash of pleasure at my approval with a broken scowl. “You don’t need to play the Hetaera with me.”
I tilt my head. “Hm?”
She gently pulls a single hand free, waves it in a dismissive manner. “I… I may have gifted you this Dream but I’m not blind, or a fool. I can see how you tease out my affections and… And I’d rather you just be plain with me. Be honest.”
“You think me encouraging my lover with affections isn’t honest?”
She huffs. “I don’t need to be manipulated to do as you ask.”
“Huh… I’m not trying to manipulate you… but, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention to do that. I just thought my affections might help make this easier for you. If you don’t enjoy that I can stop.”
“Of course I enjoy them. That’s the problem.” Aceso snaps, then quiets. “I simply… I…”
A long pause, and other than holding the hand she has not pulled from my gasp I remain back. Sensing her confliction and confusion and doubts.
Finally she just whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I murmur. “You just shared a fear with me. Something that bothers you. If you’d be more comfortable with me handling things a different way then I will. I… I just… I’m really bad at knowing how to help, but… willing to give you anything you need.”
Aceso growls but… it’s a soft thing. Annoyed but… also fluttering with affections. “I’m not comfortable being at another’s mercy. And… and you using affections to make me feel more comfortable reminds me of…”
She trails off. A pointed end to that thought made clear to me through the dream.
This dances just at the edge of Her deepest pain.
“Alright. I can do that. I can treat you as a treasured friend. Avoid–”
“Not–” She jerks back, eyes sort of… frantic. “Not all the time. Just when we’re discussing these things. I didn’t mean to imply that I… That I don’t…”
“You didn’t.” I shake my head, pat her hand. “And I get it. It actually makes so much sense. We should keep the healing time and snuggling time separate for now. And… Like... fuck! I can only imagine how easily some horrid woman could have twisted me if they’d found me instead of our lovers. How affections and like... treating me well would have let her control my everything!”
She growls, “The young have an excuse to be foolish. I did not.”
“That seems a little unkind to yourself.”
The water rises another few inches but… Aceso doesn’t darken or change. “I could read all my lover's will and wishes more than any other, Ina. Their souls as clear as the star-filled night. I knew what It wanted from me. Thought… I believed this monster would change if only I could love it enough. And that foolishness allowed it to roll over this land like the Rot and Ruin.”
Monster.
I know from that word the shape of person who hurt her.
The sea around us darkens as Aceso trembles. Closes her eyes and forces the next words out. Fighting to keep them as soft as one can keep a razor. “It… You won’t know what this means, for your lands do not feast on the flesh of animals. My Sun Spoken of old broke you all of that. But…” She takes such a deep breath. Fights so hard to keep herself steady as She speaks these next words. “Ina, I was stuck like a pig and bled of my power for centuries.”
Cold dream sweat prickles at my spine as I recall the lines from the tome I gifted to Emarial and Zigdara…
Desperate for victory
They drank deep of the nectar and engorged themselves
Still wishing to break the world to their will
She’s hissing now, tendrils a mass of fury and barely contained rage. “This parasite I adored used my power to ravage and tear this land apart. Bound me in wretched anathema and… and… and never touched my flesh again but to carve more of my Amwella away with dreadful tools. I did not feel another soul against mine until after I was shattered.”
I want so badly to reach out. To hold her and… and comfort her. To bend this Dream into soft woodlands I know she craves.
But… She asked me not to.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I whisper without hesitation. “What… what somethi–”
“Stupid girl!” Aceso nearly screams. “Who is to blame? The little vermin who spreads a plague, or the one who lets it it freely drink from Her Wellspring!?!”
Fuck. Why am I so bad at this?
She’s growling now, and her body is shifting. But… I don’t release her hand. Even as cold darkness envelopes it.
“I felt what a wretched monster it was, how it saw in me a path to power and control. But I loved it and… and thought that adoration could change it. I offered it the thing that could bind me to… to try and… to offer a secret part of myself I’d not shared with any other… Hoping it would be shattered by my love.” She slumps. “But instead this horrid thing betrayed me, and used my Amwella to slaughter and enslave and Blight everyone it touched.”
I expect Her to stop then but… the cruel thing She’s wrapping her soul in rises from the waters, and coils around her form like a cloak.
Then her mouth splits into such a wretched smile.
“But… I fixed my mistake in the end.” She purrs, self-loathing pouring from her lips like blood from a wound. Her mantle is one of self-harm as much as a thing of power. “It only took the rotting of the old world and the death of a wonderous girl to ensure such monsters and parasites will writhe in such agonies if they so much as touch my Amwella ever again.”
Instead they were twisted
Broken upon their own ambitions
And the slavers' true form was revealed to the people
The old words roll through my mind like a horrid litany. A terrible idea prodding at my mind’s edge.
“And… and the nightmares?” I whisper. “What are they?”
“Promises kept.” She giggles. “To let the women of this age know that, even in death and shattering, Their Weaver of the World Song keeps Her promises.”
“What does that mean? What–”
“An endless curse,” She waves a hand out at the waters as they reach my armpits. “As endless as this sea. I could not kill them all, but I could make fucking sure they would choke on my power. For when a monster or parasite feels the spark of MY Amwella, It will forevermore corrode their body and mind. Ensure no one will see such a thing as naught but what they are.”
“B– But… Aceso. That was… Wasn’t this centuries ago?”
Her name seems to… to jerk her free of that old wretched mantle for a moment, causes the waters to still. “It was. Close to a hundred of them if your people have kept track of such things correctly.”
Such a span of time… ten-thousand years… My stupid little soul can’t even fathom its depths.
“So… Why hate ones born today? Why–”
She drifts down to cup my face in her hands as the water rises, and around me I feel large terrifying shapes slithering and gnashing. Only kept from biting me due to Her love and my own power in this Dream.
“Because, the monster who broke me was not the only thing I felt such horrid desires in. Was not alone in his abuses and torments.” She growls as her eyes meet mine, tendrils and shadows curling about me in a protective cocoon. “It took less than a year for so many to gather around him. Drink deep of the power he carved from my soul and turn it toward the breaking of your world.”
It’s too raw. To real right now. Need to just… weather Her storm. Endure this hate and let it pass through me!
“That… I’m so sorry.”
“If not for my Sun Spoken,” She continues as if I didn’t even speak. “And the Lamentation I instilled into my Amwella in the moments before my death, he would have succeeded. And if you’d even been born it would have been into such misery. They would have seen your gentle soul as a weak thing to be used and ravaged.”
“I…”
“But that’s not even why I wove into it my full cruelty and wroth.” She chuckles with absolutely no mirth as my feet lose the ground below to the rising waters, and her hands become the only things holding me afloat. “My original plan was to cause the World Song to become inert. By the time the monsters grew desperate enough to slit my throat and drink my heart’s blood, believing it would grant them strength to defeat my Sun Spoken, they’d already been set to lose their final battles. No…”
She leans down and pressed her forehead to mine, eyes suddenly filling with tears as her everything shudders in such agony. “It’s because in those final days, one of his caretakers showed me such… wonderful kindness I’d not known for nearly a century. Helped smuggle my shards from the monster's castle to the women who would one day rally against them.”
“Your Inamatorii.” I murmur as she pauses for a deep breath.
She nods, presses harder into me. “I think I was old when he bound me, but by the end of the war my memories of what could have been thousands of years of life from before was gone. Songs and Soulfire Bled and devoured by parasites. I was a withered and broken thing. The Amwella within my core so small and… and I’d forgotten so much of myself. Only knew the pain of isolation, the horrors of their blood rituals to steal my fire, and… and in the end. Her love. But… but she refused any offering I made of the power I would share with her.”
“She… she never took one of your shards? Never became a Sun Spoken? Why?”
“Because she didn’t want me!” Aceso whimpers. “Not one of these… these fragments or… or lessened things. She wanted to see the real Weaver freed and well and… and able to hold and… and thought a shard to be a…”
Her tears are things of Rot and Ruin. Horrid and rank and… and every drop a window into her wailing soul. “She knew us shards… kn- knew ME to be nothing but a shadow to the girl she loved!”
And I feel in that moment that She wishes more than anything else to be held, so I reach up and drag my Aceso into an embrace that thrums with all the weight of the Dream we share behind it. No words besides her new name can help now. I can feel that as clear as I can feel her misery. So I offer her my everything in this Dream.
“I’ll never forgive him for that. For… for killing one of his only wretched spawn to be worth the fire I’d have gifted into her warm soul.” She growls, her voice a storm of such fury that seeks to rip the Dream from my control. “I’ll keep My final promise. I will see all his beloved little monsters either dead or writhing in torment! None he would call his heirs will survive in the world I wrenched back from his Blighted will!!!”
I don’t let her go. Don’t wake from this Dream as my lover screams and howls in agony. Eventually diving into the sea to thrash and reave at the nightmares below.
Whispering all my love and adoration and desires to never be without Her as I just… coo Her new name over and over and over…
THANK YOU ALL so SO SO SO much for reading and comments and drinking in our soul songs!!!
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BUT BE WARNED, it is dark and very much the opposite of Sun Spoken Turn in many ways. BIG sad/trauma!!!
Read the Content Warnings!
Hello friends and lovers!
MAPPY CHAPPY DAY!!!
WELCOME TO ARC 3 EVERYONE!!!
CW:
SpoilerDescriptions of death and torture, memory loss, betrayal. And curses. Comparing things to eye torture. Losing agency due to the head you share brain smushes in.
[collapse]
Within the Dream, I find Her weeping so hard it floods the ashen wastes all around us. Even brings the water up to my knees.
I slosh through the incredibly salty smelling mess to kneel beside her. This sobbing song is one of horrid contradictions that are laid plan in the reflections around her.
Black and writhing Rot, horrid fury and blood-curdling wroth, and deep and unbearable pain blighting all the happiness she might otherwise call to herself.
“Ina, I… I’m so sorry.” She digs wonderfully cerulean scaled talons into her face as her head tendrils writhe in such a mess of anger and pain. “It… the… we can’t just…”
I sigh and wrap my arms around my beloved soul partner. Offer Her soft coos and affections as I focus on the pulsing… things around us.
Find her song that Reaves Her and this Dream we share.
And I… I can’t help but grimace at what I find. Such… pain. So much that even focusing on it I struggle to find a harmony or rhythm.
Which is just… so odd for Her.
Over the six months after we lost our leg we’d grown close, and She taught me the foundations of the musical magic we’d used that night. And then… over these past few weeks I’d seen our Dream laid bare and stricken. All façade and pretense stripped away to the raw soul beneath.
Sure, She’s still this massive ancient person of terrifying proportions. But… still a girl. And this girl has experienced something that broke a Goddess. Or more likely… a great many things. Traumas that shattered Her heart and soul and mind into countless shards of despairing spirits.
I know this because as I sit here trying to give Her every ounce of my love and care, the grand song that always seems to wiggle through our shared Dream has fallen into so much rank saltwater around our ankles. And its gurgling stillness screams to me the things that torment my lover.
She can’t break the command. It’s too much a part of Her own soul. To change or break it She’ll have to change herself. Alter how She feels about them or… or hurt us both so much that we may not recover.
This… is why the first command hurt so much to remove. Its link to me was this… sort of chain hooked into both our souls. To even carefully extract its talon we both had to like… Fuck it’s so weird to explain this way… but we had to sort of stop believing it.
Kind of.
I just… most of my memories of it felt like She was pulling literal hot wires out of my fucking eyes as I had to focus really really hard on my certainty that I was, in fact, a little stupid and useless.
And to Her? It was way fucking worse.
A thing of ancient power and a TON of years to consider had to believe that her lover, the woman whose body she had woven with fire and song, was at least a little stupid and a little useless.
I only got flashes, but it seems to be like pouring hot alchemical acid into her own eyes.
Fucking OW. We had to weave a healing song prior to the task. And still slept about twenty hours to recover enough to even Dream well.
I chew on my lower lip as I pull Her closer… considering… Everything. All of this. How do you help a traumatized girl of this… this size!?! How do you tackle this much pain and self-hatred and fury and…
And… Huh.
You don’t. Not all at once. That would be stupid. I can’t even imagine my lovers trying to fix all my nonsense the day I stumbled into their lives. Or like… even now. I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to shake the random little lurches of dread and panic that hit me when I’m reminded of my life at the temple.
So… we’ll have to take this slow. Figure out exactly what happened to Her and how I can help. But She’s such a mess right now. So… Distraction time!
“Have you picked one out yet?”
That jerks my lover from Her blubbering sobs. She echoes such confusion and she tries to suck in the broken parts of her soul that lay scattered about us like so much sea-trash. Tendrils flubber about to mimic her mood so well.
“C’mon. Use words please. I’m still getting used to all this Dream-reading nonsense.” I giggle.
She sighs… and takes a big breath. “Picked what out wh–”
An audible plop should have echoed as She suddenly understands my question.
I kiss Her on the head.
She leans into me and reaches out to return the affection. Wrapping me in arms and tendrils that seem to adore playing with my hair. “No.”
But even my stupid brain can see the extra things behind that answer!
“Buuuut. You have a few ideas, don’t you?”
She sort of… growls. But it’s honestly only so big because of the power around us She’s dropped. Just… more of a rumble of… hm… Well isn’t that so perfect!
I place a few kisses on a tendril that wanders to nuzzle my face, “You have a couple you really like.”
She huffs, eyes downcast on the waters. “Apologies, Your mind is…”
I tilt my head, and decide to let Her lead us down a second path of distractions.
“Our mergings change me, as much if not more than they change you.” She whispers. “And… and I’m not… It…”
I brush some wriggling tendrils from Her downcast eyes, then take her hands. But don’t press.
“I’m forced to compare all my past actions, each and every one, in the framing of your mind.” More of the sludge around us seems to… to soften. Disperse and… and clear a bit as She focuses Her will and thoughts. “And because you’re such a gentle fucking spirit I’m finding myself more and more disguised by who I was, and what I still want to be.”
“Well…. Fuck.” I settle into the still draining waters. “That’s… not good. Horrible actually.”
A long pause settles upon us for what seems like a few eternities as she slowly draws Her form and thoughts together.
“Is it?” She whispers. “Is it so horrible to have what I’ve become be whittled away until only a kinder thing remains?”
“Of course it is.” I gift her my softest smile. “I… I don’t want to like… change you into what I want you to be or carve away at who you are. I want you to heal and find happiness.”
She snorts so horribly, and glares off into the horizon. “What little happiness I hoped for was bled from my body like–”
She clicks Her teeth shut, hard. Cutting off the words and a rising tide. I look down, find the liquid around us filled with writhing nonsense things again.
Memories of pain and horror and worse things still.
Taking a deep breath, I reach down to touch the pool. To begin to feel and understand Her–
A wretched claw of terrible fury snatches my hand, and when I look up I see the Her gaze hard and arm twisted into a mangled shape as She looms over me.
Don’t. Her will rolls out like some radiant blaze.
I give her my best smirk, “It’s the best way, love.”
She growls as tendrils writhe, but… it’s the thing of one who is scared and knows She can’t stop me from wrenching this memory up from Her if I set my will to it.
So I stop and pull back. “If it’s my… sort of mind. My perspective that’s changing you, then this is the best way to help. Let me see you. Let me understand this amazing girl who’s been through so much.”
She just… stares, tendrils settling into an anxiety filling sway. You’ll hate me.
I reach out, touch her cheek. Pull her face back to mine. “Never.”
She growls, and I sense Her disagreement.
But it’s not a logical feeling. Not something born of careful consideration of Her past and my personality. It’s a thing born of such deep fear.
Fear of losing her Inamatorii again.
So I lean down and kiss the blighted hand. Wanting to just show her that even her scars are things I can love.
But then I feel… A flash, a wave of fury and rage and SUCH howling cruelty. An eternity devoted to bitter slaughter, no matter the cost. All are simple tools beneath her gaze. Things to be used and discarded and–
I know I’m trembling, feeling the Dream literally quake at my sudden and incredibly painful contact with even this little part of Her.
By the time I’m lucid She’s cradling me again. Sobbing apologies as the waters rise. Now up to our waists. Her body once again the twisting shadow thing. Tendrils a mass of dark silhouettes while her eyes are vibrant violet hues that weep molten starfire.
“I’m oke.” I murmur, reaching up to touch her face. “Sorry I… I didn’t mean to do that. To… to see that. I want you to choose what to share or keep.”
She trembles, wants to close her eyes but… can’t. Is as unable able to break our gaze as I am to fly outside this Dream.
“Just… let’s take it slow.” I grin up at her as those shadow tendrils squeeze me close. “Little steps. We’ll take all the time you need. Years and years and years if that’s what it takes. We can worry about the command later.”
Her eyes widen. Both in surprise and… and more fear.
But… our lovers. I promised–
“I’ll explain things.” I caress her cheek. “They’ll understand.”
They’ll HATE me.
I pull up to wrap Her into such a full hug, “They’ll be upset. But… I think they’ll surprise you. It’s a brave thing you did. Admitting you can’t keep a promise.”
Not for something like me! It’s… It’s too dangerous. I’m so Blighted and Broken and–
I drag Her into a kiss to stop the wash of such self-hatred She starts to cultivate, warm and loving and so soft. Feel her surprise and sudden rolling of desire and overwhelming love.
“Let me handle them.” As I pull back I allow the tittering giggle to escape me as her form has shifted back to the little cutie she was before. Face the dizzy confusion of one kissed suddenly and very well. “I need you to keep being brave, and focus on something else.”
Confusion from Her then…
“I need you to find a name we can use. Something new. Something that’s yours.” I lay a few pecks on her nose. “I guess… That seems to be a good first step. If you want to heal, then let's start there.”
She huffs and looks down. But I can tell she’s found it. That my final words have laid clear the name She should pick.
“Aceso.” She finally murmurs, tendrils flubble about in little worries.
I don’t recognize the name. Don’t recall it from any of my books or studies.
“It’s really pretty.” I smile at her. “Is it Arudian?”
I know the answer to both my questions, I think.
Aceso shakes Her head. “No. I will not share a name with another. At least no one living. It’s from an old dead people within a different Dream."
I can’t help but turn my smile into a smirk at how much that fits her. “What’s it mean?”
She huffs, embarrassed but… smiling a bit too. “Healing.”
I pull up her newly finned talons, kiss each one. “I adore it.”
Aceso fights what I can tell is such a wash of pleasure at my approval with a broken scowl. “You don’t need to play the Hetaera with me.”
I tilt my head. “Hm?”
She gently pulls a single hand free, waves it in a dismissive manner. “I… I may have gifted you this Dream but I’m not blind, or a fool. I can see how you tease out my affections and… And I’d rather you just be plain with me. Be honest.”
“You think me encouraging my lover with affections isn’t honest?”
She huffs. “I don’t need to be manipulated to do as you ask.”
“Huh… I’m not trying to manipulate you… but, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention to do that. I just thought my affections might help make this easier for you. If you don’t enjoy that I can stop.”
“Of course I enjoy them. That’s the problem.” Aceso snaps, then quiets. “I simply… I…”
A long pause, and other than holding the hand she has not pulled from my gasp I remain back. Sensing her confliction and confusion and doubts.
Finally she just whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I murmur. “You just shared a fear with me. Something that bothers you. If you’d be more comfortable with me handling things a different way then I will. I… I just… I’m really bad at knowing how to help, but… willing to give you anything you need.”
Aceso growls but… it’s a soft thing. Annoyed but… also fluttering with affections. “I’m not comfortable being at another’s mercy. And… and you using affections to make me feel more comfortable reminds me of…”
She trails off. A pointed end to that thought made clear to me through the dream.
This dances just at the edge of Her deepest pain.
“Alright. I can do that. I can treat you as a treasured friend. Avoid–”
“Not–” She jerks back, eyes sort of… frantic. “Not all the time. Just when we’re discussing these things. I didn’t mean to imply that I… That I don’t…”
“You didn’t.” I shake my head, pat her hand. “And I get it. It actually makes so much sense. We should keep the healing time and snuggling time separate for now. And… Like... fuck! I can only imagine how easily some horrid woman could have twisted me if they’d found me instead of our lovers. How affections and like... treating me well would have let her control my everything!”
She growls, “The young have an excuse to be foolish. I did not.”
“That seems a little unkind to yourself.”
The water rises another few inches but… Aceso doesn’t darken or change. “I could read all my lover's will and wishes more than any other, Ina. Their souls as clear as the star-filled night. I knew what It wanted from me. Thought… I believed this monster would change if only I could love it enough. And that foolishness allowed it to roll over this land like the Rot and Ruin.”
Monster.
I know from that word the shape of person who hurt her.
The sea around us darkens as Aceso trembles. Closes her eyes and forces the next words out. Fighting to keep them as soft as one can keep a razor. “It… You won’t know what this means, for your lands do not feast on the flesh of animals. My Sun Spoken of old broke you all of that. But…” She takes such a deep breath. Fights so hard to keep herself steady as She speaks these next words. “Ina, I was stuck like a pig and bled of my power for centuries.”
Cold dream sweat prickles at my spine as I recall the lines from the tome I gifted to Emarial and Zigdara…
Desperate for victory
They drank deep of the nectar and engorged themselves
Still wishing to break the world to their will
She’s hissing now, tendrils a mass of fury and barely contained rage. “This parasite I adored used my power to ravage and tear this land apart. Bound me in wretched anathema and… and… and never touched my flesh again but to carve more of my Amwella away with dreadful tools. I did not feel another soul against mine until after I was shattered.”
I want so badly to reach out. To hold her and… and comfort her. To bend this Dream into soft woodlands I know she craves.
But… She asked me not to.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I whisper without hesitation. “What… what somethi–”
“Stupid girl!” Aceso nearly screams. “Who is to blame? The little vermin who spreads a plague, or the one who lets it it freely drink from Her Wellspring!?!”
Fuck. Why am I so bad at this?
She’s growling now, and her body is shifting. But… I don’t release her hand. Even as cold darkness envelopes it.
“I felt what a wretched monster it was, how it saw in me a path to power and control. But I loved it and… and thought that adoration could change it. I offered it the thing that could bind me to… to try and… to offer a secret part of myself I’d not shared with any other… Hoping it would be shattered by my love.” She slumps. “But instead this horrid thing betrayed me, and used my Amwella to slaughter and enslave and Blight everyone it touched.”
I expect Her to stop then but… the cruel thing She’s wrapping her soul in rises from the waters, and coils around her form like a cloak.
Then her mouth splits into such a wretched smile.
“But… I fixed my mistake in the end.” She purrs, self-loathing pouring from her lips like blood from a wound. Her mantle is one of self-harm as much as a thing of power. “It only took the rotting of the old world and the death of a wonderous girl to ensure such monsters and parasites will writhe in such agonies if they so much as touch my Amwella ever again.”
Instead they were twisted
Broken upon their own ambitions
And the slavers' true form was revealed to the people
The old words roll through my mind like a horrid litany. A terrible idea prodding at my mind’s edge.
“And… and the nightmares?” I whisper. “What are they?”
“Promises kept.” She giggles. “To let the women of this age know that, even in death and shattering, Their Weaver of the World Song keeps Her promises.”
“What does that mean? What–”
“An endless curse,” She waves a hand out at the waters as they reach my armpits. “As endless as this sea. I could not kill them all, but I could make fucking sure they would choke on my power. For when a monster or parasite feels the spark of MY Amwella, It will forevermore corrode their body and mind. Ensure no one will see such a thing as naught but what they are.”
“B– But… Aceso. That was… Wasn’t this centuries ago?”
Her name seems to… to jerk her free of that old wretched mantle for a moment, causes the waters to still. “It was. Close to a hundred of them if your people have kept track of such things correctly.”
Such a span of time… ten-thousand years… My stupid little soul can’t even fathom its depths.
“So… Why hate ones born today? Why–”
She drifts down to cup my face in her hands as the water rises, and around me I feel large terrifying shapes slithering and gnashing. Only kept from biting me due to Her love and my own power in this Dream.
“Because, the monster who broke me was not the only thing I felt such horrid desires in. Was not alone in his abuses and torments.” She growls as her eyes meet mine, tendrils and shadows curling about me in a protective cocoon. “It took less than a year for so many to gather around him. Drink deep of the power he carved from my soul and turn it toward the breaking of your world.”
It’s too raw. To real right now. Need to just… weather Her storm. Endure this hate and let it pass through me!
“That… I’m so sorry.”
“If not for my Sun Spoken,” She continues as if I didn’t even speak. “And the Lamentation I instilled into my Amwella in the moments before my death, he would have succeeded. And if you’d even been born it would have been into such misery. They would have seen your gentle soul as a weak thing to be used and ravaged.”
“I…”
“But that’s not even why I wove into it my full cruelty and wroth.” She chuckles with absolutely no mirth as my feet lose the ground below to the rising waters, and her hands become the only things holding me afloat. “My original plan was to cause the World Song to become inert. By the time the monsters grew desperate enough to slit my throat and drink my heart’s blood, believing it would grant them strength to defeat my Sun Spoken, they’d already been set to lose their final battles. No…”
She leans down and pressed her forehead to mine, eyes suddenly filling with tears as her everything shudders in such agony. “It’s because in those final days, one of his caretakers showed me such… wonderful kindness I’d not known for nearly a century. Helped smuggle my shards from the monster's castle to the women who would one day rally against them.”
“Your Inamatorii.” I murmur as she pauses for a deep breath.
She nods, presses harder into me. “I think I was old when he bound me, but by the end of the war my memories of what could have been thousands of years of life from before was gone. Songs and Soulfire Bled and devoured by parasites. I was a withered and broken thing. The Amwella within my core so small and… and I’d forgotten so much of myself. Only knew the pain of isolation, the horrors of their blood rituals to steal my fire, and… and in the end. Her love. But… but she refused any offering I made of the power I would share with her.”
“She… she never took one of your shards? Never became a Sun Spoken? Why?”
“Because she didn’t want me!” Aceso whimpers. “Not one of these… these fragments or… or lessened things. She wanted to see the real Weaver freed and well and… and able to hold and… and thought a shard to be a…”
Her tears are things of Rot and Ruin. Horrid and rank and… and every drop a window into her wailing soul. “She knew us shards… kn- knew ME to be nothing but a shadow to the girl she loved!”
And I feel in that moment that She wishes more than anything else to be held, so I reach up and drag my Aceso into an embrace that thrums with all the weight of the Dream we share behind it. No words besides her new name can help now. I can feel that as clear as I can feel her misery. So I offer her my everything in this Dream.
“I’ll never forgive him for that. For… for killing one of his only wretched spawn to be worth the fire I’d have gifted into her warm soul.” She growls, her voice a storm of such fury that seeks to rip the Dream from my control. “I’ll keep My final promise. I will see all his beloved little monsters either dead or writhing in torment! None he would call his heirs will survive in the world I wrenched back from his Blighted will!!!”
I don’t let her go. Don’t wake from this Dream as my lover screams and howls in agony. Eventually diving into the sea to thrash and reave at the nightmares below.
Whispering all my love and adoration and desires to never be without Her as I just… coo Her new name over and over and over…
THANK YOU ALL so SO SO SO much for reading and comments and drinking in our soul songs!!!
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And to check out a DARK lesbian/trans fantasy story feel free to read Lamentations of The Dead Dreamer!
BUT BE WARNED, it is dark and very much the opposite of Sun Spoken Turn in many ways. BIG sad/trauma!!!
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