Too many hands on her flesh.

They groped her blindly, grey and mud-slick, gouging rivets down her flanks. One caught her throat and slammed her skull against the earth hard enough to scatter her thoughts. Bile sloshed down her shoulder, hissing into the soil. The fetid reek was suffocating, turning her tongue to ash, and a rattling keen pulsed from the abyss of its glowing eyes. Farren answered with a snarl that scraped from behind bone teeth.

Peripherally, she saw Aarno had scrambled clear. Safe.

Good.

She turned her whole will now to tearing this abomination apart.

She twisted, lunged, tore with all four limbs—talons ripping meat, hooves slamming bone. She caught it by its gnarled forelimbs and slammed it back into the ground, mounting the creature’s thrashing torso, talons driving deep as she sought the seam—the unnatural split that cleaved its body down the middle. She jammed claws between folds of rotting flesh and tore downward.

The seam yawned open, and the blight beast screamed a deafening roar.

Thick folds of gray-black skin began to pull apart, peeling open like wet leather. The gap tore wider beneath her claws to reveal a mess of gnashing teeth, twitching tongues, and pale, quivering flesh, all slick with bile and mucus and revolting hunger.

The blight creature twisted, trying to curl around her, trying to fold those grotesque petals of skin up and over her, to draw her down into that pulsing maw and devour her.

Farren snarled and jammed her forelegs into either side of the opening. Her muscles trembled as she held it apart, bones grinding in her elbows, her ribs. She snapped her skull forward, ripping off chunks with frenzied sundering, tearing, ripping, a monster in her own right.

There was a wet crack as she rammed the sharp tines into that nest of teeth that passed for its sternum.

The thing flailed, shrieking, and still she held it, speared to the ground, refusing to be swallowed.

@Aarno
 
What was that about dog fights — Don’t get in the middle of them? Wasn’t this very close to one, just bigger and more terrifying and with too many limbs and a little too much blight and—

Alright, so it’s nothing like just a dog fight. But the principle was the same. He cursed, watching the beasts like one might a heating pot of oil — respectful of its wrath, but anxious to pour the batter in. Leap of faith, no matter how long or short the wait.

Damn it, I swear I had something for this— The powder, left on the shelf when he’d departed. Fuck. They were on the ground now, fiend over blighted, claws holding fast a shape that came apart. Cacophony of tearing flesh, sinew and fibre, clatter of frenzied teeth and a viscous stench that’d burrow to everything it touched. He twirled the wrist, bettering his grip on the sword, and entered back to the meager firelight from betwixt the trees.

Fuck this fucking funnel cake.

Teeth grit, face atwist with a grimace, he held his breath and swung. Steel sliced through a grotesque fold, smooth as if it was gauze.
 
From the angle of her head, Farren could watch the tilted approach of Aarno's feet. Part of her wanted to snarl at him. To stay back. It wasn't safe. To keep away. This was her kill.

But the part of her that was blood-hot and reeling, high on the brutality and savagery of tearing flesh and sundering corruption under her sharp teeth, spoke to traditions long held between Bell Keepers. To protect. To hold the line and herald the way for those who stepped softly behind her.

Be it at the expense of life or limb and every scrap of will she ripped from the earth with torn fingers.

The ring of a blade sinking into rebelling flesh bucked the body beneath her, and Farren felt a predator's glee pant with hoarse satisfaction from her parted maw.

The blight monster beneath her spasmed, inflated with a long keening hiss, and then limbs caved, bile seeped from exposed ribs, and putrid cracked bone collapsed into the embered ground.

The shroudfiend tore her antlers from its chest with a sickening shlkkk, standing over the husk as it curled inward and died.

Her flanks heaved, and blood dripped slowly off her jaw, down her legs, and a steady staccato from the tips of her tines. Through the rack of them, she watched Aarno, just beyond the steam of the corpse. She thought maybe she saw a note of shared exhaustion, and perhaps triumph. She hoped there wasn't fear in seeing her like this, nor disgust at the shape of her.

Her bones ached as silvers flames consumed her, left her small beside the massive ruin of what they’d killed.

She stood panting, clothes torn, hair and skin painted in blood and grit and things best unnamed.

She didn’t speak for a breath or two. Then—

“…Thank you.”

She turned from the corpse. Rolled her shoulder that had always been a little sore after tearing it during the skirmish two winters before.

“I passed a lake on my way here,” she announced, already starting to walk. “I’m going to wash up.”

But just before the trees swallowed her, she paused. Looked back over one shoulder, eyes dark and unreadable.

“You can join me, if you wish.”

@Aarno
 
Thank you? For what—

He stepped back from the mess, an almost staggerstep, drawing in a breath that was left shallow for the reek of it all. Stared and wiped a hand over his face, unable to speak, tip of the soiled sword giving a soft plink as it sunk into the spring earth.

One more of these eventful evenings and he’d best start taking it as some sort of a sign. For what, he’d have time to suspect yet. Have someone read the bones and the stones, other side of Astenvale.

He could hear the crackle of the fire again. And his own heartbeat in his ears, which had only just begun to settle down as his singular company spoke again, instructing. He watched her in that specific manner usually reserved for wanton ghosts or raving strangers, questions from beneath a frown. Not for a beat longer, before he caught himself.

“ I— Uh. “ He adjusted on heel, averting his look from the sight of her. That look. “ Should probably go find the horses and dismantle camp. “ Pretended to search the dark, seeing nothing. “ We can’t stay here, after this. “

He pointed to the fast settling corpse of her kill with the blade, arm lazy. Was the smell getting worse? His face crinkled, though his tone was softer when he regarded her again. There at the edge of dying light.

“ You go ahead — I’ll come find you. “ Tried a little assuring smile at that.

My turn, hmh?
 
Fireflies stitched lazy halos above the tall meadow grasses, dotting the night like stars fallen low to graze.

Farren’s boots squelched into soft loam, and her grin cracked wide through the blood spattered across her mouth when she saw them—two dark shapes at the lake's edge. The horses had run toward the clean scent of water. How typical. The Order had indeed raised clever steeds. Her gelding lifted his head at her approach, and snorted a low whinny of greeting, ears flicking. He’d caught her scent, as despicable as it was.

Which meant Aarno would be here soon enough to collect them once he discovered where they were.

A chuckle hummed low in her throat, something wicked flashing through her teeth.

She peeled off her shredded clothes with slow efficiency, pausing only to untangle the braid of her hair and drop her bells into the growing pile. They thudded with dull chimes in the grass, still flecked with gore. Naked beneath the moons, she stepped into the lake.

The cool water made her hiss between her teeth.

A sharp relief bloomed across every bruised inch of her skin as she waded deeper, the battle heat still pulsing in her bones. The lake shivered around her as she moved, her form slicing the glass-dark surface until she submerged fully, leaving only ripples and a ragged exhale behind.

When she rose, the water clung to her in rivulets. Down the well of her collarbone. Over the swell of her breasts. Across the constellation of old scars and the newly made. Her hair a long luminous pale sheet. She scrubbed her skin with calloused hands— blood, ash, the last of the rot washed clean in the lake’s cold balm.

She sighed, deep and low. Finally clean, her body feeling well-spent from so much time spent in shapes that were not her own.

They’d have to leave soon. Aarno had been right about that. But they'd earned this reprieve. And in the quiet, Farren reveled in moonslight, the ghost of unbidden blight hands still making her shudder in the aftermath, and she forced herself to replace those feelings with the memory of a more welcome touch.

She thought instead of Aarno's hands, and the way his grip had locked tight around her hips. How the flex of his forearms, sinuous and heated, had drawn her flush. The way he held the soft give of her thighs in his grasp, bruises earned and missed.

The water moved as she did, fingers trailing across her abdomen, up the slope of her chest, where her pulse beat slow beneath the surface. A wild thing caught in twilight.

She tilted her head back, watching the moons. A song slipped from her mouth without thinking, a lilting ballad sung in dusky tones, for no one but the stars.

Her voice carried, soft and low, across the water, lost in memories of heated skin and eager teeth.

@Aarno
 
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He hadn’t found the horses. But he’d given up searching for them soon enough to hear the song, come trickling in like a woodland stream to weary observance. On any other night, he would’ve considered it ghastly and walked the other way, to avoid the sirens of lakes and rivers that looked to lure one in to drown.

But he’d promised something and so approach he did to where moon shone off a rippling, black mirror. Where one sung, just about audible to one who’d slow his step and stray lighter. With just their packs on tow, as there wasn’t taking all of it without the—

“ Clever little shits. “ He muttered, spotting the all too familiar shapes of Svala and Acorn where they trailed the water’s edge. Stifling a curse, he almost laughed. Relief with that darkness of frustration about it. So many wasted steps, again—

His knee was going to kill him.

He let the things he’d been packhorsing about fall, concluding his hauling and his damn toil. Stared down at them in the evercooling air of the night, hands on his hips like any man struck with crippling indecision. His face twisted like he’d smelled shit, which, frankly, he just about had. Inspectorial, he sniffed at first the sleeve of his shirt, then the length of his hair. Just a hint of that cloves and cinnamon, overlaid with—

Yeah, no. Fuck this.

In a disgusted groan, he undid his belt and let it fall to the soft dirt of the forest floor. Kicked off his shoes next, almost staggering in his infuriated hurry.

“ Brought your pack. “ He spoke without looking. Paused as he took off his tunic and shirt both in one yank.

“ For that change of clothes. Shame about your other ones— “ Drew the laces on his hose and the waist of his braies and slipped out of them just as forcefully as he had the rest of his garments. Abandoned them all an unruly heap in his wake.

“ Proper ruined, were they not. “

Water splashed and still he avoided looking at her. For modesty? Nay, his own stupidity.

He didn’t go far, just enough to slip into a seat and be submerged to the chest. Which he did, bending at the torso to dip his head in the water in quick succession. Once he came back, it was in a keel of the head and a thunderous stroke of the hand that sought to smooth off his wet hair, from forehead to nape.

“ Are you— “ He begun asking, but thought better of it. Changed it to something else, even if it was obvious what the real question was.

“ How is that shoulder of yours? “
 
Farren watched him quietly.

Like a jungle cat tracking something slow and delicious, her attention prowled over every gesture— the hissed curse, the rough peel of cloth from skin, the loud way he needed to fill the silence with words. Darkly amused, she said nothing. Simply watched.

Moonslight painted her in eerie hues, the sheen of water sliding off her shoulders, her collarbone, her cheekbones like carved obsidian. Slated in radiance, she knew well the silver brewing in her gaze didn’t help settle him any, having noted how committed he was to avoiding looking at her. And that just wouldn't do.

With languid hips, she slowly approached, like one would a skittish beast, letting the water slip down her spine as she drifted to stand before him.

Her hand came up between them, tenderly capturing his throat, pulse cradling in her palm, her fingers coaxing his chin upward to finally look at her hooded gaze, so singular in its heated intensity.

"Aarno, love," voice silken with purred threat and affection both, “shut the fuck up.”

And then she kissed him. A languid, melting heat, slow as honey over fire, deliberate as the moment before a blade sinks in. Her lips were soft and unyielding, tasting of iron and wild sweetness. She leaned into him as though gravity itself had bent towards the want she carried, the press of her body warm and bare beneath the moonlight. Her fingers tightened just slightly at his throat, gentle praise moaned into his mouth.

@Aarno
 
I want to make bad decisions with you. The valiant effort to otherwise sure had died since, by what he could only decide was a strange work of witchcraft and the basic lack of restraint imposed by rushing blood and radiant moonlight. He’d known all this an abysmal idea the moment the lake with her in it had winked to view. And yet—

He inclined his head to look at her, throat bobbing beneath her grip in a swallow. Wanted to speak, to sneer and ask her what then, if he didn’t shut the fuck up. But just like his ambitions, she killed the words and stole their very corpse away, pressing mouth to his. He met it, water billowing as his hands made quick to grip her thighs, fingers digging to try the soft of them. To pull her closer. Lakeslick skin against skin.

It was so incredibly cold and warm all at the same time. When he surfaced for breath he did it haughty, teeth bared against her lips. Spoke low, from deep in the throat.

“ Don’t tell me what to do. “

You’ve lost the privilege of that game.
 
The anxious pressure in Farren's chest shook loose as he touched her. They hadn't resolved everything between them, but they were both alive and well. And Farren wanted nothing more than to remind herself that Aarno was still whole beneath her feverish touch. Because in this moment, his kiss tasted like salvation, and they were okay.

Her hands slid from his throat to anchor on his broad shoulders, shuddering at the relief of his hands finally on her, before hauling herself up to wrap her legs around his waist, her weight buoyed by the water.

His words pulled a rasping laugh from her, like wet silk. And she pressed in close, mouth dragging slow along the seam of his lips until hers found tusk, and nipped at the edge of the tender flesh.

"Or what." Whispered into the cradle of his ear, wet lashes brushing his skin, the tip of a canine catching the wolf's grin that bloomed. Make me.

Bait. A glove thrown. A challenge given. She would eagerly meet his mettle if he was bold enough to bite.

@Aarno
 
Her laugh, like a water spirit’s cackle, made something in his chest somersault. Thrill, lust, a promising heat and a weakness of the will. Heart twisting, the bottom of the lungs dropping. Those whispers, so close to ear they were made sheer and wispy by it, only made his cock harder.

He smiled for her, real mirth and mockery in the twist of it.

“ You’re trying me. “ Stated firm against the side of her neck. “ A feather sat on a boulder. “ Hand slipped up from her thigh to her arse, urging her rest deeper on his lap.

“ Rather cute. And daring. “ Reached the opposing hand down to prop up his cock. Rotated the wrist to tease the slit of her cunt with the head, a firm brush. And he shuddered, the forcibly stern edge of his voice chipping.

“ What is it, exactly, that might frighten you, Farren? “
 
Farren’s breath hitched at the slick, insistent tease of him against her. That firm, taunting brush of his cock against her slit made her keen, soft and low in her throat, the sound trembling between pleasure and desperation. She couldn't touch enough of him, couldn't press close enough to smother the gnawing ache that bloomed wild and coal-hot inside her.

All this time wasted with circling each other, baiting with flirt and fury, and little slivers of reluctant honesty. She was fucking done with patience, and hell-wrought good intentions. She wanted to take and be taken in kind.

Her fingers dug into the meat of his shoulders, nails trailing as she rocked steadily onto the length of him, coaxing that frantic need to sate the fire that burned low in her belly. To fuck her senseless, as he had claimed before.

And how easily the barriers burned away between them when they were like this, a live wire made of desire, bared truths, and hungry vulnerability. There was nothing to hide behind when he looked at her like this— it made her a reckless hedonist, plagued by the want to feast on the flesh of ripened fruit and make him sup the sweetest nectar from her lips.

And yet, his question stuck somewhere deeper, where it had no business seeping between her ribs like it did, lodging like a thorn in the softest part of her. But that was the danger of this, wasn't it? Of finding someone who held you as tenderly as they held you accountable.

Her palm eased up to his face, the backs of her knuckles grazing a slow path from his temple to his jaw, heavy heat still in the way she watched him.

"That we would make the other feel alone,” A murmured confession now at his lips, offered between thrusts of hunger, “despite being in the other's presence."

@Aarno
 
Eyes half-lidded, he exhaled a gasp at the feel of her around his cock, that eager and steady rocking motion that invited him to work his hips in tandem. And he would, seeking more depth and pulling her flush to every thrust, body bent against hers.

“ Alone— “ He begun, pausing for breath through parted lips, heat-parched and hoarse for it. “ Have I caused you to feel that way? “

It was asked honestly, but the motions wouldn’t stop.

“ When? “

Their lips touched but it wasn’t a kiss, just breath and the vibrations of noises they made, fucking. His look drifted shut in the disappearingly small sliver of air betwixt their faces, the force at which he drove into her mounting. Grip on her arse tighter.

“ Tell me. “
 

Pleasure fluttered her lashes— but his words dropped like coins in her pauper's cup. The echo of their plinks stalling the fervoured roll of her hips. That desperate ache remained, but the vulnerable curiosity of his voice cut through the carnal fog like a blade and sobered her back into humanity.

How did she explain that she was a beggar starved for a love that put meat on her bones? Nourished her like fresh bread and chased away the raw, biting hunger that ate away at her heart. That she felt greedy for more than her deserved share. Because how dare she want for more after being raised by a people who had given her nothing but love? Even if the hollow space where her dead mother was, was the ghost-shape her life formed around— because if Farren could be her, then maybe she wasn't truly gone, and the place inside her where her father lived wouldn't bury itself beneath disappointment and a very child-like rage.

For as the eldest daughter, Farren was raised to act as if none of that bothered her. Always the best daughter, the best sister, best mentor, and Bell Keeper, the rising sun of the Fell People— and now, the best Knight she could be. She gave and she gave until her cup was empty, and she punished herself for not finding more pieces of herself to feed those grasping hands while she choked on the ever-empty plate of her own barbed expectations.

But Aarno kept staying her hand, angry for whipping herself in his name when he did not fucking ask. Starved and still offering, as if love was only worth the measure of her sacrifice. She wanted to prove so desperately that she could be good, and she did not yet know another way.

For now, all she could ask of him was that he be patient with her while she learned, to not leave her while she burned down the house she'd built from shame and called it duty. Set fire to the rooms that shackled her with guilt and called it love.

And perhaps, if he chose to stay, if he did not find the task of her so wearisome, he'd hold her hand while she lifted herself from the ashes.

That sliver of space between them was filled with her panting breaths, suddenly overwhelmed by the raw weight of it all. Because if she said it, and he left, then the thing she feared most would be true: that she was too much for a world that only ever wanted to consume her in pieces.

Her forehead pressed to his, her hand cradling the sharp edge of his jaw.

"When you left me— not once, but twice. I thought maybe I'd asked too much. Too soon, when it was not my right."

Farren breathed through the quake inside her, braving the fear that had always chased her heels.

"Tell me the truth, Aarno. Do I frighten you?"

@Aarno
 
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She slowed down from their mutual grind and it hit him all at once he’d gone too far. To things unwarranted for this little tryst and what he’d figured it would be, once it’d begun happening. A stumble on the path where it still was too dark to see for how few things they knew of one another. The actually important, defining things.

There wasn’t going on by his lonesome, so he settled to listen and convinced his body it was just to catch his breath, cock throbbing. Still inside her with an ache that hitched the breath and drew his face to languid desperation. Fuck me.

Left her twice— And what had she exactly asked of him, then, that had been too much? Implied, maybe, but wasn’t that just conjecture. Beyond the truth she again begged of him.

“ No. “ He said in an exhale, shaking his head. Left space betwixt them by drawing back and bracing against one arm. To look at her and the vulnerability she offered him, soaking wet. Chill danced on his skin, stinging the parts of him above water that’d grown still.

“ Why would I be frightened of something that rolls over, exposing its belly, the moment I bare my teeth to it? “

It wasn’t entirely true, for he could be afraid of the things she became and had been, but those things were quarantined within the field of battle and raw power. Just how much, he’d come to learn later. Surrender and weariness made breath passed through his parted lips, the shape of him deflating despite the blood in his nethers and what it’d rather he do.

Again, the wants and needs weren’t in alignment. But when were they ever, when the latter was so obscure, often perceptible only by a glance over the shoulder.

“ You’ve asked a precious little of me, Farren. “ He spoke with conviction, for whatever one failed to actually ask wasn’t a real request. Just unfair expectation for him to ignore and to reflect back on who’d dealt it.

“ But I feel— “ He adjusted awkwardly in a pained grunt where he was sat beneath her, lake animating as he rose his hand from it and swept back the sides of his dripping hair, behind the ears.

“ You need soft things. “ His head tilted as he inspected her face, grave but inquisitive. Watching for that ripple of disagreement.

“ And time, perhaps? “
 
She followed his retreat with fingers that she sent chasing after lake water on his chest, absently soothing herself for the way his words landed.

Soft things? She stilled her tracing.

Is that what she needed? Hands that held even the most jagged edges of her, even when she made them bleed?

All of these thoughts warred with the simmering carnal yearning that still danced in her veins. He adjusted beneath her, and she was remiss at the cool water that filled the space where his large hands had been.

A thought came to her, and she peeked at him from beneath pale lashes, new fire igniting.

Because what if he was right, maybe she should start asking for more?

But if he couldn't give what she asked—

Then she would have to be okay with taking what he would give in this moment alone. Let it carve into her, deep and temporary, and cherish the wound as proof that she'd wanted once, with both hands.

And afterward, she'd retreat somewhere private, like a sick beast licking its wounds, resolved to let this thing die quietly beneath the roots of her ribs. Left with only memory and the satisfaction that there was a time when she burned so brightly for someone.

She let that certainty settle into her bones—before she rolled her hips forward in a slow, coaxing invitation, slick with lake water and returning heat. Her hands spread across his chest again, learning him by shape and pulse, as if trying to commit the architecture of his barrel to memory.

His heart thrummed beneath her palm.
Familiar now. Dangerous still.

Water dripped from her nipples, beading at his sternum as she leaned forward—close enough to breathe his breath, to let the dark rise of him rouse under her once more.

“And if I should ask them of you?” A pause, a tilt of her head, something dark and teasing now in the burning moons of her eyes. “Time and soft things?”

@Aarno
 
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