<center><table width=398 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 style="border:1px solid #408bc4;"><tr><td background="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/shrapnelserpent/atttbl11.jpg" height=100></td></tr><tr><td><div align=justify><fon, t color=white style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; line-height:10.5px;"><font color=#244e6f><div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ooc.]call my name</font></div> private for muerrin-love. 33 mia 34th, 81381. <div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ic.]and save me from the dark </font></div> Now, for sorrow. For silence. For loneliness and a weeping moon. There was nothing different about this night; nothing to separate it from a lifelong score of other lonely nights. But to one who had never known emotion, the bitter quietude would have been eerily suffocating, its muted and imprisoned screams all the more potent for the helpless confusion. For tonight, the chill moonlight, beautiful and tragic and altogether solitary, swept with a nameless sorrow over the bosom of the snow-painted earth. Tonight, the many stars were chased into obscurity by the imperious celestial's decree, and the zephyrs could do naught but sigh softly. And it was in this world that he, the malfunction, awoke. The scars that riddled his soot-stained coat screamed out, undoubtedly, of his near-lifelong exposure to fighting. But in dreams, it was impossible to fight back. He jerked to the side, a whimper escaping his muzzle. He would twitch every now and then, crying out or moaning softly. His eyes were a distinct shade of pale azure, bright and bold and desperately paralyzing when caught in a stare. Moving fast beneath black-painted and sky-inked lids were those muted-river eyes. Haunting, haunted eyes. And suddenly, he woke, screaming loudly, jerking forward to sit with his unclothed torso vertical, his legs and hindquarters still planted to the mattress and crisp, bone-white sheets. He was panting heavily, blue eyes wide and drowned with fear. Although Atti's heart was hammering away in his chest and sweat had caused the sheets to cling to him like plastic wrap, he was half-numb from his extreme panic. In fact, he felt drugged. His mind was sluggish, his body drained, and when he blinked it was only with tremendous exertion that he managed to reopen his eyes. Surveying the dorm room, he was relieved to find that he was where he was supposed to be: in bed. With Pyemme. Still panting, pallid-sea lanterns still dilated with terror, the ink-hued arden moved his eyes to gaze at the wisp of golden-brown smoke lying besides him. He looked at the form of his lover, more pearly than aureate in the opalescent light from outside. He admired the curve of her flank, the tender fragility of her knee, the bony ankle. There was a smell of perfume still in the air, and the essence of the mystical sea, and the sweet, cloaking scent of hair and fur all riled up by sex. 'Rius tried to reach for the two-toned thill. However, he found that his bandaged-swathed arms refused to cooperate. He lay paralyzed and bewildered before his upper body fell back to the mattress. The fright that had been building had swelled to terror once Att realized he was lying helpless in his own bed and couldn't so much as move a muscle. The sable half-Yki was lying prostrate on his back, rigid as a board, with his legs slightly bent. His white-wrapped arms, not unlike an embalmed corpse laid out for viewing, were at his sides. The sweat-dampened sheet, along with the comforter, was still tucked in at the foot of the bed and pulled over 'Emme's frame. The thin, cream felt-woven blanket, on the other hand, lay crumpled and twisted just below his hips. Dazed, he closed his eyes, and was swallowed alive again by the nightmare. unspeakable euphoria beyond what anyone can possibly imagine, entwined and intertwined in so many ways like a car wreck where you can't tell where one ends and the other begins, twisted metal together, but we're sweating breathing panting straining alive metal, something beyond cold steel, beyond even the normal people we left behind in the normal world. like sweat that's pouring off of both of us and wetting us and slicking the skin between us we slide up a spiral and past heaven, past hell, past life, into some summit people spend their lives seeking, but they never achieve. that summit, that pure and unbridled rampant feeling like that lazy sweat smile that passes between us, natural as breathing to us but like finding and naming every star in the sky to everyone else- complicated. pictures can't get close, words are only partially adequate, the only thing left is feeling, that feeling, you can't transfer that between people even if you hooked them up to computers and installed the latest drivers for that superbly fast interface between lives. that feeling like what perfection is, untouchable and unspeakable but we know we hit it then, 'cause the candle flame shrunk in our eyes and the music grew faint in our ears and it all kind of just slid away just then, for a fleeting and unrepeatable moment we lit on something better than heaven. look, he’s laughing as he starts to unravel and he points at the smoke coming from his joints, sleek and perfect and oiled for ninety minutes of ecstasy. you'd never know the air conditioning was running full blast, pumping fresh air into the room, 'cause they're both shining and wet like they just stepped out of the shower and their skin is as hot as the fire of hell, screaming look, look, we've suckled the purest honey from the tip of life itself and we did it because we love each other and we wanted each other in that sort of unpredicted sort of unplanned moment. we look like we've just stepped in from the rain that's definitely pouring outside, the faint patter of tiny footsteps on our rooftop. and we both smile that pretty smile and don't know what we just experienced, blown totally and completely away. the kind of odd feeling you get when you do something wrong bubbled up into his chest and made him nervous, but at the same time, he was okay with it because he'd just had some of the greatest sex of his life. but then, the 'emme-face turns garish and black and set with two coal-pits of seething champagne, seething, seething, and too small to do anythingscaredhelpless- screaming, and there’s nobody there to save him now and the claws and teeth are tearing away his flesh and the lacerations aren’t healing over and the blood doesn’t congeal just keeps bleeding bleeding and he knows what she’s doing to him is wrong but he can’t do anything ‘cause he’s so fuckingscaredandit’shappenedbeforeand- His breath now coming in little mewing noises, Atti tried to get his uncooperative body to move. It was no use; he was as helpless as a newborn. Atti had no control over his body, but he did manage to blink his eyes. When he reopened them, everything was back to normal. He was awake again- and screaming. By the time that he realized that he was awake, his throat was raw. He was still in panic and terror from the dream. He’d killed a few after Perrai had raped him. Blood had been shed so much in the passing nights, every victim dying more painfully than the first. It was odd to the dark and muscular 'dragon how high a male could scream as teeth ripped into him. But then 'Emme changed everything. He blinked, and everything turned black. A 'dragon-sized puddle of black fur had been resting stagnant beneath tangled, damp cotton. Now, it spasmed, and it became increasingly more evident that the puddle was not only 'dragon-sized, but 'dragon incarnate. Once-sprawled, gauze-covered limbs were slowly, deliberately being sorted out from what had once appeared to be a fuzzy black amoeba. And then, lo and behold, a magnificent head and cobalt-flamed tail emerged as well, revealing a thin, well-sinewed, lupine-like half-Yki with an impossibly, impenetrably obsidian pelt and a pair of stoical sky-colored pools. Less than a minute later of falling back into his hellish stupor, 'Rius had pushed himself back out. He was trembling and terrified now, his silk-panted knees drawn up to his unclothed chest in a fetal position. And as much as he tried, he couldn't stop the hot, salty tears from coming. He choked for a moment. He hated crying. With every fiber of his being, he hated it because he was not the type to cry often, and so when he did, it was almost like a confirmation. A confirmation of everything that was bad and horrible in his mind, of every dread he'd ever felt deep down. Atti got up, grabbed a cigarette from the night-table drawer besides him, got out of bed, and walked across the room. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped out with a lighter, flared the cig to life, and let it dangle between his lips, still leaving the door open. He took a long, slow drag, still crying, his throat sore, watching the snow fall. It was one of those things that made him feel almost okay. But he wasn't okay. He knew he was a little sick in the head- and that was okay. He always would be. Things from the past made certain of that. Like the scars he'd turned into tattoos. He still couldn't cope with seeing them in the mirror. He hadn't explained them to Pyemme yet. Maybe he was just too damn scared. <br ></div></td></tr></table><center>
out {{x}} I will make this world of my devising Creative license: activated. In my understanding, the dorms are underground, but... let's pretend they're nine stories up, instead, and there's a balcony. x3 in {{x}} out of a dream in my lonely mind Awake. Asleep. Some nights the two things were so close that to get even the thinnest blade between them was a struggle. Reality and dream wrapped up so tightly, trading turns to paint Pyemme's mind full of visions like great stretching murals. While one was dominant, the other lurked close behind the eyes, sharp and cold, glittering like a knife's hard edge in the inverted light of soliloquy, waiting, waiting. And then, as smoothly as if the two were one, there was reality, there was dream. Perception shifted. The lukuo blinked her dream-eyes, opening them on the world of her dorm room. So messy, so much disarray. There were clothes strewn all about her sleeping area, and not just those that she and Attrius had been wearing earlier in the evening. Her cold blue irises swiveled across the tumuli of her eye whites, another scene appeared before her. Dark, the darkness of nighttime, only the edges of everything were illuminated. All she could make out was the differences in the darknesses. There was the night-stand beside the bed, crawling with books, glasses, jewelry, gray, black. An alarm clock silently screamed the time in huge red word balloons, megaphone exclamations boring straight through her retinas. Another image. They came faster and faster. Her ceiling: white. A door, the door to the bathroom, slightly ajar, the darker darkness crawling out through the opening. Glass, window, outside, Attrius, stars, moon. Atti was lounging on the balcony. His darkness was the darkest of all, the impenetrable color of black ink, a void, a hole in the universe, too dark to exist. No light. The stars around his head were afraid to shine, they disappeared beyond his darkness, spiraled and sank into his skin. She slid out of bed slowly, her feet touching the cold floor after a few moments of dangling. As she rose, the sheets of her bed slid over her body, silver in the twilight, like liquid, pouring over her silky fur and pooling below. She wanted to go to Atti, out there in the cold, but he seemed so far away. Her legs carried her slowly across the floor, trance-like, sleepily. Then she moved faster, rushing towards her lover like a train gathering momentum. Faster, faster, she ran across the dorm room, through the glass doors which were not glass doors but the wings of a divine and invisible bird, footprints in the snow and up and over the railing, and she was falling, falling into air. Wind screamed around her ears, pulled open her eyes. The ground was rushing up so quickly to meet her. It was not the ground. It was a great black pit, black like death, black like Attrius... Pyemme opened her eyes to see that she was standing on the balcony of her dorm, just beyond the threshold, with her hand perched delicately on the doorhandle. Sleepwalking? she thought wondrously, I never sleepwalk. Atti, her night-black renegade lover, was standing a few feet away, his head encircled by a blue-gray cloud of noxious smoke. She took a few steps toward him, her small feet sinking noiselessly through the thin layer of snow that had formed. "Bad dream?" she asked quietly, her silvery voice penetrating the silence in a way that seemed natural, like the call of a nocturnal bird. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the railing of the balcony and lacing her fingers together, as if she was in deep contemplation of something in the distance. All she could see was darkness and the fine white glitter of the snow. She didn't dare look up at Attrius's face, for fear of what she might find there. Darkness, the darkness of that gaping void. Darkness that swallowed the stars.
<center><table width=398 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 style="border:1px solid #408bc4;"><tr><td background="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/shrapnelserpent/atttbl11.jpg" height=100></td></tr><tr><td><div align=justify><fon, t color=white style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; line-height:10.5px;"><font color=#244e6f><div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ooc.]you make me perfect </font></div> BEAR IT LIKE A WOMAN, MAN. :P <div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ic.]help me get away from myself </font></div> He would never touch the height of the ubermensh because he did care about others, and he did care what people thought about him, and pretending he didn't only made him feel worse. He felt miserable because it was guilt that rode hand and hand with him. He had ruined lives and he knew it. Atti had been the black sheep of his family, which was ironic considering just who his parents were. With a father who went from being a playboy to a rapist and back, and a whorishly holy mother, he didn’t really have any guidance to tell him things were wrong or bad. Each parent said they were wrong, so the confusion ran amok. All of it had started when his mother had taken some bad acid and begun a desperate drunken night, caught unawares by the pro-Grader activists. He might regret it now, if he thought about it, but he was an existentialist and took everything in stride. It was what he had to do. He bummed his cigarette and put it in the ashtray next to him. The marijuana in the left side of the pouch around his neck was a temptation he gave into, considering so much of it was dried just right. 'Rius worked with skilled hands, and managed to work out a rather neat joint for himself. The lighter he had bought a few weeks ago came out and he lit the drug like an experienced worker. He was, in a sense. The nujeq kept him calm, let him keep his head, and this he liked. His pupils dilated. There were footsteps – - it was just Pyemme. He sighed deeply in relief, and silently, slipped his arms around her as she leaned against the railing. For a moment, the pallid moonlight caught the tears in his eyes, photograph-like, rendering them a burning, icy azure. "Bad dream?" How very true. <font color= "#abcce4">"Yeah,"</font> he said softly, before burying his face into her nape and hair, the cornsilk tangled across his black-painted visage like seawrack. He inhaled deeply before pulling away and holding her close. She smelled like ambrosia and perfume and pot-smoke. <font color= "#abcce4">"I'm cold."</font> He put out his joint, laid it in the ashtray, and pulled her inside with him. Att shut the door; sat on the bed, wrapping a rather huge fur and velvet throw around the two of them. <font color= "#abcce4">"Pyemme?"</font> They wandered alone, accompanied only by each other, him in a shallow hell of what might be called life and would lead him through suffering and unto death, her his only salvation. <font color= "#abcce4">"I have something to tell you. About me. About… before we met."</font> He swallowed nervously. <font color= "#abcce4">"Some… bad things happened to me, and I – well, I need to tell you."</font> White light, then blue, then black. It was some rhyme or reason that grasping was impossible. Like bloodied-velvet curtains that smelled like sex and looked like roses or the distant hum of music reverberating over the ever-present heart beat, they were things of the abstract and very tangible world. But they were untouchable. <br ></div></td></tr></table><center>
ooc {{x}} oh, won't you please just say so I'll bear it like a BEAR-MAN. ooc {{x}} 'cause I'm not gonna leave until you let me go If it was cold, Pyemme didn't notice. The chilled breeze and silent snow were not enough to pierce the double layer of her gilded pelage, but she could immediately feel the heat of Atti's hands on her waist. She exhaled slowly, closing her eyes on the mist that formed when her breath hit the winter air, focusing her mind on her lover's touch. She could feel his arms wind around her, every place where his softly undulating chest touched her back, his broad muzzle tucked into the crook of her neck. She had dreamed of contact like this when he was gone; she wondered how long it would remain. "I'm cold." And all too soon he was gone, except for a small pressure on her arm that beckoned her back indoors. She followed dutifully and sat beside him, as if there was nowhere else in the world to go. And yet, there was. Her dream still hung before her like a silent movie, projected on the glass doors. She could see herself rushing towards Attrius, then overshooting him and taking a perfect, graceful swan dive over the balcony. Again, and again, and again -- the movie was on a permanent loop. Pyemme returned to take another dive each time she was about to hit the frozen ground below. The lukuo hugged the heavy blanket closer about herself, leaning against Atti warily, always mindful not to accidentally prod him with her horns. She didn't believe in the subconscious power of dreams, but did see certain connections. She leapt while the dark arden smoked pensively. She couldn't reach him; she was running to him, to help him, and she fell, it was a mistake. She wanted to help him, but she missed -- what was he? She was falling, sinking, drowning, and he was no more than the brick tied to her ankles. When would they hit the furthest bottom of life? When would she reach him? "I have something to tell you. About me. About… before we met. Some… bad things happened to me, and I – well, I need to tell you." Suddenly a spark lit within her, burning and turning with a particular fierceness she had not felt in a long time. This was it... this was the spark of intelligence. Attrius was not her lover, at this moment; he was her patient, her test subject. Pyemme had always considered herself a psychologist first and a thill second, but recently she'd been... slipping. Getting too involved with her emotions. They stood in the way of her work, her discoveries. She had to push them aside in order to make progress against the calamitous whitewater of chaos in the world. She couldn't love Atti and save him at the same time. She forgot all about the Pyemme taking swan dives on the balcony. That's right -- who needs dreams? What are dreams, anyway? Just bursts of images produced by the brain stem, certain research concluded, that the sleeping brain tried to connect in logical patterns. Not unconscious fulfilment of desires, or visions of the future. Dreams are just pretty things that happen in the night. Pyemme might have gotten up to go retrieve a notebook and pencil, had her sense of propriety not suddenly struck her. In true psyciatric fashion, she tried to answer Attrius in a way that was encouraging, but not expectant or demanding in any way. "Whenever you're ready," she finally said, in a hushed, careful voice. Her blue eyes glittered hungrily in the dark.
<center><table width=398 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 style="border:1px solid #408bc4;"><tr><td background="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/shrapnelserpent/atttbl11.jpg" height=100></td></tr><tr><td><div align=justify><fon, t color=white style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; line-height:10.5px;"><font color=#244e6f><div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ooc.]you know you got the cure you know he went astray </font></div> :D <div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ic.]you used to stay awake to drive the dreams he had away </font></div> Knowledge was a terrible and deadly thing. Her question was out of some dark corner of the past. Atti had to struggle to remember that night, but did so with surprising ease once it was made clear. That was the night he lost his virginity to Meth. The night he had come back into the cave, steel-chained, crying and trembling, reeking of sex and his dastardly deed and not said a word. He knew why. It was basic, primitive. She might have been expecting the words of God to come from the mouth of a child. Instead, he gave her the truth. It was what she deserved. <font color= "#abcce4">"I'm afraid."</font> Drugs didn’t do anything. 'Rius knew that. He had suffered through his father, and through his own addictions, and only had scars and a tainted past on display. He had put it out in the light because that would lead them away from the real problem. Sharks scent blood, but if there is too much of it, they go mad. They attack each other to tear something, anything, apart. And for those sharks, he had slit his throat. And he would laugh when they finally realized what he had done. Laugh and grin because he was extraordinary. He was indestructible. Instinct wasn’t a God either. It was common memory, like a world tattoo. Something they shared, but something that only got them so far. In some, the strands are stronger. Atti knew how to operate a gun because of instinct. He knew how to shoot up heroine because of instinct. Breathing, sleeping, eating, sex - it was all instinct. God was a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. God was happiness. Att's vision was twisted, but it held some warped truth in it. He could see something beautiful on the horizon. He trembled, sliding close to her to share body heat and to let her drain his fear and pain. Because they were both so sick, so addicted, they were wonderful for each other. Spoons and candles against a green poison and a flower. They’d sink into hell together one day. His left fist uncurled slightly, and on his palm there were healing scars. They were in the shape of the Roman numeral for twelve. He had done them in a fit of depression, done them as he stumbled over old tarot cards in an abandoned house. The hanged man. This was his card, because though he suffered, he was learning. True knowledge could only come from suffering, and this was where the ice-eyed philosopher was stuck in. His head was on the ground, the blood was rushing down, but he was clear-headed in his brilliant way. Sitting still, he felt his body get hot with the pain and memory starting to rise. In the shadows, he was not yet aware of how the scars over his slender frame seemed raked into his flesh. He was not aware how bright the silver in his ears and tongue stood out. All he was aware of was her. Don’t be stupid. Don’t overreact. Breathe. It’s just like smoking a cigarette. Let the drug calm you down. Not that hard for a boy who was spawned out of opium and raised with a taste for heroine. Not bad at all. As her words hit him again, he was subconsciously growing tense. It was not until a few minutes later that realization hit him. And suddenly it was so obvious, so damned obvious that he was shocked at himself for not knowing. The light in her eyes - she wanted to know. He pulled his knees up to his chest, his bandaged arms wrapped around them, trembling. His voice was broken and whispered when he finally spoke. <font color= "#abcce4">“Hold me."</font> The smudged blue eyeliner around his pale blue lanterns made him look like some Gothic poet on a bad day. In a way, that was just what he was. Except he wasn’t going to go sit in a corner and hail some dark lord. He was the dangerous sort who knew the demons were very real. They lived in his head. In the past. In memory. <font color= "#abcce4">"I was born in the Nyonge,"</font> he began. ‘Rius looked down for a moment at his scarred arms, then back at the female beside him. 'Emmei- do you think my eyes are the eyes of a demon? He was about to reveal things that he'd never told anyone else, and he understood what emotional danger he was putting himself in by doing so, but… he wanted to tell her. <font color= "#abcce4"> “The night that I was born on – to my tribe, the Sennai – it was a dark one. One where the barrier between Fromina and this world thinned. And it was a blue moon that night – I was hailed as a demon child." </font>A painful look tenderly laced his muzzle at the memory, and he finally moved his seething-sky gaze to 'Emme, pricking his torn and metal-strewn ears forward to catch the natural sound of her breathing. <font color= "#abcce4"> “I was born as a product of rape. My mother was a full-blooded Yki who had moved south with her brother, my uncle Taor, after she’d wedded a luoko. They had Crail and Prazen – but then, one day, right after they were born, her husband disappeared. He was never found again. Anyhow, this ‘dragon raped her, and she had me. Because I was born ‘evil’, she had either the choice of killing me and staying with the tribe, or taking me, leaving Crail and Prazen with my uncle, and being banned to live in a nearby village for other exiles and misfits. She chose the latter."</font> He was comfortable here and wanted someone to listen to him. Someone to learn of him. <font color= "#abcce4">“When I was seven – that was when they came."</font> He was shaken by the force of his own willingness to share his past. Because of this confidence in and his love for her, he trailed his studded tongue ponderingly across one lip and then nodded to himself, indicating that he was going to continue. <font color= "#abcce4">“They were a group of pro-Grader radicals. Apparantly, someone in the community had something bad about the Graders, and they simply… attacked."</font> He choked, shaking heavily, his blue-painted lids squeezing shut, shuttering closed. <font color= "#abcce4">"I – I watched them. They hit me, held me down, and – and –"</font> He breathed in raggedly, trying to collect his composure. <font color= "#abcce4">"They… made me watch them ki - kill and rape… my mother."</font> He grimaced and stretched his shoulders by rolling them. Atti pulled away the blanket and rolled up his pants so that she could see the pink and ropy ribbons that striped his hip and inner thigh. His entire body tautened at the memory, and he fingered one of the bulging scars, fiber-like-textured in shiny pink and pale purple, with little dots marking the entry and exit points of every stitch. <font color= "#abcce4">"That's why I… freak out sometimes when you touch me there, I guess." </font> It was a little hard, unveiling the tale that had remained sealed in his mind for years now. <font color= "#abcce4">"They hit me until I went black. When I woke up, I was in a series of underground tunnels, injured, bloody, bound, and gagged. That was when I learned telepathy – the older 'dragons – there was about a dozen on us - in there helped me. One of the radicals – his… his name was Meth."</font> 'Rius squeezed his eyes shut, his insides burning and strangled, before looking back at her. <font color= "#abcce4">"He was the one who broke me."</font> He swallowed painfully. <font color= "#abcce4">"The… one who raped and beat me. I was in there for abour a year. There was finally a revolution amongst us prisoners, and I was able to crawl out and make it."</font> He choked on his words in emotional distress, struggling to hold back the tears. <font color= "#abcce4">"I killed two of the them before getting out. I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I never looked back. I was eight."</font> He smiled faintly; bitterly. <font color= "#abcce4">"I eventually passed out from exhaustion. I was found by a luoko while I was sleeping. He tended my wounds and gave me a place to sleep. His name was Aare – he became my teacher, mentor, and guardian. And the only friend I'd ever had. We traveled for a long while, sort of nomadic, before settling down in Aurius. I lived with him until I was seventeen."</font> He shut his eyes painfully in a foreshadowing of newly-risen memories about to be shaken from the tomb. <font color= "#abcce4">"I'd met a former Sennai who knew who my father's name was: Craid Silano. I killed him. I went east wards after that. I got stoned and met a girl named Saizo, and… we settled down together in a little shack on a plain. I guess it was sort of inevitable, because there was nothing between us except for lust - just like every other relationship I... I had before you -"</font> Atti paused, smiling now. <font color= "abcce4">- but I found out that she was cheating."</font> He sighed bitterly. <font color= "#abcce4">"I'd been doing substance. All it took was some bad acid, and I kill… I killed both of them."</font> Now he was shaking, but not out of anger. No, he was sobbing without sound, trembling with guilt, and then he found a rock amongst the sea of his mind and grabbed it. <font color= "#abcce4">"I ran again. I ran to the east again. But… history has a tendency to repeat itself."</font> The arden's eyes were partially glazed as he blinked and looked sadly at the snow-wept horizon outside of the window and beyond them. Both the lands and streets were vast and untamable. <font color= "#abcce4">"Her name was Perrai."</font> The whore's name was a curse, spat like one would spit blood. <font color= "#abcce4">"She did… she did bad things to me. Even worse than Meth. I got away, though. I got away, I got aw -</font> He broke down finally, curled in a fetal position, quaking, crying heavily, shaking, afraid. <font color= "#abcce4">"Oh, Gods,"</font> he sobbed. <font color= "#abcce4">"Oh, Gods, oh, Gods…"</font> he choked, shaking his head, trembling violently. <font color= "#abcce4">"'Emme,"</font> he whispered. <font color= "#abcce4">"Oh, 'Emme…"</font> He looked up at her with his tear-stained and eyeliner-smudged face, hauntingly beautiful and pained, and trembled and sobbed in her arms. If he could read the ribbon of fate, and see it from the start of creation to the end of time, he would go mad with the reality of it all. But in denying the need to discover more, to question fate and defy the Goddess, he had so molded himself in the image of what he had become. He was a deviant in a world of rebels who sought to avoid what they were expected to be. No one was unique. Because his mom was dead, did that make him special? No. Because his father had been fucked-up and a rapist? No. Because his dad's messed-up genes had passed to him? No. Everyone was full of stories of these sorts, and each was so recorded in the blood and bone of history. He wasn’t special, and he wasn’t unique. He was disposable. He was a hell-prophet, he was the antichrist. He was Saina's boy. <br ></div></td></tr></table><center>
ooc {{x}} oh thou in whose presence my soul takes delight This marks the beginning of the short posties, right? x_x ic {{x}} on whom in affliction I call In the deepest, most secret and subconscious places in her mind, Pyemme had always known of Attrius's capacity for killing. (She wouldn't call it murder--she couldn't, because murder was a crime and killing was merely a natural occurrence between predator and prey.) And there in the dark places she also knew that he was unstable at the very core of his being, in danger of losing his grip on reality at any time, capable of running away for months to pursue a gruesome, mindless task. His story only served to explain the irreversible condition that the lukuo was clearly aware of. But somehow, and for reasons that she would never be able to explain herself, she felt safe. Completely and utterly safe. And she only felt this way around Atti. As he surrendered himself to the fierce flood of his dammed emotions, Pyemme slid one arm around his back to draw him into her tight, warm embrace, and placed her other hand on his cheek opposite. She wanted to comfort him in a way that no psychologist could, but she was too much psychologist to offer him sweet nothings and blissful lies, however reassuring. She leaned in, holding his head delicately, her face so close that her lips brushed lightly against his furred ear as she whispered. "I can't say that everything is alright now... you know as well as I do that it can never be alright." She turned his face towards her, then, and looked in his beautiful, tear-glazed eyes, eyes that once she had been afraid to look into for fear of falling in and becoming lost forever. They had the same blue eyes, blue the color of the winter sky, of thin ice, the true color of lightning and the eggs of certain birds. His blue eyes were set in a face so deeply black that they glittered feverishly like lost gems; hers gazed out from honey-hued fur like lapis inlaid in the countenance of a goddess statue. So utterly different, with one frail, ephemeral link connecting the two. Her gaze on his always intact, she continued. "I'm here now, Atti. You don't have to be afraid anymore, because I'll never let anything hurt you. I'll protect you," she smiled, more sure of the words coming out of her mouth than anything she'd ever read in a textbook, any conclusive clinical trials. The words she spoke bubbled up from the very core of her fount of knowledge, "I'll protect you, if you'll let me."
<center><table width=398 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 style="border:1px solid #408bc4;"><tr><td background="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/shrapnelserpent/atttbl11.jpg" height=100></td></tr><tr><td><div align=justify><fon, t color=white style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; line-height:10.5px;"><font color=#244e6f><div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ooc.]until the very end of me </font></div> yesyes. 33 <div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ic.]until the very end of you</font></div> He still had nightmares. In fact, he had them so often he should’ve been used to them by now. He wasn’t. No one really got used to nightmares. For a while, he’d tried using every pill imaginable. Excedrin PMs, Melatonis, L-trytophan, Valium, Vicodin, and quite a few members of the barbital family. A pretty extensive list, mixed, often matched, with shots of absinthe, lung-rasping opium hits, and mind-dizzying injections of heroin. None of it helped. One might try, as Atti had, to find a sky so full of stars it would blind him again. He was fighting with everything he had to no face the thing he dreaded most, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature that he truly was – the creature he still was, buried in the nameless black of a name. And that was when the nightmares began. He choked. His voice was anguish, describing in a sound a scene of awful violence, a hundred serrated teeth, bright with a thousand years of blood, jagged nails barely tapping out a sound of approach, blue eyes wide and dilated, cones and rods capturing everything in one unfailing and powerful glance. "I'll protect you, if you'll let me." <font color= "#abcce4">"Always."</font> And then he kissed her, and she tasted like ambrosia and pot-smoke, and he knew then that he never wanted to kiss anyone else again. <br ></div></td></tr></table><center>
ooc {{x}} my comfort by day, my song in the night you keeled it! keelar!! ic {{x}} my hope, my salvation, my all Pyemme willingly submitted to Atti's kiss, engaging him in an involved but absent-minded way. Her lips gently spread his, her agile tongue tenderly sought out the soft places of his dark, sweet mouth. His flavor was of cigarettes, nervousness, the night. Yet her mind was elsewhere -- she closed her eyes, as if this would prevent her active thoughts from being tossed out through lens and cornea like radiant energy through glass. I will protect you, the walls of her mind reverberated again and again. But she had to protect him from the only thing that endangered him now, the only thing that could trouble him in the safe-haven of school and people and society. She had to protect him from himself. If she'd had a notebook in hand, if he were not kissing her mouth but instead sitting on a couch across a sun-lit room, she would have written in definitive dark pen: bipolar I with psychotic features; dissociative tendencies, fugue. Underneath she would begin listing medications with question marks next to them, maybe cross out the question marks as she continued to listen to his symptoms. Tranylcypromine to alleviate his depression, chlordiazepoxide to ease his sleep. Lithium to stabilize his precariously perched mind, teetering between mania and despair. She could save him. She would. She had to. She loved Atti with a fierce possession; if he was lost, then she was lost -- they would both go down together. Pyemme broke their kiss slowly, letting her soft eyes flutter open dreamily, seeking his lights for a moment before swiveling downwards. She reached for his arm, the closest one, and drew it towards her. It was wrapped skillfully as always in bandage that glowed a faint azure in the dim moonlight. Her fingers sought out the end of the bandage and she began to unravel it, slowly, not afraid of what she would find underneath.
ic {{x}} there's only roses in here "Do it. I trust you." The golden hairs along Pyemme's spine pricked up when Atti spoke those three little words. Her fingers paused in their work for a moment, and she looked up into her lover's dark face, eyes glittering. She smiled, hoping he would smile back. Then she returned to her task of unwinding his bandage, which she did carefully and methodically. His forearm began to come uncovered, starting at the elbow. As a few centimeters gave way to an inch of uncovered area, she could see the beginnings of thick, ropy welts, huge and pink and visible against his hairless skin. She almost gasped as his scars came into view, but bit her lower lip and pressed on noiselessly as more and more of the white gauze fell away. Finally, when it was all uncovered and the bandage lay discarded in a pile on the bed, she held his arm delicately, one hand holding his wrist in her lithe fingers and the other hand supporting his elbow, and simply marveled at the intricate spider web of scar tissue. Pyemme, who was rarely caught speechless, could find nothing to say in this moment. Perhaps there was nothing she could say. But for now, wordlessness seemed only appropriate. No apologies, excuses or condolences could ever begin to make headway against his incredible hurt. In silence, her eyes traveled the raised paths across his skin, twisting and turning in so many ways, until her gaze lit upon a few dark marks across the inside of his wrist. She squinted to see it in the darkness of the starlit dorm. A letter... numbers... a code. She could feel something inside her tighten, not in anger but in sorrow for all that the arden had to go through. An unwilling victim of chance. He had received more pain in his lifetime than anyone should in a thousand reincarnations. Still holding his wrist gently, Pyemme carefully touched the tattoo, feeling underneath it the fine scar lines, then raised his arm closer to her. She loved him, every part of him, the grim smiles, pained beauty and the scars. Without removing her eyes from the code, she softly kissed his wrist, to show Atti that no part of him would go unloved.
<center><table width=398 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 style="border:1px solid #408bc4;"><tr><td background="http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r9/shrapnelserpent/atttbl11.jpg" height=100></td></tr><tr><td><div align=justify><fon, t color=white style="font-family:verdana; font-size:10px; line-height:10.5px;"><font color=#244e6f><div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ooc.]you’re the queen and i’m the king </font></div> tonight, tonight, dearest. the song, too, heh, which reminds me of this thread a lot. :o this isn't my best, but... uh. here goes. <div align=left><font color= "#abcce4">[ic.]nothing else means anything</font></div> “Kill her." He remembered screaming as the hot tears slipped bitterly down his cheeks, remembered his legs kicking out at the arden holding him down. "Little boy, you’re going to be such a good fuck." And he looked at his mother, with her wide, wild green eyes, and the black hair that fell in long plaits around her face – his hair – as they stripped off her clothes. This little boy - we will call him the Antichrist, Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of Darkness, Father of Lies, and Spawn of Satan. We will call him Attrius. But Mommy, Atti didn’t come back. He’s alive. Oh, and Att got raped and beaten up and Crail and Prazen are dead and he fell in love with his soul partner, Mommy. But he got back up and he's walking, Mommy, he's walking. There was so much and so little he could do all at once that it almost overwhelmed him. They were each other's lifelines; without one there would not be the other - not for a single second. They had sworn it, always sworn it, but tonight they had pledged it. In the molding of two into one, in the moment when their bodies united and the world around them exploded leaving them with nothing but each other, where the dameons and the gods meant nothing and died - they had pledged it. No one could ever tear them apart. He looked down at his scarred arms. Woven lines of ropy pink and white, a patchwork of welts and scar tissue, overlaying the black and concaved numerals and letters that were burnt in. Neither had to say anything – it was just something they both understood. <font color= "#abcce4">"I love you. Always and forever."</font> <br ></div></td></tr></table><center>
