Andarin: The Mountains: awkward as ever; --

And he goes, Wyvern does – because he knows, dimly, what he’s done and why. Even then, he could feel her voice in his mind (you could, but you won’t) and the doubt; that one, small seedling of doubt. The doubt that maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been choice or the lack thereof. That he’d been lying to himself all this time.

There is the kindling. He can acknowledge that. How could he not?

Doesn’t mean he enjoys it. It isn’t everyday one puts one’s entire life into question.

But… he is glad it was Astarte and no one else.

Even if, in part, something of his thinks, distantly, you’re using her.

Why yes, the other part of him, the one usually suppressed under the walls of morals and inhibitions, says, of course you are. And I don’t think she cares, does she?

Then again, in this mood – raw, unprotected under the weight of Corruption – she probably wouldn’t anyway.

But he rather doubted it.

The little minx.

(Or tigress?

Rawr.)

“Astarte,” he repeats and a faint smile finally, finally, comes to his face. Perhaps it’s the corruption working – perhaps the exuberant flashing of colors he doesn’t seem to even notice, melting his body into the shadows, into lights, into her side.

Mm.

“Teasing me, are you?” his lips move down the length of neck and back almost without notice. but there’s no need for words, not really. Not here. Not now. If he speaks to ease his own… discomfort… at the situation, it’s nobody’s business but their own, though. “I’d have nobody else’s teasing, though. You know that.”

What a lovely chatterbox he is, brushing past her spine in soft small caresses – as inadequate as he’d ever been; he’s never touched anyone but Icarus, after all. Been touched, yes, at least three times (all sons, ironically enough, but for the last one, who had no gender and no identity) but not like this. Never like this.

He thinks, somewhere faraway, that he would never touch someone else like this, either.

“I wonder…”

First time for everything, yes?

Yes.

Somewhere in the dark, a krait stretches and twines around a tigress, as comfortable as ever; if scales and fur melt together in a strange (and dangerous, so dangerous) confusion, it feels more natural than it should.

Somewhere in the dark, someone else watches, black as an oilspill, and smiles.

wyvern
yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain
new things, and never this best thing again;