A lust for life [closed]

[joies]

Who: Persephone + Others
When: Throughout November and December!
Where: Here, there and everywhere
What: Some closed starters
Warnings: First starter will include some body horror due to Full Moon transformations, will update as needed!

[If you would like do anything with the flower lady, hit me up over at floriographies or DMs!]

Comments

asura. (12th nov - warning for body horror)

[joies]

[The changes had been slow. Gradual. A few back pains, a few itchy scales growing it.

It was fine, she could handle this. Then the day of the full moon arrives, and the blackening at the tips of her fingers is enough to tell her that it will not be slow anymore. Persephone is good at side-stepping around issues, diverting attention away to what she wants - a tactic she abuses, if either of the house residents asked why she seemed intent on hiding her hands. Sokie and Asura aren't stupid, they know the full moon is upon them, but she simply hopes whatever their Bonded experiences will be enough to pull away their attention.

By the afternoon, most of her nails have fallen out. The numbness at the tips of her fingers made it difficult to gauge her grip, and a dropped pot in the garden took most of her nails with it - the pain not even registering, shock numbing the rest of her. But now there's blood splattered everywhere, and the pain shoots up her arm - only aggravated by her new, black claws growing in. When the nails fall from her other hand, she didn't even do anything. They simply dropped off, like dead leaves from a tree, and her pain quickly doubled.

It's late afternoon when the worst of it hits, when she retreats to the far edge of the garden - the pain making it impossible to keep going. A bloodied hand pressed to a bloodied mouth - fangs forcing out through teeth and gums, the blood thick in her mouth. Her back throbs and aches and tears as wings start to grow, as a tail extends from the bottom of her spine. A part of her, probably delirious from the pain, notes that her clothes are practically unsalvageable now - so blood soaked that she doubts it will ever come out.

Something in her chest soon starts to burn white hot, burning along her throat and forcing her to give a raggedy cough - uncertain if the blood that splatters is from her mouth or from her now raw throat. It doesn't really matter at this point, does it...

I'll need to clean later, she needs to think of something that isn't the pain. So she thinks of the garden, how her blood is staining soil and stone. How it seeps into flowerbeds, and she can feel her stomach twist at the sickening reminder - when others bodies and blood was given to her, as her Keeper forced her to bloom.

Another harsh, bloody cough escapes her as she bows her head down - eyes squeezing shut as she bears through the pain. There has been worse pain, she can handle this. And still she prays that the house residents aren't here, that when she next sees them, the blood will be cleaned away and her new features will be neat and pristine.]

[mirshikar]

[ Persephone is right: Asura is no fool. The full moon is well upon them, and if the Queen had chosen to obscure her hands from sight, it had only been for one reason; one folly notion which she had always possessed for as long as the King had known her. Though he had bid her not to hide from him ("not here", he'd said, "not where our allies are few and we must derive strength from one another"), she had made him no promise in kind, and that's why--... He had granted her a buffer, despite being keenly aware the suffering which she bore; he had allowed her the space to weather the changes which beset her on her own terms in the seclusion of the gardens.

But for no longer, for no more.

The first droplets of a cold Noveuer rain begin to fall, when Asura infringes upon the Queen's privacy in the courtyard behind the house they share. Fresh blood colors grass and flowerbeds alike, and though Persephone has never breathed word of it to him (and likely to no one, outside of her motley of companions), he wonders if she had not sought out the gardens because she'd been confined to such a landscape when she'd been Changed before. The thought (wholly unbidden) would have made him sick with rage, if not for the sight of the Queen with her head bowed (as it should never be), ever-blooming wings burst through the the skin of her back as though Persephone herself were a seedbed for the growths. The beginnings of a tail and the protrusion of fangs are smaller things, harder to identify when the Queen is bloodied so, but before Asura is aware of the motion for himself, he is at Persephone's side, and the extent of the transformation is visible to the eye up close.

Instantaneous, then: the magic which falls upon the Queen as a shroud, a healing balm made potent by the foci which Asura employs (his own crystalline skeleton). Slowly but surely, it mends the skin torn apart by the emergence of new extremities (muscle, sinew, and surface all) as Asura shifts to function as a brace for the Queen, his larger frame at her disposal for support. ]

Sorry, Persephone. [ Is she able to hear him; will she be responsive? Has the ferality ushered in by the full moon claimed her as well? These things, he is unable to discern, but the answers will reveal themselves in short suit. And then? He'll adjust. Move to become whatever she needs, as she needs it. Until then, he continues to speak, hoping that the familiar cadence might ground her: ] Couldn't let you go through this alone for the second time.

[ No matter how badly she might have wished otherwise. ]

[joies]

[The wash of magic is startling, a shock of clarity among the dense fog of pain. Even moreso the voice that speaks, grounding her with its familiarity and the comfort that cadence always bring.

And with that comfort comes dread. He's now seen her like this - seen her bloodied and broken, in a way she never wanted him to see her. Always she wanted to make sure that only image he had of her was someone composed, someone who wouldn't be hunched over like this in a pitiful attempt to hide. Like she was when she first Changed.]

You should've... [The words are croaked out, bloodied and raw as a cough trails onto the end of them. Her eyes open slightly, before squeezing shut, vision swimming and swirling even as the pain eases - part of her mind realizes her eyes are changing as well. The pain there must be from her pupils changing and thinning, to better suit the creature she is becoming - even as she still remains blind in one, newly grown fangs gritting together at the sobering thought. Not even this will grant her complete vision again.

The slowly changing dragon stubbornly stays in place, neither reaching for him nor pushing him away. She refuses to weak, she can't be weak, but she knows Asura will not leave her side now. Obsidian claws, new and forming strongly, digs into the dirt onto her - trying to push herself up, even a little. Ignoring how her back screams in protest, as it tries to accommodate both her emerging tail and wings.

This is fine. This is fine. She can't give reason to worry, especially when surely his own Bond must be suffering too - ]

I'm... Not the one you should be worrying about... [Another wince wracks through her, as scales soon start to grow and form around her horns. Vines becoming a deep black like her claws and tail, like the expanding trail of scales along her arms and up her neck.]

[mirshikar]

[ Falling along with the rain, the King's response is an ungentle thing: ] You don't get to decide where or with whom my concern should lie.

[ If the Queen of Spring is weak, it is not in bearing a Flowering dragon's form (the changes which Asura has never known to fall so swiftly upon any of their Mirrorbound comrades—abnormal and starling, that Persephone should suffer so very much at once), but in heart. That she would be foolish enough to make a play at casting aside his worry when nearly every inch of her person is slick with blood is testament to as much. Testament, too, to how her mind remains her own (were her thoughts steeped in ferality, Asura would have been met with aggression, and in the here and now there is none) regardless of the sheer amount of pain she is in, because the Persephone which Asura knows? To the detriment of both herself and others, she would always choose to hide from him.

(Her true weakness, he'd glimpsed it long ago, and despite witnessing it a hundred times over, he had only ever embraced her all the more fiercely for it.)

He leaves no room for protest, when next he speaks: ] Let me help you to your feet.

[ Where Persephone makes to push herself up, off of the blood-sodden ground beneath her, Asura falls into a crouch beside her, seamlessly assisting. Fit together side-by-side, one of the Queen's petaled wings flexes and flutters at the King's back as he aids her in rising, one of his arms at her waist, the other helping her hand to rest at his shoulder. With the support at her hip and the crutch of Asura's broad shoulders, there is nothing which should prevent one so adamantly determined to stand from realizing their goal.

Rain cascades down (cool, cleansing). Asura breathes (refocusing his magic). And Persephone changes further (her verdant splendor shaded with all the ebon hues of shadow ). ]

I am powerless, to prevent you from being hurt further. [ For as much as he is able to cast healing magic (and does, a pulse of energy helping her body to replenish lost blood), he cannot seem to keep up with the sheer speed of her transformation. And even after she has become like him, a dragon in full, the pull of the moon will hold her in its sway, with or without a Bond. ] But...

I'll be damned, if I can't be the one you lean on, the person that you need. Just like I needed you all those years ago.

[ And still does. For fuck's sake Persephone, you couldn't have honestly believed that Asura would let you bleed out in the middle of the yard. ]

[joies]

But I can feel as if your concern should be elsewhere.

[The words are frigid, hissed between gritted fangs and from a bloodied tongue. Unlike Persephone, but very much like an increasingly irritated dragon - aching and raw and denied its request to be left alone in this broken state. All she wanted was to weather this out alone, with nobody to bear witness to this mess she has become.

It's not the aggression he may have been expecting, but the pain is enough to loosen her usual composure - yet, she doesn't physically try to push him away. Rather she moves with his movements, bracing herself against his shoulders with another ragged breath - rattling and harsh in her chest, the changes slowing but not stopping. The wave of healing magic soothes the burning pain into faint aches, the adrenaline finally fading as her blood loss eases.

Now she feels... tired. The irritation is still there, prickling under her skin, gnawing at the back of her mind - but she has no desire to act on it. Yet something passes over her expression at his words, something colder than the warmth they fill her with.

Words she wishes to be true. But she cannot always lean on him - not when others need him, both physically and emotionally. Not when she slowly becomes something else, something that isn't entirely herself anymore.

The shake of her head prompts her hair to sway gently, blush curls blocking her expression from view as the rain dampens them - prompts stray strands to cling to blood-slick skin. He may have needed her years ago, but time has changed much - especially here - and she can't allow herself to need him anymore. Nor should he need her.]

You can't always be there for me, Asura. [Even though her hopes that he would actually be his Bonded during this time were completely dashed.]

[mirshikar]

No, I cannot be. [ No more than anyone could, not even her Queen's guard. This, Asura does not contest (he hadn't been there for her, when she'd vanished in pursuit of the Larcenist; when Asura himself had taken leave of the Freehold he'd governed time and time again over the years), but... Persephone, she forgets something.

Though she stands (as the Vernal Sovereign and as herself, bloodied and bearing new features but remaining defiant still) and manages to speak (despite her labored breath; the state her lungs must be in), she forgets their steadfast partnership of half a century, choosing instead to believe that a handful of months could possibly infringe upon what they share together.

But then, perhaps it is Asura's duty (as Imperator, commander of Kings and Queens and warden of their histories) to remind her of as much: ]

But my heart is with you always, Persephone. [ Whether it takes the form of a Wyrd-crafted bird, scarlet winged and boisterous, a steadfast embrace from Asura himself, or the care he employs in all things related to the Queen (a lingering kiss, before she departs from the home they share; gifting her small spots of sunlight, captured and imbued into charms), he is always with her. The promise that they had tied into the tapestry of Fate had been no capricious whim, no fleeting fancy. And had she not returned the sentiment in kind, promising him in turn...?

("Take it freely, for freely it is offered, and forever have a part of me in your keeping", he had bid of her, once upon a time, and "I swear that I will watch over you always, Persephone, even if distance should part us," he had pledged in the moments after.) ]

Tell me what you need in the here and now, and I will see it done. [ But he will not infringe upon his vow. Persephone is pained, he understands. She is not a Crimson Knight, an agent of wrath who would snarl and spit, raging in the wake of being changed, and for it, she suffers, but... She cannot mean to turn him away; she cannot intend to break what they'd sworn to one another.

Lips twitching into grim smile, Asura shakes his head, his side and shoulder colored red with Persephone's blood as the rain dilutes it, washes it away. ] I will not be made an Oathbreaker on the account of a single full moon.

[ Turning his face, he presses his nose to the damp strands of the Queen's blush-colored hair, all the emotion (passion, ferocity, belief in her) in his voice constrained to a whisper: ] No more than you will be destroyed by it.