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

[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.