warnings: animal cruelty ; description of a corpse ; murder of a loved one ; ptsd triggered by trauma

general: that time fel missed the boat with stel ; feels ; hurt, no comfort

idiom

• to lose an opportunity to do something by being slow to act

“Stel?”

She tucks her nose beneath the line of his jaw and leaves a kiss, “Hmm?”

He runs the edge of his thumb down the soft skin of her shoulder, so pale as to glow in the moonbeams sneaking in through the fluttering curtain. “Do ya ever think abou'—”

Fel doesn't finish his question. The words seem to have gotten lost in his stomach somehow on the trip from brain to mouth. They linger there, acidic and unpleasant.

Somewhat used to his antagonistic relationship with expressing himself by now, she settles close against his side to wait. Content to explore with fingers and lips the beautiful jagged streaks and broken stripes of shiny, mother of pearl scars, scattered like constellations over his slate skin.

He struggles to wring a coherent thought from his pathetic dishrag brain for a long moment before giving up completely. Fel digs hard into her hips, dragging her atop to sheathe himself.

Her gasping giggle sets his pulse leaping wildly, blood screaming, a golden knot in his belly tightening as his words finally untangle. “Run wit' me... I wantcha ta be wit' me...”

She pulls his broad hands, calloused and scarred, up the cage of her ribs to fill his palms with her breasts. The gentle tug behind his navel is the pull of her gravity, every ilm of him alive with desire. Menphina’s beauty glows from her moonstone skin; the steady tidal rolling of her hips a slow and inevitable push toward strange, unfathomable waters.

A swirling maelstrom on the edge of an abyss.

Flush spreading over face and breasts, she smiles, soft and sweet, then kisses his fingertips, “I'll go anywhere with you, Fel.”

The maelstrom claims its spoils, wet heat pulsing from him in waves as he grinds his hips hard into her at an angle. She moans loud and long, shuddering with every twitch of his length. He fill his empty hands with every ilm of her he can reach, desperate to touch beautiful curves shivering in pleasure.

She bends to kiss him, eyelids, chin, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth that always seems to be grinning slyly, as though it keeps secrets the other corner can’t know. “Tomorrow maybe?”

Another sundown wrought of flame and dark velvet sky.

Another moonlit night to pass the bells with her. With Stel.

A fluttering over his heart, a morpho caged by ribs just by thinking of her. Soft skin, sweet laugh, and tender kisses.

Stel.

Stel who wants to run away with him.

The lightness of his soul a pleasant distraction, until he comes across the deer.

Maggot infested and rank—even the eye sockets—beautiful hide sliding into liquefaction, returning to the patch of Eorzea that gave it life. Other than missing antlers it’s whole. Poached solely for the trophy.

It turns his stomach.

When the corpse becomes a young duskwight woman he gags, stumbling back into a tree. He clings on for life, splinters embedding beneath fingernails, head spinning and pulse pounding.

Blood runs from her belly, the knife buried deeply not hindering the flow in the slightest.

Breathe. It ain’t real. Breathe. It ain’t real.

BREATHE IT AIN’T REAL.

The ravaged deer returns. He slides down the trunk of his tree to rest his ebony head in his bandaged wrapped hands, struggling to rein in his breathing and his breakfast.

Can’t do this again. Can’t protect anyone. Fifth sons ain’t good for nothing ‘cept breedin’, as his mother always said.

Does Stel really mean to come with him?

It’s only pillow talk. He’s no knight, no mate, no nothing.

What if she’s pregnant now? She must be; been cumming in her for moons there’s no way it hasn’t happened yet. Even then, it’s just a matter of time.

He’d be endangering a kit by bringing it with him, her too. That’s why men don’t hang around… they aren’t needed beyond this. This is all they’re good for.

His heart sours, the warm flutter in his chest going cold. Dalamud hangs low against the flaring stars, as if leering.

He’s been here far too long. She could be matriarch of this village one day, and he’s doing her wrong with his selfishness, spending all the nighttime bells with him rather than hunting or working.

She’s too innocent to know she deserves better.

He turns on his heel and vanishes back into the darkness, melting into shadow as if he’d never been there at all.

Stel adds her nicest dress to the half-filled travel bag, along with several clean sets of smallclothes.

After a moment, a simple set of tiny clothes, blankets, and swaddling materials join the dress and extra smallclothes.

Her cheeks color as she roams her little cottage, a hand resting low on her belly. She and Fel won’t need much, but a kit will.

“Never hurts to think ahead,” she hums.

warnings: toddlerfic?

general: toddlerfic

verb

• involuntarily open one's mouth wide and inhale deeply due to tiredness or boredom
• (of an opening or space) be very large and wide

noun

• a reflex act of opening one's mouth wide and inhaling deeply due to tiredness or boredom

Rosemary Molkot, aged 4, hated bedtime.

There were very few things Rosie hated more than bedtime.

Rosie cannot yet write anything besides scribblings, however if she was capable of such a feat her greatest hates list might look something like this:

THINGS ROSIE HATES

1. Medicine

2. Vegetables

3. Bathtime

4. Worms

5. Bedtime

6. The dark

Needless to say Wee Rosie did not care for her parents calling bedtime all willy-nilly, after just one single, tiny yawn.

Not even a yawn so much as commentary on the interminable banality of her modern existence. An existence laced with indignities such as—but by no means limited to—the aforementioned bedtime, a strict limit on the amount of ginger-cinnamon cookies she's allowed to consume in a day, and the time outs she must endure on the rare occasions she succumbs to temptation and chases ma's chickens into a frenzy.

A temptation she'd indulged in today, as a matter of fact.

The long, shuddering yawn was an act of protest against these injustices and should be treated as such, but her kind, ill-informed parents failed to grasp this nuance and sentenced her to bedtime.

How dare they just assume? When conclusive proof existed to show that not only was she not tired, she had never been tired, not once, in all her one thousand five hundred some odd days of life.

If only she could better resist the heaviness of her eyelids, the weakness in her limbs as da gently scoops her up from her ~~nest of blankets~~ fort by the fire and cradles her against his chest.

No doubt her inability to fight back is the result of some wicked magic of ma's; all the neighbors called her a witch and she never denied it, just laughed as she handed them sparkling bottles of sweet-smelling liquid to treat so-and-so's fever or to help their auntie's cousin's wife's niece three times removed’s milk flow freely after her baby came early.

Whatever that means.

Still, despite her parent's treachery she loved them and looping her short arms round da's neck is a surrender she accepts, even enjoys. She nuzzles close to the warmth emanating from his dusky skin and metal prosthetic alike.

“Not sleepy,” Rosie grunts.

“Aye? What ya think ma? Can she go another quarter bell or tuck 'er in ta bed?” Da looks at ma, dragging his chin over the silken fur of a tiny, tufted ear.

“Well I'm tired, certainly, and my poor chickens are exhausted. Regardless of what she says, seeing as the Princess Rosemary's servants and playmates are all succumbing to the sleep of the just, she may have no choice but to join them.”

“I love it when ya say a buncha stuff I don' understan'.”

“So you just love anything I say then?”

“Aye. 'An not just whatcha say neither.”

Rosie grumbles to herself, eyes squinched tightly against her parents' ridiculous wordplay. She's already surrendered to their impertinent demands, must this humiliation be dragged on further?

Da takes her to her room then deposits her between the sheets of her trundle bed, tucking her in, arranging her crowd of stuffed companions just so, and—after a whine from Rosie—switches on the small device he made for her. Soft orange light radiates from backside of the insect-shaped lamp, banishing the looming shadows from corners and ceiling.

”'Night, sweetroll,” murmurs da, sliding an errant lock of the small girl's shining ebony hair out of her eyes with gentle, artificial fingers.

Rosie is already fast asleep, one fang glinting as she dreams of chasing squawking chickens across the yard, unreprimanded.

“Nah, I dun mind books so much. I’ll stay in Sharlayan an’ ya go to Thavnair, Stel.”

Her violet tail dances in mirth, “What’s that, liar? You’re going to Thavnair, of course.”

“Yes. Please go to Thavnair, Felcy’ra.” Krile’s protest is accompanied by a great sigh and a certain tension to her jawline, as though just the idea of dealing with Fel on a research project team is enough to set her teeth on edge.

Fel pouts, glancing at Alisaie for backup.

The young elezen raises her hands in a gesture of surrender. This is Fel’s battle to lose.

He narrows his one visible eye at G’raha Tia, who is oblivious, deep in scholarly conversation with Alphinaud.

“How many bells a day do you believe we may spend in the Noumenon, Krile? Eight? Twelve? Perhaps fourteen?” Stel asks, her tone sweet and innocent.

Krile, ever quick to cotton on, feigns surprise, “Did no one inform you? Eighteen hours minimum is the planned schedule. Mayhap we will study longer depending on what, if any, information we unearth.”

“I see. Then surely there will be frequent breaks and a ready supply of decent food?” Stel’s toothy grin bears an uncanny resemblance to the expression Fel normally wears. It’s enough to make no small number of the Scion’s blood run cold.

“I must apologize, but no,” replies Krile, quite serious. “I fear we have no time for breaks and the only foodstuffs the much diminished Baldesion budget can currently supply is Archon bread and weak tea.”

At the words ‘Archon bread’ Fel’s ears go flat. ‘Weak tea’ seems to be the finishing blow. “I’m goin’ to Thavnair,” he monotones.

After Fel takes his leave with a distracted kiss across her cheek, Stel raises a brow at her companions, “Can we really only afford tea and Archon bread?”

Alisaie and Krile dissolve into ringing peals of laughter, startling G’raha and Alphinaud out of their discussion.

“Absolutely not. Even if our funding was that dire I would not subject any of you, much less myself, to those sorts of inhumane working conditions,” explains Krile, wiping streaming eyes.

“Excellent. I would have stayed in any case, but if it was necessary to rid ourselves of the sort of mischief only a bored Felcy’ra can manage it seemed a small price to pay.”

The group indulges in personal reminiscences of bored Fel, shuddering as a unit before trooping en masse out the Annex doors and toward the library in high spirits.

In the split second after arriving via unattuned aetheryte to Yedlihmad, a veritable feast of delicious smells assails Fel’s nose. His belly gives an answering rumble and he believes, for one blissful moment, that Thavnair was the better choice.

Then comes a full body wave of mind bending nausea; the sort where you have an absolute certainty that if you opened your mouth, you would be revisited by meals eaten in childhood.

He falls to hands and knees, unable to control his own body, falling into a long series of shivering cold sweats. The belly that rejoiced at the prospect of new and exciting foods but moments ago now gyrates in the back of his throat, ready to empty itself on the baking sands of Radz-at-Han—wrung out like a dirty dishrag.

By the Twelve what sort of torture from the Seventh Hell is this?

Archon loaf would be preferable to this.

Sadly, the thought of the fish laden bread calls to mind an unbidden and unwelcome recollection of its taste. The unpleasant, grainy texture. The heavy chewiness of it—the way it sticks to your teeth and seizes up one’s jaw. And this is to say nothing of the smell: a dockside fish market at high noon in summer, mixed with over processed plant matter of a decidedly unfresh nature, and overlaid with a fragrance not unlike an auroch’s arse.

Estinien’s boots pay the ultimate price for Fel’s momentary lapse of concentration.

The light in Krile’s eyes is ethereal and strange, radiating a peaceful calm that Stel finds unnerving in contrast to the words her friend is speaking.

Words from Hydaelyn.

“In darkness, seek joy. Surrender not to sadness, and see beyond despair. Walk free, and bear the light for others to follow.”

Stel glances with apprehension at the pale blossom in her even paler hand, the petals unfurling gracefully around the delicate center. Reminding her of the halo of light sometimes visible around the moon on the coldest nights of the year. However, its soft pearlescent glow is somehow threatening in its serenity.

A ball of ice slips down her throat, coming to rest in her belly, burning there with cold ferocity.

For a long moment, she thinks to behold the expression on Fel’s face; to sort through her own emotions by observing his.

It takes another moment for her to recall he has gone to Thavnair: he is not by her side—his solid presence an immeasurable source of support—nor he will he know of this development until she tells him the details.

She feels his absence like the keenest blade.

”Stel does alchemy too. Not like dis kind though, the other kind,” announces Fel.

Nidhana looks up from analyzing the drunken deepa’s recorded data, “Stel?”

Thancred and Estinien chuckle. Urianger explains, “Another of our bosom companions. The Lady Stelmaria is the other Warrior of Light and Felcy’ra’s dearest—”

Fel gives a loud, fake cough, the tiniest flush blooming under his cheeks. Urianger fixes him with a stare wrought of solid steel but chooses to let sleeping chocobos lie.

Nidhana throws back her head and laughs, trunk curling upward and eyes crinkling. “A warrior and an alchemist? She sounds quite formidable. I should like to meet her one day when all this is over.”

“Aye,” grunts Fel, absorbed in checking his side arm for microscopic flaws. Thancred watches with barely restrained glee.

The good-natured arkasodara returns to her work. “‘Tis a wonderful thing to have special friends to share your failures and triumphs with, is it not? The bitter turns to sweet and the sweet becomes all the sweeter.”

“‘Tis indeed, my lady,” says Urianger.

Discovered and apprehended.

Called up on the carpet before the Forum like a group of naughty children when they were only asking questions.

And sneaking through disused mine tunnels, yes.

Though if that had gone wrong they would have inconvenienced none but themselves.

The back and forth arguing between her fellow Scions and the Forum members sets Stel’s teeth on edge.

G’raha, showing a glimmer of the Exarch’s gift for public speaking with gravitas, holds forth on the Forum floor about his restricted section discoveries. Every pair of eyes in the place is glued to his face and in watching she recalls—vividly—why she loved him.

Once.

“No longer was knowledge preserved for the benefit of society, rather society was to be gradually reshaped to ensure the preservation of knowledge.

A current runs through the room like levin. Several of the figures clad in graceful, flowing white silk sit straighter in their high-backed chairs.

“The most conspicuous and telling change was the one which befell Labyrinthos. Once little more than an oversized storehouse, an enormous allocation of funds saw it transformed into an advanced research and archival facility.

“I also discovered a fascinating account on the finances of our Dravanian colony. The settlement attracted students from far and wide, and the connections and the tuition fees thus acquired were funneled into further improvements for the archives.”

The rustling of fabric grows louder, the esteemed representatives murmuring to each other in undertones or else settling themselves to stare at G'raha Tia in rapt attention.

To Stelmaria they look rather like a flock of game birds disgruntled to discover a predator in their midst, but rather than flee they choose to flap their wings at each other and scratch the dirt for insects.

“Now there is no question that our nation’s progress is tied to the acquisition of wisdom. Nevertheless the vast resources diverted for this purpose borders on the obscene.

Forchenault Leveilleur's lips pinch into a thin, mottled line.

“But returning to the matter of when…” A pregnant pause allows the crowd to tense in anticipation as G'raha lines up to deliver the final shot. “Our change in course appears to have been made some 270 years ago.”

Y'shtola gasps, “The very same period when Sharlayan scholars in the Hinterlands began a formal study of the aetherial sea.

The two miqo’te share a meaningful glance before Y'shtola continues, tart as a lemon and delivering each word with mocking venom, “You found something did you not, and whatever it was gave rise to your oh so important duty?”

Alisaie stares at her erstwhile father, and only her father.

A strained voice rings out across the marble floors, “Mind your tongue, Archon. If you had seen—” The man stops and grabs at his throat, gasping.

“Some form of enchantment. A binding, mayhap?” G’raha muses to himself in an undertone.

“It puts me in mind of a fae geas. They keep silent in regards to whatever it is they know or they face consequences. Mayhap I should ask [our beautiful branch] what they think,” observes Stelmaria wryly.

G’raha studies the small woman, eyes dancing in amusement, “Mayhap you should. No doubt they have a most enlightening opinion.”

Fourchenault speaks over the rising din, trying to be the voice of reason, but G’raha moves closer to his companion so she may hear his next words with perfect clarity, “Whatever their reasoning, I intend to discover it by any means necessary.”

Bang.

Bang. Bang.

Fel growls in annoyance as Fandaniel seems to magick himself right out of the path of every loosed round.

Even angry as he is, Fel never misses.

Yet, the shots fly wide, embedding themselves in the undulating walls and floors or ricocheting off into nothingness.

It makes him see red.

The voices of the dead and the damned cry louder, ringing in his ears.

He can hear their endless screaming.

He bites the inside of his mouth—sharp, curved fang piercing smooth flesh. The taste of his own hot, coppery blood spreading across his tongue cools his temper enough to focus: Ya can’t win this one champ. Just learn what’cha can.

Not a difficult proposition, as it turns out: Fandaniel is overly fond of the sound of his own voice and freely shares no small amount of details for upcoming plans, but the tantalizing fragments are just enough to make clear the huge swathes of information the Scions lack.

In the end, Fandaniel flounces away unharmed while Nidhana remains trapped within the tower, the prototype scale rests somewhere at the bottom of the impenetrable labyrinth, and Fel struggles against a bitter wave of frustration that threatens to swallow him whole.

The brisk, salty sea breeze on deck banishes the last lingering tendrils of nausea. While the tonic she’d taken eased the symptoms of seasickness somewhat, Stelmaria spent much of the voyage doing all in her power to keep meals down.

In the far distance, illuminated by the soft glow of a sun rising through morning haze, lies their destination: an island covered in vibrant greenery and dotted by stately white edifices all facing a bustling harbor, in which the statue of a man kneels, pouring an endless stream of water from the pitcher balanced on one sculpted shoulder.

Sharlayan. The city of scholars.

Felcy’ra stares in the city’s direction, though his eyes are unfocused and unseeing. Perceiving something other than the ship’s rocking deck. Something that creases his brows and exposes one menacing fang.

“Fel?” she whispers, for once not worried that her last meal will make an appearance along with her words.

He blinks, the dark clouds upon his brow lightening as she crosses the creaking timbers on unsteady sea legs.

“How ya doin’, sprout? How’s ya brekky sittin’?”

“Well enough, seeing as I haven’t had any to begin with,” she quips.

Stel seizes his arm at the railing, desperate to remain on the ship in spite of a particularly large lurch of the deck and her belly.

A grin spreads across his own features at her pinched expression. Fel’s body adjusts to the ship’s movements as though he were born on the water. Additionally he’d evaded any and all symptoms of seasickness—much to Stel’s chagrin.

Not that she could stay upset with him.

Not when he’d been so gentle and conscientious of her needs since they’d left port: getting her fresh water or lighter fare, distracting her with bawdy jokes and wild tales, keeping the others from disturbing her rest with a deftness that surprised her.

“Glad ya feelin’ better, but ya a tad late developin’ ya sea legs to be honest. We’re almost to harbor and steady land.”

“Menphina is most merciful to the least of her children,” Stel replies, a wry twist to her lips.

“I’d pay a heap of good gil to see ya be what anyone migh’ consider least, sprout, an’ tha’s no lie.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but a sudden burst of spray soaks the fluttering hem of her red skirt, “Seven hells!”

Fel, dry of course, smirks at Alisaie, who has just now emerged from below deck to make an exaggerated stretch in the morning sunshine. The young woman smirks in kind—the pair of them are a menace indeed—and takes the rare opportunity to tease Stel, “Ah no. Nothing sadder than a wet cat.”

“Rude,” says Y’shtola, herding the rest of the Scions onto the deck ahead of her.

The arrival of their friends turns the topic to business, but the buzz of conversation around her is most comforting. So too is the warmth of Fel’s hand wrapped around hers and the faint stirring of her violet hair as he chuffs softly into her ear.

“What were you looking at earlier?” she murmurs, pitching her voice low so that only he could hear.

He shakes his head, shaggy ponytail swaying with the motion, and fixes his peridot eye on the others.

Very well. She would ask again later in private.

”You know there’s no need to tease G’raha like that,” she sighs.

A sharp bark of laughter rings loud in the cozy room. The air from his lungs chills the moistness where his hot mouth had been on her skin, raising goosebumps and drawing forth a shiver. “All the times to talk abou’ G’raha an’ this is when ya bring it up? Ya gone crazy?”

Fel grins, wicked, and presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, just above the knee.

“You great beast; so what if I have? Who’s fault would that be?”

Again, a kiss, although higher this time—perhaps halfway to her hip. She reaches to grip a velvet ear in anticipation but he bats her hands away.

“Mine, o’ course, ‘cause I been teasing ya. Wasn’ teasing him though—just ya.”

Another kiss, but this one is not anywhere on her thigh.

Nor is it a kiss so much as it is a slow, deliberate drag of clever tongue across wildly sensitive parts, before closing his mouth over the prize to apply suction.

“Twelve preserve,” she breathes, seeing stars.

Tease indeed.

The pair of them were supposed to be resting, but several long days and nights spent at sea with zero privacy and…

Well…

There was very little sleeping going on.

“You were teasing him though.” Trying to put a sentence together while he amuses her is like digging a hole in the mud—as soon as two words link properly another pair slips apart.

“Nah. Wouldn’ dream of it,” he replies smoothly, with all the innocence of a kit with a hand in the cookie jar. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’ think of anything to tease him about—”

Stel laughs at the chuckle rumbling from his chest, “You putting your needy hands round my waist at every opportunity during Krile’s tour was not teasing?”

He props up on elbows and meets her gaze, the unruly flop of bang covering the golden eye he disliked—but she loved, “Nah. Didn’ want ya to fall off the pier or into any of the fountains. Ya was a little discombobulated maybe? What with all the blushing an’ gigglin’ ya were doin’.”

Her pulse rises in her pale cheeks, higher than it already was, “That was because you would kiss me every time Krile turned her back to us?!”

“Ya had some crumbs left from lunch on ya face. I was jus’ takin’ care of it for ya, like a gentleman.”

Incredulous, her mouth falls open, “Crumbs?!”

“Aye, crumbs.”

“Just because you are a horrible, evil man who can’t eat without a bib does not mean that I—” she begins, eyes twinkling.

Quick as a wink, Fel slithers up the length of her languid body to kiss her into silence. His skin is scented with the green wildness of deep forests and smeared in her own musky slick. She moans at the throb low in her belly, the blaze within growing brighter at every touch of his scarred hands.

He turns his head to taste the skin of her shoulder and whispers, “Crumbs.”

With rather more force than strictly necessary she manages to pin the laughing male keeper to the mattress, straddling him and ignoring the hot hardness pressed against her belly and mound.

“And the pinching? Was it absolutely critical for you to repeatedly squeeze my bottom out in public?”

“Aye, the future of Eorzea depends on it.” His grin is so wide she is quite sure she can see every one of his pure white teeth.

Not the answer she expected.

Fel continues, “‘Cause I don’ wanna save a world where G’raha ain’t spittin’ jealous of how I got ya all to myself.”

“So it was teasing?” she clarifies in mock seriousness.

He says nothing, only rubs his thumbs across the soft flesh of her ribs, tracing the curve of bone beneath. The smile fades and his eyes glitter, becoming sharp enough to cleave her open with just a glance.

“How cruel. I shall have to punish you.”

His eyes bore into her, “Aye.”

She wraps a hand around him and cocks her hips, rubbing her soft, sensitive nether lips against his throbbing length. Looking for all the world like a mad coeurl in heat.

”What did you see earlier? You never said.”

Her voice is muffled with both sleep and the pillow where she’s buried her head, but he reasons well enough what she’s asked.

“The lady of light,” he replies, drawing idle shapes over the beautiful curves of her naked back. “She said to seek light in darkness—that I was gonna be tested.”

She shifts to take in his face, gazing at him tenderly with eyes muzzy from sleep, “We’ll make it. We’re together.”

He nods, leaning down to press his mouth to the raised scar at her shoulder, “Aye.”

This thing between them was new and somewhat strange: at times delicate and fragile as spun glass; at other times as strong as forged adamantite. It was different from all the other times they’d tried to be together—some fundamental shift in attitudes and desires occurred somewhere along the line. Where exactly he couldn’t say, and he suspected that neither could she, but the fact of the matter was she gave him life, her daily presence brought a steady glow of joy to his soul. It felt right.

“Aye,” she echoes, raising herself on her elbows to kiss him softly, like the ephemeral brush of a morpho’s wings. “Now sleep before Krile charges in and beats us to death for not following her direction to rest.”

Sprawling next to her, he relaxes without even trying, able to drift off to the steady rhythm of her breathing close by. The lavender and myrrh scent of her skin perfumes his dreams.

post type:

#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #ffxivwrite2022 #shitpost

series:

#ffxiv

• #wolshipewfic
• #exlibris
• #ffxivwrite2022

#dnd

• #threadsbetween

genre:

#horror #nsfw #kindansfw #fluff #au

universe:

#ffxiv

• #worldunsundered
• #prearr
• #arr
• #heavensward
• #stormblood
• #shadowbringers
• #endwalker
• #postmsq

#dnd

• #eberron

ship:

#felstel #hythhades #wolcred #wolexarch #wolgraha #wolmagnai #wolship #wolzenos

character:

#ffxiv

• #alisaie
• #alphinaud
• #ancients
• #estinien
• #exarch
• #fel
• #fray
• #graha
• #haurchefant
• #magnai
• #poppy
• #rosie
• #stelmaria
• #thancred
• #wol
• #yotsuyu
• #yshtola
• #zenos

#dnd

• #polly

“Then what happened?” Rosemary watches her da’s face in a state of rapt focus only attainable by the tiniest children.

“Well then ya’ ma said,” Felcy’ra’s voice rises into a breathy falsetto, a terrible imitation of his wife, “’Oh won’t some han’som hero save me from this terrible, disgusting chigoe?’ An’ then she gave a great swoon—”

“She what?!” Her ebony ears fly back in surprise, disbelieving eyes sliding across to Stelmaria, who works quite determinedly at her embroidery—head down and lips thin.

Rosie can’t imagine ma ever swooning.

Fel grins in unrepentant glee. “—Ya’ ma went swoonin’. Pay attention sweetroll, this is gettin’ to tha good bit.”

The small kit stifles giggles with her dove gray hands, amethyst eyes shining, “Aye, da.”

“So I come leapin’ into the clearin’, strong lance arm ready to bring down this foul beast—”

“What did it look like, da? The chigoe?”

Chigoe sometimes lived in the tree outside her bedroom window. Rosie could hear their gentle chittering on quiet nights before she drifted off to sleep, but she’d never seen one.

“Huge. Three or four yalms tall at least, giant slaverin’ mandibles click-clackin’ away thinkin’ of its’ next meal. To this day I’m deadly sure it meant to devour ya’ ma whole righ’ then an’ there—jus’ snatch her up all in one big gulp.”

Rosie, ever the appreciative audience, gasps. Good thing indeed that the ones in her tree couldn’t possibly be that big, or she might worry they planned to eat her too.

“So I come leapin’ over the hedge, then manage to jump up on one log, then over to another—up an’ up an’ up until—”

“Until?”

“I snap on my lucky goggles,” he demonstrates, ”an’ I come down off the bough like the wrath o’ the Twelve. Jumpin’ wi’ all my might—an’ ya know ya’ da, wee Rosie, I got a lot o’ might. The wind was whistlin’ in my ears an’ sending my hair all flyin’ any which way. I tell ya I was very glad I had my goggles for protection.”

Rosie’s da only takes his blue-lensed goggles off to sleep and take baths. She’s allowed to wear them herself for a single bell on her nameday, to make the next twelve moons happy ones.

They are that lucky.

“Anyway, the point o’ my lance pierces right through the monster’s crispy shell an’ brain an’ deep into tha dirt. All twenty of it’s long, spindly legs go twitchin’ an’ flailin’ as it dies, an’ so I twisted my lance jus’ ta be sure it was dead.”

“Was it dead?”

“Aye. An’ I was so lightnin’ fast I managed to kill it stone dead an’ catch ya’ ma ‘afore she hit the ground.”

“Ma fell!?” The little girl’s mouth hangs open, eyebrows almost hidden under her sweep of jet black hair.

“She caught a swoon, Rosie, remember?”

Rosie may be just six summers old but she’s learning that her da sometimes fibs in his stories. She loves them though, and loves her da and ma, so she lets da think that she believes him, even when she doesn’t.

Besides, if he goes too far ma will stop him, like always.

“An’ there I was: covered in sticky, green gore, hair a right mess, my lance stuck in a dead chigoe, and with the most beautiful miqo I’d ever laid eyes on laying helpless in my arms. All well an’ good—‘cept she was out cold.”

“No!”

Ma knocked out? He is definitely telling tales.

“Aye. So I kissed her to wake her up.”

“Like in the stories?”

Da puts his broad hand over his heart and assumes an earnest expression. Pity it’s completely ruined by the quirk at the corner of his mouth.

A rustle of skirts before ma’s clipped tones ring out, “—That’s enough nonsense for tonight, I think. Time for kits to trot away to bed.”

She rises from her rocking chair and tidies away her things, making ready to take Rosie to her room for bedtime.

“But ma—,” whines Rosie.

“But Stel—,” whines da.

“No buts. Bed.”

With a petulant grunt, Rosie pads down the hall ahead of her ma, tail hung low.

Da clears his incomprehensible metal thingamajigs into a basket he keeps by his chair. All traces of his former protest have vanished, replaced with his usual fanged smirk.

“I don’t swoon. I’ve never swooned,” quips Stel, without heat.

“I beg ta differ. I could make ya swoon right now if I wanted,” murmurs Fel, wrapping his wife in his arms and chuffing warmly into her ear. He traces the shape of her jaw with one scarred thumb, calluses rasping on her smooth skin, before pressing his lips softly against her carmine mouth.

She smiles against his kiss. “Hush.”

On her knees in front of him, she gives an impressive imitation of submission.

Large, limpid eyes turned upward to catch his gaze. Ears down and tail across her lap, her hands behind her back, exactly as he'd instructed. She very nearly had him convinced.

However, he knows that there is no man or woman that could truly tame her, she simply allowed them to believe that she could be—when it suited her designs. A shadow-striped tiger prowling behind cage bars it could easily squeeze through.

But it doesn't. Won't.

He can't say exactly why, but the danger of it is just as exciting as seeing a creature so wild playing at being a housecat up close. At any moment she could bear her fangs and open his throat.

Instead, she kneels. Eager. Willing.

Ruby red lips parted wetly around the fullness of his aching cock.

She was only allowed to touch him with her mouth, but he could touch her however he liked. And touch her he does.

A soft moan escapes her as he palms the delicious weight of a milk-white breast, pinching the sensitive nipple he finds at it's apex and feeling it pebble under his touch. His slate fingers run the length of her delicate collarbones before tracing down the stark black lines inked onto her graceful shoulder. She shivers in response, a true surrendering of herself to him, and not the part she's been playing until now.

It's the reaction he's been waiting for.

Fisting his hands in the heavy silken fall of her long violet hair, he pulls gently and she obeys, sliding her hot mouth along the full length of him.

Now it is his turn to shiver.

He watches her bright eyes as he fucks into her mouth slowly, keeping the strands of her hair wrapped tight in his fingers. The expression on her face, bliss mixed with adoration and love, almost undoes him completely. Every part of her feels so good but this...

“Stel,” he growls, voice trembling at the effort it takes to keep himself still.

She looks up at him, quiet. Serene. Obedient.

Then she runs her tongue along the underside of his cock, lingering deliberately on the sensitive ridges of the head.

His mind goes blank, conscious thought blinking out before a rushing wave of desire so powerful it takes his breath away. The fists in her hair tighten involuntarily and she moans again at the pain of it, delighted at being treated roughly by the man she loves. At being desired with such ferocity that he becomes a monster of pure instinct.

Slamming himself in and out of her slick, burning mouth the tight pressure in his belly intensifies, all sensation narrowing to the slide of her soft, wet lips over his swollen girth.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck ya feel so good I want to fuck ya so bad I want ya to scream for me when I make ya cum I'm gonna make ya forget your own fuckin' name.” The debauched filth pouring from his lips spurs her to greater heights, angling her head so that he goes deeper with every sharp thrust of his hips.

It's all too much.

The knot within him unties, all the pressure it held in check suffusing his entire body with warmth, a feeling of mind-altering pleasure so powerful he shivers from head to toe, cock pulsing hot spend directly down her throat.

It feels like a lifetime and yet no time at all before his awareness widens beyond the sweet beguiling curve of her lips, which are turned upward in a self-satisfied way.

“Ya just so good at that. Should be illegal,” he whispers, breathless.

She preens at the compliment but replies, “It's only because you're so fun to tease, Fel. I love to watch you squirm when you come for me.”

He bends to kiss the top of her head to hide the pinkening skin at the bridge of his nose.

Fel is on his knees in prayer.

Making supplication to a being composed of moonlight and mystery, sweet cream and salt brine.

She overwhelms every part of him, each sense honed in on her—and only her—with mathematical precision.

The soft curves of her hips bless his scarred hands, rough calluses rasping over silken flesh. Curious, greedy, his hands wander further, climbing the delicate ladder of her rib cage. He tests the weight of a breast by giving a peaked nipple a gentle squeeze and smiling widely at the resulting catch in her trembling breath.

Her shivering moonstone skin is slick with sweat. He allows his large hands to glide down to her sides to better bring the searing heat of her firmly against his lips.

In his experience, prayers are better received the more fervently they are whispered. He intends to engage in very fervent worship indeed.

Lazily, he swipes of the flat of his tongue across that most sacred part of her, filling his mouth with the taste of starlight, sin, and sea salt. She whimpers sweetly in the back of her throat, tightening her grip in the wild tangle of his ebony hair.

Oh how he loves that sound.

He wants to hear it again. To make her lose control, to cause her to gasp his name in the throes of pleasure. A pleasure that she only experiences because of him.

More than half mad with desire, he lifts one lean, pale leg over his shoulder, glad for the solid presence of the wall behind her. Running his steady hand up the smooth, warm flesh of her inner thigh he's rewarded with a low moan, that soon becomes a sharp intake of breath when he presses two clever fingers gently into the dripping heat at her center.

“Fel...” she whispers, eyes closed in ecstasy.

He works his fingers in and out with a slow rhythm, as steady and deliberate as the tide. The thumb of the same hand rubs circles on her pearl, slick from his attentions and her own arousal.

“Ya so beautiful, Moonbeam,” he murmurs, punctuating each word by sucking a small, vivid red mark into her perfect pale skin.

“Ya smell so good,” he says, inhaling the scent of the lavender perfume she always wears.

The pressure of his thumb increases slightly and she rocks her hips against him, moaning.

“Ya feel so good,” he growls, gripping her haunch tighter to keep her still while his slick finger move faster. She's so wet that each sheathing of his digits causes an obscene squelching sound. His cock swells to an almost painful hardness against his belly.

He ignores it, concentrating instead on bringing her to the very peak of pleasure.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Inside, she flutters. Her eyes open and meet his for a long, lingering moment before, grinning, he lowers his mouth over her pearl again and gently sucks.

“Oh” she breathes, almost a whisper.

But he hears it.

Pressing his lips harder against the sweet wetness between her thighs he continues to fuck her with his fingers. His free hand reaches up to roll a pebbled nipple between thumb and forefinger.

“Oh Fel...” her voice begins to break as her breathing grows wild and unsteady.

The grip on his hair and ears tightens again. Desperate for relief from the building tension, Fel rubs his aching cock against the  silk of her trembling calf.

Circling, sucking, brushing, and rubbing, his clever tongue samples every part of her irresistible heat. She rocks her hips hard into his face but he keeps going, thoroughly undeterred.

The pressure in his belly builds past where thrusting against her leg provides any assistance; he wraps his free hand around his length and pumps experimentally.

A thick haze settles over his brain.

He wants to make her come apart shivering.

He needs to stroke himself until he comes with her, for her, spattering his offering of liquid pearls at her feet.

Frantic, he increases his pace once more, fingers and tongue working in feverish tandem to shatter her, reduce her to a sobbing mess. His hand slides easily up and down his cock, slick with pre cum.

She trembles, stiffening, involuntarily pressing his mouth into her petals with the hand tangled in his hair. Releasing a strained, wordless cry her hips fie an involuntary buck as the fire and silk of her inner walls clench rhythmically on his fingers.

He imagines that it's his length inside her instead of his digits. He pictures burying himself to the hilt inside her tightness before pumping his release into in the heavenly wet depths of her body, then tattooing languid kiss after kiss on her beloved heart shaped face, her pale shoulders, and the delicate column of her throat.

With a grunt he comes, spend pulsing out between his fingers to land in shining white puddles and spatters across the floor, the wall, and up her silken limb as far as her hip.

Her trembling travels the full length of her body, skin of coalesced moonlight shivering, raising goosebumps as though she's chilled.   The motion passes from her into him, magnifying with each kiss he burns on the canvas of her hips and thighs.

Absently, her gentle hand traces the velvet edge of his notched ear.

He shivers again with a laugh, catching her fingers to kiss them, “Can't seem to stop shaking, sprout.”

“Maybe we should go to bed then? Get some rest,” she says, wry smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

He has a sudden irrational desire to kiss her precisely there. “We're not gonna rest, are we?”

She shakes her head in the negative, the violet curtain of her hair swaying with the motion.

“Good,” says Fel, rising to his feet and moving to pick her up.