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.