Hell Hath No Fury as the Fire In Her – Raivh and Xinavee

[Raivh]

Flecks of ash intermingled with snow flitted before him, dancing, twisting, and drifting through the air as they fluttered to earth. The breeze was gentle but biting. His breath, opaque, came in puffs in front of him, clouding his vision from time-to-time. Reflected in his eyes were high flames, golden yellow, bright orange, and brilliant white, and at the very heart of all of these colors, ice blue.

The figure of a young woman lie amidst the pyre of dried wood and grasses. Her body was nearly consumed now, flesh charred black, becoming the bits of soft ash that littered the snow before him and fell upon his shoulders. He was laden in a dark cloak, the hood pulled up over his head and lowered to obscure him from the view of those around him.

Unlike the mother who wailed for the loss of her daughter into the night like a wolf at the full moon, there was a slight smile over his face. This wasn't a kind smile, nor one filled with happy thoughts of days gone by. No. This was a smile of satisfaction.

“Adulterer!” The shout came from his left. A man stepped forward and cast something into the flames. It hit the young girls corpse and rolled out the other side.

Turning his head ever so slightly, the cloaked figure shifted his sights on the man. His sneer broadened as he watched the big fellow stumble forward. This man was the woman's betrothed. Or at least he was. Now, he was nothing more than a drunken mess, his hair disheveled, clearly having come straight away from drowning his misery in ale.

Two other men stepped toward the man, reprimanding him for his outburst. They hoisted him up by his arms and threw him in the direction of the downhill slope. Down, down, he rolled, covered in white powder, until he crashed into a tree at the base of the hill with a loud thud. The excitement over, the gathered crowd turned their attention back to fiery attraction and gaped, tears pooled in their eyes, countenances solemn. Following the mass, the man in the cloak turned his gaze back to the girl, just in time to witness the end of the ceremony.

Rising from the burning pyre was the young woman's soul. She looked terrified as her eyes darted this way and that. Just when fear was really beginning to take hold of her, she looked down. He could see it. That moment when realization gripped her like a vice. Only he could hear her scream as she stared down at what was once herself locked in mortal flesh.

Mother!

No one heard her shout.

Mother, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

Her voice, heard in his ears alone, was broken, defeated.

“My dear,” he said, speaking to her, his chin lifted to look upon her. His teeth were bared in a wicked smile. The woman whipped her head in his direction.

You!

Her anger only fueled him further. “Yes, Love?” His words came as the darkness started in around her.

You did this! You tricked me!

“Me?” he questioned, eyebrows raised in shock. “You're the one who tempted me, though, aren't you, Love? It wasn't me whom pressed mine lips firstly against yours. It wasn't me whom positioned herself so snugly over your cock, now was it?”

Laughing, now, he watched in pure amusement as everything she feared in life wrapped its wicked, cold claws around her wrists, locking her in cuffs and chains.

He watched her chest heave, as if she needed air any longer.

“No, dear.” He was directly in front of her now, “I do believe that was you.”

Cupping her face in his hands, he brought his lips to hers. Her mouth was agape in horror before she bit him, her teeth clamping down over his lower lip. Without so much as a grimace of pain, he leaned back, letting his hands slide gently over her neck, down her shoulders, and sway lackadaisically at his sides.

“Very well,” he uttered to her, a bead of blood pooling on his lips, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. “Hell welcomes you.”

With a piercing cry and a flash of light, she was consumed by the darkness, just as her body had been by the flames. As the spectral scene before him vanished, the earthly world had grown ever silent. He could hear the wind whisper in his ear, could feel its sting. The funeral party had all gone. Not a living soul remained among him.

Breathing deep, he fixed his eyes on the half moon above, partially covered by the clouds that had brought this snowy night.

 

[Xinavee]

Lailah had stood before the mirrored pool of sight, watching yet another fated doomsday. Her search was simple. Find those few who deserved a second chance and shove their asses out. Miracles disguised as bad luck would shift the tides as Lailah touched the surface of the pool of sight. She was searching the snow-covered fields of a churchyard. Like a magnet with in her blood she felt the pull course through her veins, and yet the pool would not let her look closer. She tried focusing on the closest thing to him, some poor wretch of a woman burning in a pyre, held man’s attention but even as close as they were Lailah could only see a blur where his face should have been and the gentle release of a sinner’s soul, stripped and shackled before being wrenched into hell.

In curious desperation Lailah tapped at the pool’s surface where she might change the blurred strangers fate and save him from his own demise. This proved to be a cataclysmic mistake as the waters from the pool splashed back at her. One moment Lailah could see the rippling effect of the touch of her hand and the next the pool had splashed back, wetting her body in a burning light.

She was falling, feet over head, the great black feathers of her wings tore and singed with the heat of her fall. Her lungs filled with ash and burning gas. Stones spewed up into the air and cast upon her body as she plummeted towards earth.

Snow cut into Lailah’s flesh and rain burnt trails upon her spine. The tracks of her own blood were cooler as it trickled and merged with the wounds upon her back. Heavily her body hung between her weak arms, to crawl forward but collapsed. Labored breath shook her body as she lay still, her skin cracked where the fire still licked at her human flesh, and two great gaping rifts where once there may have been wings. She opened her eyes. Even this simple act was painful.

Where was she? Once again Lailah lifted upon the palms of her hands and pressed against the cold surface of the snow-covered ground. This time her arms would hold her, and she crawled her knees up under her body, pulling her form from the pyre flames. The heat of her skin, melted the snow around her as mud caked upon her naked form and flecks of skin began to fall, like tree bark shedding its layers for a better growth. She dark eyes darted about the deserted night. A fallen angel in a foreign land, a foreign time, a foreign body. She kicked backwards, against the new reality of her fate, and that’s when she felt it, that magnetism in her blood, pulling her to around the tall pyre of fire where HE stood.

 

[Raivh]

Shifting his weight, he exhaled and felt a shiver of delight rush down his spine. He reached up with both hands to slowly remove the hood that shielded him. With a quick jerk of his neck from left to right, he smiled and turned to face her, feet spread apart, arms down in front of him, hands folded pensively over one another.

His honey colored eyes fixated on her, worked her naked body up and down. He then leaned left, peering behind her at the bloody tracks in the snow, watching as they faded as if to have never existed in the first place.

“What a pleasure to see you down here,” he said, maintaining his eye contact with her. It wasn't her job to oversee these funerals, to watch the dead rise or be hauled into the abyss. That was his job as a Guardian of the Heavens and the Earth. “You look like.” His brow furrowed, pondering playfully, and then smoothed while the corners of his lips stretched.

“Ah!” he exclaimed with a flourish of his hand, forefinger to the sky before immediately dropping it downward. “Hell. You look like Hell.”

Laughing to himself, amused by his jest, he walked toward her and stopped just a few feet away. “What did you do, Love?”

His eyes danced over her dangerously, a wicked sneer playing over his expression. Leaning down closer, he gestured to her back. “Where are your pretty wings?” As he said it, a pair of large snowy wings burst forth and fanned out with great strength. With a powerful movement back and then forward, he was floating above the surface of the ground as he watched her with knowing curiosity.

 

[Xinavee]

What? HE was what she could not see? This was what she had been flung through the aethors for? What she had lost …lost everything for? The dark abyss blackness of her eyes would follow his movement towards her, not shamed by the lack of clothes, but oddly chilled by the snow. The sensation was one she had never witnessed before and it caused her to glance down at the flakes in under her, tilting the shinning crescent moons of her pupils to pinpoint one falling lacy flake and cup it in her hand as she watched it melt upon her skin before batting her the long lashes of her lids as she caught his movement once more.

He was looking at her, like a panther, like a predator might stalk it’s prey. “I was working when-“ What was she going to say? When she didn’t see him? When she tried to save him from the disaster that was on it’s way? She watched his wings unfurl before glancing back at her own torn back, unable to see it, but to feel the way her skin stretched and ached from where they should have been. She sighed realizing the irony of it all. She might have tried to save him, but he would easily be able to fly away, where she on the other hand, she was destined to witness the cataclysm first hand.

Lailah reached her hand towards his, silently asking for help up, but would stand regardless, glancing over the body of the poor girl she had seen just leave it. “If the men who threw this girl into the fire see me walking around before all of this peels off they will think I am a witch. Will you help me find a place to remain until…”

She paused trying not to give into the desire to despair, to mourn her loss, especially not here and with this witness. She would accept her fate, her death willingly if it would only restore her to before. Even as she said this to herself, her eyes drifted back towards the honey heat of HIS. Why had she not seen him? Why did she, even now, find herself compelled to follow, to trust more than she knew she should.

 

[Raivh]

His teeth remained bared as she spoke, a beast among beasts on this night of glorious nights. It was always after he'd watched women like her be dragged into the abyss below that he felt so alive. A shiver trickled down his spine and caused his wings to twitch in mid air as the pleasure worked its way out of his system. He lifted a brow in curiosity when her words broke, trailing off with the cold gust of wind that swept along his wings.

Drawing closer to the ground, he studied her, realizing that she was weak after her fall. The grin on his face faded. His gaze fell to her hand and dulled as his head tipped right, wondering if she really expected him to touch her, to help her to her feet.

“My dear,” he started, his voice low, lips curling back once more as she seemed to begin to grasp the tragic reality she faced. His eyes locked on her, amber eyes deceptively countering his angelic features. When she met his gaze, his smirk broadened, and he finally came to stand before her.

Slowly, he lowered himself closer still to the ground, leaning so dangerously close to her that he could feel the heat pouring off of her. Catching the underside of her jaw in one hand, he pulled her ear close to his lips and felt them brush against her lobe. “I don't think you fully understand what's happening.”

He chuckled and shifted his weight. “I'm the reason this is all happening, but I'm the one that always wins.”

He leaned back away from her, his palm cupping her cheek as he cast a glance behind them, directing her to the pile of ashen char wasting away in the wind behind them. “That woman,” he uttered, “She was my plaything.”

“Besides,” he laughed, letting his words taper off as he motioned behind her, to the man that had earlier tumbled down the hill. The drunk's eyes were wide now as he began to come to. “I think our guest has woken up.”