[b]Dolly![/b] Valynia knew what she was doing, marking her prize. It meant that even though she could toss said prize to the jackals, she could reel the prize back in. Getting too fresh with the new meat would be an implicit challenge to Valynia (probably the name, based on context, based on compliments, based on comments while she was being squeezed and weighed up). So she’s spared her most lurid scenarios of what might happen with eight Hybrasilians, two aliens, and a captured high priestess. But when she’s sat down, she’s still huffing hard through that red scarf, and her hair is frizzing in her face, and she smells like half a dozen pirates cheekily getting their scent all over her. Her eyes are a little unfocused, and they widen when the soup comes in front of her. [i]Oh. Of course. They have to prove that they can handle the heat, because that’s how they maintain their face among their peers. And if you complain, you might get nothing.[/i] All eyes are on her as Valynia ties the scarf around her throat and tucks it neatly behind her. Even more marking, more claiming, more attempts to provide her with what Jade can give her in spades. (Except Jade won’t give her half a dozen pirates rubbing their cheeks on her while she squeaks, won’t give her the taste of new cotton in her mouth, and won’t make her parade around a brand for [i]everyone[/i] to see.) She picks up the spoon. Puts the spoon down. Brushes her hair out of her face one-handed, ignoring the pirate who whistles and asks if her highness needs a fancier spoon. Freezes as Valynia drags her fingers through her hair, hits a knot, tugs just a little bit. Feels her scarf-covered throat exposed, a flash of yellow above the red. “Go ahead,” Valynia says, tying a ribbon into her curls. “Unless it’s [i]too[/i] much for you~?” Implied in the trill: an amused threat. Things will get worse if she refuses the soup, not to punish her but because Valynia is playful. Dangerously playful. Not constrained in the ways that even Jade is. “You’d be surPRIsed,” Dolly says, her voice cracking like frost under her feet in the pre-dawn morning during that one really cold winter snap. Her fingers are already most of the way to her mouth by the time she checks herself, which has the small-spotted gremlin sitting on the table to her left going into hysterics. To salvage the situation, Dolly bravely stuffs a mouthful of soup into her mouth. And then her nose starts running. “Mmm! [i]Mmmm!![/i]” She sticks the spoon messily back into the soup and starts waving it in her face as her tormentors burst out into a cacophony. It’s so hot! It’s [i]so[/i] hot! It takes a moment for the mouth to catch [i]up![/i] And then it’s!! Would Angela burst into flames if she had this?? “Awww, good girl,” Valynia purrs, dragging her claws up the back of Dolly’s neck in a way that makes her bang her knee into the table because there there [i]there[/i] that’s where Jade lingers, too, and thank the goddesses that the table’s thick and the soup’s barely disturbed. To her credit, she makes it halfway through the soup before she’s too much of a mess in every direction to finish. And to Valynia’s credit, she only [i]threatens[/i] to soak her gag in the leftover soup. And to Dolly’s credit, again, she is keeping the intense, [i]intense[/i] forbidden moans under control. No making just-for-Jade noises in front of a room full of pirates watching her and making fun of her but in a way that’s much more visceral and, and [i]hot[/i], maybe because Jade’s going to come and pluck her away from Valynia once she’s finished her seduction of the mean rude handsy possessive [i](possessive, oh no, mmmpfh)[/i] pirate intent on embarrassing her in front of a bunch of other pirates, but in a way where she insists on having control and being the final authority on how far Dolly gets pushed, and the kittenish ribbons in her hair, and the occasional tug on the scarf, and let’s be honest, the soup isn’t the only reason her face is on fire. (But Jade will harbor no competitors. Even if she needs Dolly to be a seductress, right here, right now, somehow twisting Valynia around her little finger, which would probably be easier when she’s not got her nose stopped up and her eyes full of spicy tears, because she doesn’t look seductive at all, and that’s ridiculously unreasonably [i]distressing[/i]— even if that’s so, at the end, Jade will still take her treasure back. And that treasure needs to protect her heart so that she doesn’t prove unfaithful, even while she is, tactically, being a seductress.) If Dolly was cool, she would have told Valynia to “save the leftovers.” That would have been so cool, so composed, and she’s going to be so angry when she realizes she should have said it later tonight. What she ends up saying is more like “I’b forry, I can’f, I [i]can’f[/i], pleaff…” [Dolly is [i]Smitten[/i] with Valynia hitting her guiltiest pleasures, now that she’s lowered her emotional defenses on her Holy Mission. She also rolled a 6 on eating hot soup, but as that is not an actual move, she gains no XP.] [hr] [b]Smokeless Jade Fires![/b] Upside-down. The whole world is upside-down. This minx, this diva, this legs-and-stretches, this fish-climbing-waterfall, is telling a story even harder than Jade herself can. Is. She could. She’s just worried, is all. [i]Hot flashes of arousal. Mewls melting into a thick mouthful. Eyes on her, eyes on her, eyes on her.[/i] The thing is [i]Jade[/i] that Jade knows this story [i]Jade~[/i] or this kind of story [i]oh, oh, Jade~![/i] and this one is dangerous, snakewise, a coil of rope. The one she needs. The one she [i]needs[/i]. She pounces. The arc of it, the shape of it, is awkward. And when she has projected herself close, she cannot help but feel that [i]thighs tensing[/i] she has somehow gotten it wrong. Hands on the pilot, but unsteady, tenuous. Her off arm feels full of needles. “I shamed the Red Band. I! Out of an empty sky, my fire!” [i]the red band, the red band, the red band—[/i] “I, struck, fell swooning— and they, shamed, stole my—“ [i]prize[/i] “prize!” (Not a prize. It’s the wrong word. Not won. You can’t win Dolly. Unless she’s playing for the prize every waking moment. Heap her in pleasures, rain gifts on her, beg her for the shining facet-ruby of her [i]mouth[/i] heart.) “I turn to you. I do not care for your peril. You will do.” Her hands are not where her hands should be. The dress is a shifting terror field of hungry dead-star-wolves. [i]a guilty hunger for hands.[/i] “You will. I [i]need[/i] you.” The words hang in the air. They are crystals, glimmering, bright. Piercing. “If I do not have her returned to me, I will die. I will devour myself and hang in an apple-tree. And if your refusal costs me her, I will drag you down myself!” [i]down on knees and cheeks and hands[/i] “I do not [i]bargain,[/i] daughter of Fishers, wave-dappled! I will give you what you want, because I am generous, I am indulgent, I am—“ [i]a pleading look, a kitten’s kneading, a throbbing heat[/i] “—[i]obeyed![/i]” The whole world is upside-down. The pilot-she-needs has three weapons: her impossible smile, her terrible control spike, her intoxicating dress. She is a goddess. She is drowning. She is in control. She is bones. She is to be obeyed. Her skull is set in the branches. Dolly is a fire made of hands and want. She draws herself up, huffs, stretches arms (and arms, and arms, and still it does not help the phantom feeling, no matter how many ring her as a halo). “Beg forgiveness, and I will overlook your impudence, Whispered Promise! Deny me, and I will devour you, and the glory of my service will pass to one less suited for the task!” Her eyes are terror lights. And yet she still feels [i]smaller than the rest, the crowd, hot, present, on all sides[/i]. What does she want from the pilot? Immediate obedience, so that she can have her Dolly again, as soon as possible. Deference, because she is a goddess, and that is the cornerstone of her self-definition. It would be better to have asked what she does not know that she wants: someone to touch her in the ways that Dolly does not dare, to actively want her, to help her make sense of the lust roiling through her. Dangle Dolly in front of her, treat her like a goddess and claim yourself to be a myth in turn, or rather do not deny her either Dolly or divinity, and you can lead her by a leash wherever you please. And would it not be pleasing? How can her focus be caught? Ropes, to convince her that she is held. Touches, hunger, kisses. Convincing her that she is in a story about a goddess and that it has a happy ending no matter what indignities befall her. Promising her that the only way Dolly can be saved is to follow exactly as you say. Presenting yourself as a sage, someone who knows more and whose strange commands have an underlying meaning. Or simply asking her to bless you, and to be sure that her pilot-blessings are thorough and intentional. What does Smokeless Jade Fires come to believe you love most, Whispered Promise?