Illumin0sity

Journey to the East

Noah turned to face Elann readily as she went to the bench. He fell back onto his bottom, resting his arms over his knees with legs slightly spread. She thanked him and he nodded in welcoming. It did make him feel good to actually be doing something for her instead of her doing something for him. On the base level it was because he was the Kelvic to her bond, on a deeper level outside of his race’s spiritual need, he felt good because he was her friend, lover, and husband for what that meant to him. It was taking time, but he was getting to warm up to her as his mate in the animalistic sense and felt longing in wanting to work together because they were family and would build theirs larger in time.

Noah was right on the floor in front of Elann looking up at her as she cracked her lids open. He met her sleep filled gaze. She gulped down the rest of her water and came to him, setting the cup aside. He moved to accommodate her again, loosely attaining his cross-legged sit to make a hollow in his lap for Elann to reside in, her body cradled by his arms and into his chest. He didn’t put up a fight and didn’t say a word, simply turning to face the back of the wagon, the flaps, as he watched them shift and shuffle against one another with each bound of the wagon’s wheels and ripple of wind.

He felt her falling asleep in his hold, her head lulling to rest over on his torso. They were both lightly weighted individuals but she was lighter than him still. It wasn’t hard to lift and maneuver her body and it made it that much easier to pull and tug her towards him in their aggravated affections. He felt the near whole of her weight there in him. It grounded him in that spot because he dared not moved for those few chimes it took for her to fall back into the depths of sleep. He was awake so his breaths failed to match her deeply taken ones to a tee but they were around the same pattern.

It had grown as quiet as it could grow with the wagon rumbling under and around them, so the sharp and roving intake of breath Elann performed brought his attention fleeing from the flaps in the back to her. The look of confusion on her face made Noah want to shush her and tell her to go back to sleep; she looked almost childlike to him, adorable in the way that brought on a sense of protection, as if she couldn’t defend herself. It was the same feeling he got when Alena fell asleep on him the night of the bandit raid. The feeling was acuter though, fueled by her being his bondmate and best friend.

“Sleep,” he mumbled over her, tilting his head to rest his cheek on the top of her head, the brown locks soft on his skin. He took a breath then and recalled a song sang to him in his own childhood, the lyrics clear and the song about the sea. His voice was soft, carrying as much as a melody as he could, given he had just woken up as well. Planning to wake her up when they stopped, he sang:

“Hush-a-bye, my little child,
Hush-a-bye, though winds blow wild;
While the storms rage o'er the sea,
You shall sleep in serenity.
Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,
Sea winds whistle a lullaby;
Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,
Sea winds whistle a lullaby.

Child of fisherfolk by the shore,
Winds shall sing to you evermore;
Winter gale or summer breeze,
Fill your dreams with their melodies.
Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,
Sea winds whisper a lullaby;
Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,
Sea winds whisper a lullaby.”

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

Chapter 1.3 | Saturday Morning | Silos

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Handpicked; the word had been going through Ely’s head since he withdrew from the city’s plaza. He was confident in his abilities but not confident to the point to justify him being handpicked for anything, at least in his mind. It was what he thought about has he drove the distance from the plaza to the silos, careful not to leave his vehicle anywhere in the archaic society they lived in. Sure, there was order but there was always the chance for a slip up – he didn’t want to be victimized if there was. It made him cautious in the city and even more so outside of the city’s limits. As it were though, Ambrosia was his home and his father was one of the order keepers here, so he put some merit in the police’s ability to keep said order.

Ely pulled up to the silos, his music soft before it faded away as his engine died. He looked over the scene. There were already a group of people there but he wasn’t sure just how many others there would be. It kept away the guilt of being late and instead let him focus on figuring out why he was picked to spearhead this grandiose notion to expand the city and west coast civilization as a whole.

With a foot hanging out the open door, Ely pressed the button upon on his dashboard to lift up the hatchback. Stepping out, he rounded the side of his vehicle to the back and grabbed the gleaming half-spear and the backpack, draping it over one of his shoulders. He stuck the butt of the spear in the ground and reached up to close the back. When it clicked satisfyingly he went back around to the front and locked it up, closing the driver’s door now before venturing towards the rest of the gathering party.

There, he was told that he wasn’t just a ‘schmuck’ and he, along with the others, were picked by Omega and Banjo to lead the efforts. Next, he was vaguely introduced to who he was going to be working with. It was almost too hard for Ely to wrap his head around it all, knowing that it was tasked to them to put humanity back on the map of the world and they would be memorialized because of it, so long as they did a satisfactory job.

“No pressure,” he whispered under his breath following Erik’s louder statement.

Again, he thrust the butt of the spear into the ground and put his backpack on properly before he retook the weapon in his hand, holding it off to the side like a walking stick. The person who intrigued him the most was Arwan and her gigantic cat. He had never seen anything like it, at least this up close. He wasn’t that far from it, a few feet, and it made him hope she had a good hold on the beast. Arwan herself was admirable if she was able to tame that thing, and by how docile it looked, Ely couldn’t doubt it or her ability.

As it were, he stood there patiently waiting for the next course of action, the next instruction. He couldn’t lie and say his insides weren’t fluttering with nervousness. They were; the unknown was a scary place and he was being weighed down with a crazy new amount of pressure. Again, no pressure, he reminded himself mockingly.

Journey to the East

Noah’s face didn’t show any immediate judgement, he was just watching her and her shaking leg with a grand sense of quizzicality within him. She didn’t exactly answer his question, leaving him none the wiser to her actions. All she did was moan and lie there with her shaking leg. He sipped from his drink and she seemed to get even more active in her peculiar movement. She propped herself up, leaning down onto her hands and putting her body in a weird position for him to even look at. It was then that his brow perked, quirking to denote just how unusual he thought she was behaving.

She groaned out for water, instilling the trickling urge in him to come to her. He looked into the depths of his cup. Seeing it was empty, he set it back on the floor and poured another cupful for Elann. He grabbed it with his right hand, using his left to crawl his way back to her and setting the cup near her head. “Here,” he said as he set it down.

Noah sat back on his heels at her side as he examined her body beneath the blankets again. The wind rippled against the flap lightly, drawing his attention there. The sun wasn’t shining as brightly as it once was, the slit in the flaps now emitted a pale blue light of dusk instead of the bright yellow of midday.

“It’s getting late,” he pointed out. “We slept all day.”

It wasn’t a problem in his mind but he did feel rather lazy having done nothing with his day but sleep. The lethargy in him due to his wound was annoying, today less so because of the goodness instilled into it due to him and Elann getting along. The fact remained though, he hadn’t done anything with his day.

“I think we’ll be stopping in a few bells,” he added quietly.

Journey to the East

Noah didn’t bother to grab the cup and hold it under the spout of the pitcher. Instead, he chose to lift up the pitcher with his left hand and pour slowly with the bounds of the wagon as to not make a mess. He got his glass partially filled and set the pitcher down, grabbing the cup in the same motion with the same hand and drinking. He felt near useless with his right arm because he didn’t know how much he could put it through now. Every day he was testing limits subtly yet he was also afraid of doing anything to harm the stitches.

He heard the faint movement of the blankets behind him, feeling the buzz of Elann’s wakefulness in their bond, and it compelled him to shimmy enough on the floor to slant his body towards her enough so he could see her clearly. Her waking routine was predictable and was kind of funny to him. Her squeals and little moans reminded him of small woodland critters, mostly as they would squeal as he snatched them up; it reminded him that she was something of a prey creature in his eyes. Her personality matched it, as did her mannerisms and small stature in comparison to his own.

Noah was silent in his watching of her, bringing the cup to his lips to swig from consistently as he observed her painfully slow movements of waking. She turned to face him, meeting his bright eyes with her own of squinting. He looked blankly back at her, blinking in the half-moment it took for her to start her bizarre movements under the blankets. His eyes drifted down to her legs as they shifted, shook, and jiggled before stopping.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking back to her face. “That looks silly.”

Even to Noah it looked weird, what she was doing, and he wondered the motivation behind it. In the time it took her to answer Noah set the cup down on the floor in front of him and reached for the pitcher again, drawing another cup of water out of it before setting it back in the corner with the pitcher of tea. He took the cup up again and looked to her, sipping, but still looking over the cup at her.

Journey to the East

Noah draped his arm around Elann, resting his hand over the small of her back as she nuzzled into him and sapped his heat from his skin with her cold extremities. Believe it or not, it was a feeling he missed, her coldness on his hotness, because it meant they were close enough to even touch in that way. Opening the way for her to expand upon the space she had in his heart was a hard thing, but nothing she did so far had uneased him, scared him, or made him unsure if it was the right decision to make. He wasn’t pressuring himself to let her invade him, his hurt wouldn’t let him do that. He was letting her find her way back, his mind judging her actions to see if they followed the words of promise she spoke.

It took Noah a little longer to fall asleep. He hadn’t drunk any of the herbal painkiller in a full day now, but the warmth and love of Elann’s affections and their interactions dulled his ache enough to be comfortable in falling asleep and sharing his bond with Elann. The rolls of the wagon had to be passed off as something else, something rocking and soothing enough to lull the Kelvic into sleep. He was the opposite of Elann, when they hit a bump or divot in the road he was roused slightly from his doze that deepened in time. Eventually, he did fall asleep entirely in what depth his mind allowed him to drift into.

Two bells passed before Noah woke up again and, when he did, Elann didn’t stir despite his shifting to regain his comfortable position. Aimee hadn’t returned, staying true to her word, she was going to walk that day. In his half-wakefulness, the male wondered if it was some form of avoidance or if she was recovering from the apparent consequences of her magic used yesterday evening. He had no way of knowing until he asked but the last thing he wanted to do was peel himself away from the bed and try to find her.

As it were, he let himself be taken by the lazes of sleep again until evening began to fall and his waking mind was disturbed by the wagon’s rocking and creaking and jumbling. Elann was still sleeping at his side but his head was starting to hurt from his own heat and the lack of water in his system. He hadn’t drunken any tea before sleeping and all he had was the remains of Elann’s water from that morning.

He tried his best to slip away from Elann without totally waking her, rising to sit up and scratch his head before laying the palm flat against the side that was throbbing. His waking eyes found the pitcher of water she kept inside the wagon for such situations, next to the tea, in the corner of the wagon near their things. Like he basically crawled into the bed to lie beside Elann, he did the same to crawl towards the pitchers and the few cups that were theirs to begin with. There in the corner he sat down with his back to Elann and the rest of the wagon, working slowly to put himself a simple cup of water together.

Journey to the East

In the time it took for Noah to speak again Elann was already dozing off, staying true to her word of him apparently tickling her to the point of exhaustion. It was endearing and he felt a protective sense over her there as she was lounging into his body. He had her in his hold, her head on the bareness of his chest, and the tiny whimpers of her contentment, they were all adding to the guardian sensation in him to keep the one he loved comfortable.

After he did speak, she rose, stretched, and then fell onto the bed, turning to face him and request for him to lie with her, her eyes meeting his. He nodded to answer her, yawning as well but failing to cover his mouth before he moved the tiny ways towards the bed of rugs. It was simple to slide down next to her and be comfortable there. Lying on his left side and facing her, he welcomed her back into his warmth with a sleepy face.

The afternoon was going well so far; they had got along well enough to physically enjoy one another and maintained the sense of understanding until this moment where they were going to nap. He wanted the next two weeks to go by just as smoothly, today having instilled him with more hope for the future.

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

Not sure about anyone else, but I'll have my reply up when I wake up. Will edit accordingly once done.

Posted!

Journey to the East

Elann joked and Noah laughed, it was but a two-part chuckle, but it was his. His smile remained as he spoke, “You can’t learn to swim in a puddle,” he pointed out cheerily. “Maybe we should just throw you out into the ocean.”

He was kidding but the idea, the image in his mind alone, made him smile all the more. Noah learned the swim in the ocean near the wharfs with the aid of his two brothers. He had no choice but to learn if he wanted to hang out with them when they were younger; anything they did, he did too, and more sometimes just to show he could make his own fun, his own way, as well.

Elann explained the would-be chicken situation to him, saying he could do what he wanted with them so long as he didn’t kill below the minimum number of adult chickens Elann would set. He found it funny still that she had to specify they had to be adult chickens. Noah did get devious ideas of leaving just chicks in the steads of chickens just to get around Elann’s rule. He was a predator, he had to be smart to get what he wanted.

“Okay,” he agreed. Elann’s terms weren’t difficult to agree to, it would be showing restraint when he had a particular taste for poultry that would be hard.

For an avian Noah ate an awful lot of other avians. Aimee had called him a cannibal, and he saw the irony in it, but chasing another bird was often more entertaining than going after a quick moving hare or squirrel.

After agreeing with Elann, he drew quiet and settled into the rocking of the wagon. It wasn’t hard to hear the creaking of the entire caravan’s cars but it had become but a background noise after their weeks on the road. There were only two more weeks left and he was getting anxious to see Zeltiva again. Talking with Elann about it only made him more excited for his hometown, to show Elann the city he adored and missed, the coastal city with tightly woven rooftops, a maze of roads and alleyways, a great amount of people, and the holder of his childhood.

He was also enjoying the moment with her there, thankful that the scare Elann gave him because of the drawing didn’t actually turn into a disagreement. On the contrary, it turned into something of a compromise, him agreeing to another set of Elann’s terms without much hesitation. Noah knew what he would and wouldn’t do against her, knowing she wouldn’t have to worry about him being unfaithful or becoming blindingly drunk.

Noah nuzzled into her cool hand, letting the moment further deafen him to the sound of the wagon wheels going around and around. The sound was almost soothing now, something akin to rain coming down just outside of the window. It was far from a quiet shooshing, he had just been so conditioned to it by this point it didn’t seem to matter. He pressed down a bit, kissing Elann on the top of her head. She had still made him tired and now that they were lulling away he didn’t mind falling asleep then and there for a nap.

“Do you want to lie down?” he asked, nodding to the bed of rugs she made.

Journey to the East

There were times in their relationship, even before they were a couple, where he would seek her affection in these ways. Noah liked to be held, petted, and kissed in the way she kissed him. When he wanted it, she usually knew. There were times where he would even seem restless, fidgeting before he worked up the nerve to follow her around her home because she never seemed to sit down long enough to catch the cues he was giving off. He learned to be more obvious, even going as far as calling her name at some points just to bring her attention to him. He supposed he was easy to miss due to his quietness, and he enjoyed that aside from the times he wanted to be noticed and shown physical love.

Elann’s first question made him smile. It was funny. He nodded, licking his lips. “You can raise chickens in most of the yards,” he informed. “We can go to the beach too. That’s my favorite thing to do, I miss the beach, and, yes, I can teach you how to swim.”

He tilted his head looking down at her then. “You want chickens?” he asked curiously, then he smiled in his own amusement. “What if I get hungry and you aren’t around? Can I eat one?” While Noah was joking he was also being utterly serious. He wouldn’t hesitate to take down one of their chickens if he had the mind too. To him it just seemed like he could have the thrill of the hunt in his own backyard and the hunt, in a way, was fun.

He also thought it odd seeing as Elann had a fear of animals. Her fear hadn’t gone unnoticed by him, he could see it and feel it in the way she barely petted him when he hunted for the first time with her. He also observed it in the way she was initially afraid of Aimee when she saw the wolf as an actual wolf for the first time. Were chickens supposed to be different for her?

Journey to the East

It seemed just like how he would come when beckoned by her, she did the same when beckoned by him. He held her there in his lap, his hands coming together over waist facing around from him as his arms pulled her into his warmth and bare torso. He listened quietly to her explanation, watching her lips as they moved, drifting to her eyes, and then leaning in enough to smell her hair subtly, playing it off as a passing kiss on the temple, as she recounted the stories about unfaithful men in her tribe and how their mistakes could mean dire consequences.

Noah’s head inclined upwards a bit as her hand came and grasped at jaw. “Mhm,” he hummed. It was reassuring to hear her say it was because of her own cultural and religious reasons for not wanting him to go, it was necessarily for a personal reason, he didn’t believe. Then again, the more he thought about it, went back to how he found it hard to tell where she began and Yahal ended, he wondered if there was a personal reason at all. It was then he made the assumption that Elann personally was almost defined by what her culture was or how Yahal would view something, it had shaped her after all.

“It makes sense,” he said earnestly.

Playfully, he pulled away from her hand and angled his head down to nip at it. He knew he wouldn’t go unless asked out by his friends, if they remained in Zeltiva any longer. He sought to change the topic now, to bring lightness to the heavy thoughts that nearly soured the good time between him drawing her and going through his drawings with her. She did inspire him to draw, her striking features, the ones that captivated his interest without fail, were jewels to him and he felt as if he wanted to capture them, encapsulate them on the paper so she could see what he saw.

In teasing his hand threatened to tickle at the side he was holding her on but they stopped, hoping they at least drew a smile from her. Afterwards he kissed her caringly on the brow, squeezing her a little in his hold.

“What else do you want to maybe do in Zeltiva?” he asked, opening himself up for more questions to what exactly could be done there and what couldn’t.