soiltouched

[soiltouched]

I’ve tried to hide it, but my heart betrays me every time you’re near—I’m completely, hopelessly in love with you."

"I---"

Words escape her, as does her breath, for the time being. She simply stands there, captivated in the moment, as though the world around her revolves, but she's come to a complete stand-still. Her eyes glaze over and she can feel herself drift away from her body for the briefest moment, until she wills herself back into the present. The fingers on the hand that once bore an iron engagement ring clench and unclench, as though she's just remembered something, and she looks at him with wary eyes.

She's a dreamer. Has always been. But she's traveled a long, harsh road since her time of childhood dreams, and if she's learned anything by now, it's that nothing hurts quite as much as having your those very dreams crushed before you. And that's exactly what she feels will happen to her heart, which, in spite of all the harshness surrounding her has managed to remain gentle, kind...if he's toying with her.

But then...to what end? Two things click together in her mind at that moment; for one, she cannot possibly think of any reason why he would do such a thing to her, and secondly, and perhaps most prominently...somewhere deep down inside, a glowing ember that she has been ignoring in protection of her daydreamer's heart, roars ablaze with a fire that has, perhaps, been there from the very beginning. And she knows, then, that the feelings are reciprocated.

She takes a step forward, but feels so unsteady on her feet with his revelation that she instinctively reaches out for him, hands finding solace against the wall that is his chest. She knows. She knows. And it's all she really needs to close the distance between them, fingers curling into his leathers so she can push herself up on the tips of her toes in order to draw him in for a kiss. She kisses him for as long as her legs will possibly keep her in that position, only tearing her lips away from his when her muscles begin to protest and she's out of breath from the intensity of it all, upon which she takes one of his hands in both of hers, tracing gentle lines along the scars that cover them, eyes not yet meeting his for fear of feeling to deeply, as she always has.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting to hear you say that..."

[soiltouched]

—  𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒

"I’ve tried to hide it, but my heart betrays me every time you’re near—I’m completely, hopelessly in love with you."

"I want to be the reason you look at your phone and smile."

"Loving you is like breathing… and I’ve been holding my breath for so long, I can’t do it any longer."

"Every time I look at you, I realise I don’t want to spend another moment of my life without you."

"I don’t know how or when it happened, but you’ve completely stolen my heart."

"I used to wonder if love was real… and then you came along and made it the only thing I believe in."

"Every part of me aches to tell you how much I love you, even if it’s terrifying."

"Loving you is both the easiest and hardest thing I’ve ever done."

"I keep pretending I’m fine, but the truth is I’m in love with you, and it scares me."

"I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I had to say it—I’m in love with you."

"The truth is, every part of me belongs to you."

"I tried to deny it, tried to push it away, but I can’t—I’m hopelessly in love with you."

"You’re my first thought every morning and my last before I sleep."

"I think about you more than I’d like to admit. I think… maybe I’m in love with you."

"There’s a quiet peace in my heart every time I think of you, and it feels like love."

"I never expected to feel this way, but here I am, confessing that I’m in love with you."

"My heart races, my hands shake, and all I want to say is ‘I love you’."

"You’re the reason I believe in love, and I don’t know how to keep that to myself any longer."

"All I know is that life feels brighter, warmer, and more alive whenever I’m with you. I think I’m in love with you."

"I’ve tried to act normal, but the truth is, you’ve captured my heart."

"I think I’ve fallen in love with you, and every day I fall a little more."

"Loving you feels as natural as breathing, and it’s taken me far too long to say it."

"You’re my heart’s greatest wish, and it’s time you knew—I’m in love with you."

"I feel a warmth in my heart every time you’re near… it’s love, isn’t it?"

"I don’t know how to say it gently, so here it is: I love you. I think I always have."

"If I don’t tell you this now, I’m afraid I never will—I’m in love with you."

"There’s no one else I think about like this, no one else I feel so deeply for. It has to be love."

"I don’t need you to say it back; I just needed you to know... I’m in love with you."

"Every moment we’re together feels like magic, and that magic is love, isn’t it?"

"I’d rather risk everything and tell you the truth—I’m in love with you."

"I was fine on my own, but now that I’ve met you, I can’t imagine a life without you."

"I’d move mountains if it meant I could tell you every day how much I love you."

"Loving you feels like the most honest thing I’ve ever done."

"The truth is, my heart has belonged to you from the very first moment we met."

"I can’t promise that I won’t be afraid, but I can promise that I love you."

"Every day without you feels like a day wasted. I’m in love with you, and I want the world to know."

"If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I love you with everything I am."

"You’ve woven yourself into my heart, and there’s no turning back—I love you."

"Loving you is like coming home to a place I never knew I missed until I met you."

"It feels like my whole life has been leading up to this moment—to tell you that I love you."

"I’m scared, I’m nervous, but more than anything, I’m in love with you."

"I didn’t know it was possible to feel so deeply until you walked into my life."

"I could search the world and never find someone who makes me feel like you do. I love you."

"I never believed in fate until I realised how perfectly you fit into my life."

"I could wait forever to say it, but I don’t want to anymore—I love you."

"Loving you feels like the answer to a question I didn’t even know I had."

"I love you, (name)."

[soiltouched]

Send 💐 to bring my muse flowers.

[soiltouched]

@moondevoured

"I'm cold, Nessa." She wasn't really, aside from the little feet that had pattered across the marble flooring of their mansion's lavish landing in order to reach her older sister's room. But the company of her sister always made her sleep that much more soundly, and trying to obtain a spot in her bed had become a bit of a habit now. Some nights, she knew Nesta would begrudgingly give up the comfort of her spacious bed to accommodate her younger sister curled up next to her, whilst on other days, she would send her back to bed with promise of other times of shared comfort to come. Little did they know that there would be many times of shared beds, where moments of comfort would be few and far between.

---

"Nesta, I'm cold---I can't shake the cold..." Her teeth had been chattering for well over an hour, and despite having the luck of being in the middle, between her two sisters, for this night, there was just no warming up, no winning the eternal race against the icy cold of winter that seeped through the cracks of their cottage. No matter what, it always seemed to catch up with her. And once it held her in its icy grasp, the cold would seep into her bones and settle there until every part of her ached. Pressing herself further against her older sister, Elain clenched her jaws tightly together.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to wake you. Could you just---"

Nesta's warm breath washing over her was a good remedy against the wintery chill. Perhaps the only remedy she'd found; the fire had crackled out, their father asleep in front of it, and with no more wood to fuel it, they would have to wait until the next day to gain a true semblance of warmth again.

---

Cold. So very, very cold. Not just her body, her very soul was cold now, her heart stilled, her breath frozen in her lungs, and she couldn't speak, couldn't hear, couldn't see. Everything around her was black now, a deeper, darker black than anything she'd ever experienced. And then the ice, Mother Above, the ice that ran through her veins---she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. Death gripped her, and she was deconstructed, piece by agonising little piece, until she was nothing but essence of the girl once known as Elain. The Cauldron stilled for the briefest of moments, marveling as it does with all Creation, and it gifted her with something in exchange for the marvel of her life. She could see. She could see so very far now.

---

"It's been cold without you."

She doesn't know why she says it like that, nor does she know if the message will even reach its intended goal or simply fall on deaf ears, but she has to try something. There was a point where she would have simply let the situation be, where she would have focused on her own pretty little things and pastimes in order to avoid confrontation...and she has been doing that, for far too long now.

It's taken quite a bit of time for her to come to that conclusion, and it takes even more conscious effort to not fall back into the same patterns, but she's on the right track. So is Nesta, she knows for a fact. But too much has happened between the two of them to just address that out in the open, out of nowhere. And so, she pushes past her habit of making herself scarce and busying herself with inconsequential things, in favour of what truly matters. Her sister.

She doesn't know a better way to say it. She can't outright say it. But it's written on her face nonetheless.

I miss you, Nessa.

[soiltouched]

Her hands are already busying themselves trying to find anything resembling sterile cloth and perhaps liquid to clean his cut with; she likes to keep things tidy even in the small amount of space she has, but between spending as much time as she can outdoors so the walls don't constantly feel like they're caving in on her and training with Azriel, things have gotten a bit...cluttered. In her mind, she's already halfway through the motion of pivoting away from him in order to scour through the room for anything to aid her on her by now silly little quest---but her body doesn't follow. It's not a freeze, not in the way she would have done before all her progress. It's a desire that flickers within her, like faelight reflected on the crystalline surface of her mind, and it seems to bounce an impossible trajectory to her heart, where it flutters and remains, burning. For him.

His words sink into her, slipping under the surface of her carefully crafted composure, lovely little Elain - though he's seen past that a plethora of times now. They sink further, further, until they find their target where such words always do, where she aches for him most, and she has to press her legs together in order to stave off an entirely too wanton reaction, in favor of meeting his challenge. Who is she kidding, actually? She could never quite match him, but what she can do is complement.

He is a whole male all by himself, but the two of them combined just seem a little more...complete. She's not mentioned it to him, and isn't sure if she will; his eternal dance with words moves her entirely too much when turned against her, he'd have her back against the wall at every turn. Oh, but how many nights had she touched herself at the thought of just that? Her back against the wall.

It's as if he's read her mind when he moves to do just that. She backs up, willingly, not out of intimidation, but almost as if in synchronicity with his movements, magnetized by his sheer presence. His shadows, dancing around him---it makes him so unspeakably beautiful to her, she's of half a mind to reach out to see if she can grasp at their tendrils, caress them. Instead, she lifts up her chin in playful defiance of being called bold. Bold, she can do, these days.

Her fingers curl around the hilt of the dagger he's holding up, but her gaze remains firmly locked onto his, a suggestive gleam in her eyes as she grips it, almost as though her gentle, yet skillful fingers were encasing something else entirely. Though, judging by the sheer size of the Shadowsinger, she doesn't think her relatively small hands would quite be able to envelop the full circumference of him. The thought sends a burning heat coursing through her body, centered between clenched legs, but in spite of that, her voice sounds steady as she speaks to him.

"What is it you'd like me to try, Azriel? Somehow, I think I've lost my element of surprise."

she is astonishing, he thinks. well, he knows she is. she is multi-faceted and always surprising. the quiet fawn has grown teeth and become quite the little beast . . and azriel wasn't lying. he was proud of her. while she didn't best him, she did come prepared and if he had been anyone else, he'd be dead if she was an actual threat. that? that made him proud of her.

she is something forged - like her sisters. resilient and strong. her kindness and grace is just as much a weapon as anything else. it takes an extremely strong person to forgive and move on. . . to find peace in the storm. she is a warrior too, despite what she may feel of herself.

the tongue on his neck flares want inside of the shadowsinger. did she really think she could do such a thing without reaction? the blush to her cheeks has him even more endeared with her. enamored. hungry.

" it seems you've already checked it over. would you like to run your tongue along it again? " he speaks, half-teasing, but half something .. entirely else. he takes a step toward her, backing her closer to the wall in the dark of the room. at this point, one cannot tell where azriel and his shadows begin and where they end. " that was bold, elain. " the dagger, now in his hand, flips to where he's holding the blade between his fingers. " you can try again? "

[soiltouched]

She's somewhere between slumber and waking when he comes to her as though in a dream. A man, shrouded in shadows, swift as the beating wings of ravens, with a familiarity about him that she should have recognized. And she would have, if they hadn't spent long hours training for instincts, or...what did he call it? Muscle memory. Her muscle memory kicks in before she's even fully awake, fingers curling around the hilt of the dagger, and in her awakened state, she realizes who she's about to be faced with, just as he materializes before her.

She's rather proud of herself for besting him this time, or at least coming close to it; they had trained so often and she had made so many mistakes, she'd been of half a mind to just...give up. Her sisters have a knack for it, but she's always been non-confrontational, so it doesn't come quite as natural to her. Even so, she's done it. She's finally getting somewhere, and a smile plays across her lips in acknowledgment of it. A smile that simmers into embers of something more intense when he takes hold of her wrist and manipulates it, and the dagger, away from him. She'd almost pout. Almost. What she does do, however, is tilt her chin down just a little so her already sizeable hazel eyes become that much bigger as she directs her gaze at him.

He takes a step towards her, and she now tilts her head upward; funny, really, how he would have intimidated her in her younger years. She'd never been scared of him, but with long, lonely nights of heated fantasies and wild imaginations, he'd always seemed so...out of her reach. He moved her back then, still does, but in entirely different ways than he had in the beginning. She is no longer the trembling young fawn that had once stilled under his gaze, his touch---no, an altogether more mature form of her has emerged. More in tune with herself and her surroundings...and more equipped to accommodate him, in all of his facets.

His remark sends a tingling trail down her spine. Proud of her. She'd not realized before that she's been wanting or needing any such validation from him, but to be seen by him like that, for her capabilities, and not just for the pretty face? It moves her. Her lips part, but all that passes them is a sigh, a held breath released heavily in the presence of him with his shadows. They add so much depth to an already extraordinary man, she can hardly contain herself when he reveals them, and with it, himself as is. Astonishing.

She matches his step towards her with one of her own, then, almost daring him to finish what he's somehow started, even though she's never quite certain how things will end up between them. But instead of keeping his gaze, her eyes dart to the trickle of blood that is well on its way to disappearing under the edge of his leathers. She doesn't think before acting this time, and her lips are upon his skin within seconds, tongue darting out to halt the trickle of blood in its track. Almost instantly, she retracts, wiping at her stained-red lips whilst pointedly ignoring the feeling of blood rushing to her cheeks as she looks away from him, busying her eyes with something...anything but him and whatever expressions he might have right about now.

"We should do something about that---even small cuts can get infected, you know."

A habit leftover from her human days. The cut has probably already closed by now, what with his accelerated healing, but that doesn't mean the sight of blood hasn't ignited a certain need to tend to his cut. That, and it's a perfectly good distraction from her impulsive act just then.

SLIDING FROM SHADOW TO SHADOW, WINNOWING FARTHER, he finds himself materializing in elain's room after a long day. his head tilts as he hears the noise of a blade being pulled and it's at his throat. behind him, he sensed her. his shadows all but disappeared, whispering of the rare, brave seer. a wicked grin spreads upon his face as he turns toward the noise. the sharp edge of the dagger slides against his skin and he doesn't even react, the blade drawing blood that dribbles lightly down the side of his neck.

" did you see me coming ? " his voice is that of a whisper, yet somehow loud and echoing around her. his shadows slide up around them, gripping her wrist to point the dagger away from them. it holds her arm hostage there as he takes a step into her space. whether or not it's true or fair, he says it anyway: " you drew first blood. i'm proud. " @soiltouched

[soiltouched]

Blue flowers dividers💠 By me

[soiltouched]

Oh, to be a Princess. Any young girl's dream, people would say. And for a while, it was; being made to wear pretty dresses, dancing barefoot on the lush carpets that adorned marble flooring, imagining to one day be in the arms of a true Prince. A strong man of noble stature, who would take over the care that my dear Father had always given me, and provide for me for all my days to come. Never mind the dangers of the world, never mind the harshness of tongues when one falls out of grace. Just there, in that moment suspended in time. A princess.

What does a princess do, pray tell, when the carpeting wears out, when the marble floor cracks and the palace around her crumbles down from around her, brick by precious brick, until she's out in the cold with nothing but threadbare clothing to shield her from the harshness of the real world, her knowledge of it next to nothing? She'd dreamed to travel the world one day, but foot by meticulously placed foot is what she has to do now in order to survive, to avoid the debris of her once so perfectly put-together life. To avoid becoming part of it.

I don't know what real princesses do in a situation like that; all I know is what I did. I held onto the things that had once sparked joy within me, no matter how small or inconsequential. And I shut the ragged curtains to keep reality at bay. Because for all of the dreams and wishes I'd ever had...I'd never learned what to do when dreaming is no longer an option.

It wasn't the best way to deal with things. But I'm still breathing. I'm alive.

I think.

And I think that perhaps, I should open the curtains to let the light in once more. Just a little.