#(( congrats amira you got??? a type???? of wrasslin?????

[royalreef]

There's a brief pause where Miranda doesn't respond. She doesn't tense, she doesn't tighten. Her eyes are open and startled, but her pupils do not thin, her fins do not press back, her bioluminescence doesn't flare to life.

Miranda's shoulder is covered, like the majority of Miranda's body, in a dense layer of scales. They fit together like stones in a pathway, nestled tight, armor that knits together into a perfect shield against the strains of the world. They buckle beneath Amira's teeth, resisting injury, made for stresses greater than this and blades designed to cleave through flesh as though an idle daydream. The osteoderms connected beneath each one of the scales assist in this, resulting in a strange movement under Miranda's skin, beneath Amira's lips, where they fasten together, bones embedded against the very top of her muscles, to form something solid and firm, redistributing force out over something that feels less like a shoulder and more like a brick wall in of itself.

She tastes like biting into a salt rock, overwhelming, with only a faint aftertaste of fish, or something similar enough.

Miri's still blinking into the air by the time all of this has sunken in. She can feel Amira's teeth on her shoulder, biting into one of the exposed patches of scales, feel the pinpoint of her jaws and her teeth and the grip of Amira's arms, warm and lithe and wrapped around her chest so that she breathes against Amira with every inhale. To bite is to mean something to something like her, something with jaws and scales like Miranda, fully equipped to do what she was designed to do by successive generations stretching back into deep time. To bite is to engage with those meanings, to endure something older than Miranda herself. In a way, this is Miranda's first language, learned when she did not know anything else beyond the blood flowing in her veins.

Miranda does the only thing she knows to do, in such a situation.

Her head swings down, and she sinks her teeth into Amira's shoulder.

In a perfect, crystallized moment, the difference between one body and another falls into wonderful clarity. Miranda is not just a merfolk, not just mere predator, but a machine built for the purpose of delivering a bite. Her cheeks are soft and wide because the mass underneath is muscle, large as someone else's biceps, connecting her lower jaw to the upper. More muscle sits inside her mouth, tethering her jaw to the roof of her skull, wrapping around the back and into her neck for more power, swifter delivery, greater strength. The size of her head alone is something to be considered, large as someone else's ribcage, large as a torso, so much of it muscle, so much of it connected back to her neck, neck thicker than other's legs.

The rest of her head is solid bone, connections for that muscle, reinforcement to prevent her from breaking her own skull for the force of the bite she holds. Her teeth are vast and arranged in one perfect row, focused pressure and force down onto each and every point with nowhere to go. Serrations that line her teeth would crack down into bone and splinter it, force it apart, render it useless with two tons of pressure borne down into such a small area that nothing survives, nothing lasts. This is the bite that her scales are designed to save herself from, and there is a reason they would prevent entry to anything less.

In a single, terrifying moment, faster than air or light or the divine or anything that could have saved a poor, hapless soul, Miranda's teeth are on Amira's shoulder, a moment given in the awareness of any living being that was aware that there were things out in the world which could deliver oblivion onto them, everything that instinct was working to prevent—

But Miranda's teeth do not go through Amira's shoulder. They do not break bone, do not make pain and blood bloom in their wake and grant sweet oblivion. Skin splits as teeth are pushed in, but in comparison to that terrible awareness of what Miranda could do, it feels nearly sweet. Tender. These are cuts, blood, but they are shallow, superficial, leaving marks but not marring muscle and flesh.

Miranda's arms, lost somewhere in the focus on her killing jaws, have wrapped around Amira in kind, and they squeeze her tight. Miranda's chest meets Amira's, flesh on scales and vast ribcage, with a heartbeat behind them that is beating a little faster than usual. It seems so loud, up this close. Miranda's pulse is usually so sluggish, so languid, and now it fills the spaces between with a heedy and pulsating thump.

Miranda is growling. Low, animal growls. Something that makes the hair instinctively raise, too low to be comfortable, rumbling through bone down to the marrow, felt more than its heard. Growls like this are not made to be heard twice, but here Amira is, audience to something feral and new leaking out of Miranda's jaws, which push their fangs so tenderly into her shoulder, as if hoping Amira could feel every inch.

These are not angry growls. Not in the least.

@royalreef said: "Trick or Treat!" for amira :>

Happy Halloween <3

14. Bite mark

"Hey, Miri~!" Amira rushes forward to give the princess a big, warm hug, wrapping her arms around her tightly.

And then, in a fit of hubris, bites her on the shoulder.

Wrasslin' time.