#hearing good things about everything from challengers to furiosa to i saw the tv glow to love lies bleeding to monkey man

[softgrungeprophet]

i need a million dollars just so i can go to the movie theater more than once or twice a year, there's so much out this year i wanna see... on a big screen and not "i'll watch that later on my laptop" which i never do

[hopelesslygazingthestars]

One blisteringly hot afternoon, Elia and Ashara lounged in the princess’ solar. Her friend sat across from her, atop her Dornish rug – that old filthy rug Ashara gifted her on arrival to Sunspear, all those years ago. It had seen more dances than the palace feast hall. It was where they twirled, Ashara with Elia, the music trapped by closed windows and doors. Once the colour of blood oranges, now it told an earthy tale of love and laughter, of more good times than anyone could ever be promised.
It was this perfectly normal day that Ashara came to a sobering realisation. Elia was oh so beautiful.
Ashara was supposedly composing a new melody on her handpan. Instead, whilst Elia was concentrating on her book, Ashara concentrated on her. She watched the way her dainty fingertips tapped idly on the frayed edges of the rug, the waves of her hair, her eyelashes fluttering when she blinked in shock at whatever she was reading. Ashara was enamoured. 
She met her dark orbs; the most beautiful in all of Dorne, she was certain. They were so dark they seemed almost black until the sunlight caught them, setting them molten hues of the very richest of browns, bright with life and laughter. 
Her skin – and Ashara had the good fortune of being able to feast her eyes on a great deal of it in the sticky heat. Usually she was covered in a shawl, lest she catch a chill and see her in bedridden for days, but today’s humidity called for minimal layers – her skin glowed a deep bronze that turned rosy at her cheeks and pink at her lips. And what lips they were; full and tempting as they twisted up into a smile. 
“Fuck,” Ashara breathed, dizzy from desire. She could not remember when she had felt the like of it. Perhaps never at all. Though she took pleasure in men, women always did seem to have a way of making her heart flutter quicker. 
Her thoughts drifted, to somewhere different, to a train of thought she knew she should not entertain. She should not have been imagining how soft her lips were, or how warm her tongue would feel against her own. 
More and more, every time they were together, she felt something stirring, until her heart ached to be rid of it, but yearned even harder to hold on to it simultaneously. 
Ashara wondered if this was another passing fancy. For that was always her problem—she fell in lust too easily. With a snorted laugh, a crooked smile, the movement of hands when they spoke; a unique intonation in a voice, and she would be infatuated. Ashara spent her short young years entangled in a mad love affair with the very concept of people. Nonetheless, her feelings were as changing as the waves of the Summer Sea. 
She snapped out of her reverie. Elia seemed startled, the rhythmic hum of her fingernails on the surface of the rug lost. They both stayed silent. 
The tension in the air was suffocating. It felt as if Ashara’s thoughts were so loud that Elia could hear them. 
“What dark cloud troubles your mind today?” Elia asked because she knew her too well. And simultaneously, not nearly well enough. 
“None at all.” Ashara responded far too quickly. 
“Tell your brows that. You’re frowning my dearest.” Elia teased. 
When Ashara felt her forehead, she was surprised to find the tell-tale signs of a deep frown. 
“Oh.” 
Elia’s black eyes studied her, though not quite as intensely as Ashara previously observed her. 
“Lady Ashara, do you miss your brother?” 
She did, of course she did, but not enough to call him back. He was finally doing something for himself, she could not begrudge him that. 
She shrugged. 
“You know he is with family, uncle Lewyn will care for him like his own son.” 
“I’m not worried about him.” 
Ashara answered, although her eyes again drifted to Elia’s taunting lips. 
Elia regarded her, eyes roaming from head to toe, and for a moment Ashara feared she might have been caught. Elia had always been able to read her as easily as the book in her hands, as if the words of Ashara’s thoughts were written across her forehead. 
“Do you wish to have gone with the Red Viper after all?” 
Not more than a few moons after they returned from the Scorched Rock, Oberyn bedded Lord Edgar Yronwood’s paramour, then challenged him to a duel. The young prince had won the duel. However, the whispers of Yronwood’s death, days later, spoke of Oberyn wielding a poisoned blade. Princess Furiosa had all but exiled the Red Viper, sending him on “duty” to Oldtown and then Lys. 
Before Oberyn’s departure he had begged Ashara to leave with him, to seek out adventures across the world together. He attempted to persuade her with vows of giving her heart’s desire. She would be free to dance, and sing, and indulge. Everything she had ever dreamed of, yet she refused when she realised it would mean leaving home… leaving Elia. 
“No, my place is with you, princess.” She answered honestly. 
Elia smiled. 
“You are good to stay with me, Asha. I couldn’t bear to lose you.” 
Now, Ashara smiled. 
“I will always stay with you, Elia. I have yet to meet a man I prefer to you. I fear that is my curse.” 
The words caught in her throat as puzzling sadness washed through her. 
“Don’t listen to your mother’s urgings, we are still prized maidens, and the time for husbands remains in the distance.” Elia deduced. 
Since Prince Doran’s wedding to the beautiful Lady Mellario of Norvos, Lady Dayne had put increasing pressure on both herself and Aethan to look towards marriage, much to Ashara’s chagrin. The mere idea of being tied down to a husband, locked up in his castle for the rest of her days, made her want to fling herself from a very high tower. She still vividly remembered the fiasco that was her parents’ marriage and had no desire for anything similar. 
“You must not have heard her endless nagging at the wedding.” 
Elia laughed then. It would have been difficult for anyone within earshot to not hear the grumblings of Lady Dayne. 
“You must look to the future, Ashara…will you grow old alone-” Ashara said, impersonating Lady Dayne’s incessant fussing. 
“No, no… ‘will you grow old with no family, Ashara… the boys already complain you only have eyes for Elia, Ashara…’” Elia teased, fingertips poking at Ashara with every sentence. 
“…If you are to be married soon, you need to at least pretend to find them half interesting, Ashara.” 
Elia mercilessly tickled at her sides, sending her into fits of giggles. 
“Princess.” Ashara reprimanded when she was all but gasping for breath. 
Elia smiled at her with feigned innocence and Ashara immediately sought revenge. 
It was only then she realised they may have gotten carried away. As her own laughter died down, she wound up pinning Elia down, wrists above her head, straddling her. 
She gazed long and hard at the dark eyes beneath, and Elia looked at her in a kittenish way, head tilted and eyes sparkling. Ashara felt as though her entire body became magnetised. Her thoughts raced, confused and sporadic, like a lightning storm inside her mind. For the life of her, Ashara could not comprehend why she suddenly felt this way. She decided her mind was malfunctioning when she thought she saw Elia visibly gulp, blink, and lock her gaze onto Ashara’s eyes. 
“I…” Ashara coerced herself to say, feigning normalcy in her voice. Although, for reasons beyond comprehension, not letting Elia’s wrists free, nor shifting so she no longer straddled her. 
And apparently, that was entirely acceptable with Elia, because she looked, then, like they were having the most ordinary conversation, in the most ordinary way. 
“I – I, simply, uh.” 
Her words were failing her miserably. Elia’s body was wriggling underneath her own, and her dress too thin, and seven hells, she was a disaster. Her eyes dropped down to Elia’s lips, and she cursed herself for being so obvious. 
Ashara cleared her throat and finally found her voice.
“I dare you to dance for me.” She spoke the first thing that came to her mind. 
Elia laughed musically at Ashara’s odd behaviour. 
“Why would I do that?” 
Her eyes were soft, yet hypnotizing like she was peering directly into the sun. In that moment, Ashara dropped her hands, moving to hold Elia’s face. 
“I shall bestow you a kiss if you do.” 
Ashara was pushing the boundaries of their relationship, was intrigued to see if this was simply lust or something else altogether. 
“And what makes you think I want to kiss you.” 
“Don’t you?” 
She knew she was not supposed to feel this way. Elia was her closest friend, a sister almost. 
Ashara gingerly caressed over her darkened cheeks and nose… and lips. When Elia shut her eyes, she stroked the tips of her thumbs over her eyelids ever so gently, feeling her lashes flutter against her skin. It was new territory for them, but Elia seemed to enjoy it, arching up into her touch and smiling. Then, Ashara kissed her; her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose…
Her hands shook slightly, her mind repeating the same sentence over and over, ‘do not do this…’ 
But the sound of her heart was beating so thunderously she could not concentrate. 
Their lips touched, and the world fell away. 
Elia’s mouth was firm against hers, but the kiss remained gentle, slow, and yet passionate, comforting in ways that words would never be.
They held it, before their lips began to move in perfect sync, slowly, cautiously. It was a few moments before it registered that Elia was kissing her back. She adjusted her hand from an impossibly soft cheek to the back of her head, fingers tangling in long, dark hair, lightly pulling Elia closer, adding greater pressure and deepening the kiss. 
When it came to an end, Ashara exhaled through her nose, not wanting to let go. Her entire body had been taken over by the overwhelming feeling of relief, combined with eccentric panic and lust. 
Onyx eyes opened and they stared at each other in a strange way. Ashara sat frozen as she deciphered exactly what the touching of their lips made her feel. 
“What was that for?” Elia asked, observing her as if calculating a complex cyvasse play. 
Unable to take the pressure of Elia’s scrutinizing gaze, she looked away when she answered. 
“I was curious, I suppose.” 
Ashara half expected Elia to laugh, instead of the words which came. 
“And have I sated your curiosity?” There was a playful lilt to her voice that washed Ashara’s anxieties away. 
“I’m not certain, let me steal another and we shall find out.” Ashara half jested. 
Elia halted Ashara in her descent with a hand to her chest. When she met her gaze, there was no longer amusement in her eyes. 
“I might allow you another, if you vow not leave me another heartbroken maiden, running from the gardens in the wake of your fancy.” She said gravely.
Something akin to guilt swirled in the pit of Ashara’s stomach. 
Ashara was in no hurry to give this newly discovered sensation up. It was a tingling that stirred low in her stomach, and she wanted it to consume her.
With another kiss, Ashara promised on soft lips.
“I would try my hardest for you.” 
They kissed, again, and again, and again. Until they were breathless, until they could not speak, until their giggles became hoarse and squeaky. 
At night, they fell into bed together. And because it was late, and only because of that, they helped each other with their undergarments rather than wake the servants. Though they had dressed and undressed in front of one another a million times, something was different between them. Disrobing transformed into something of a shy dance. 
Their hands were much less practiced than handmaidens, but they laughed and fumbled their way through it all the same. Ashara learned the way to twist her wrist so that the stays of Elia’s intricately woven vermilion silk dress loosened easily; and she also learned to ignore the way that her heart hammered at the softness of Elia’s skin against her fingertips. She attempted not to notice the way the straps had left marks against her back, angry and red, that she craved to smooth out with her palms, and if she was to be honest, with her mouth. 
She forced herself from staring when Elia stepped out of her drawers, naked and giggling. Instead, she passed over a nightgown as if the sight of her was nothing important. In a feigned cough, Ashara disguised the way her breath caught at a glimpse of Elia’s bronze body in the moonlight. As she observed her final preparations for sleep, Ashara desperately attempted to distract herself from ungodly musings about the shape of the princess, the swell of her breasts under her nightdress, and the dark softness at the apex of her thighs that she was not supposed to be hungry for. 
In the end, they laid side by side, silent, and not touching; other than the way their hands pressed together. 
Eventually, in the stillness of the moments before dawn, Ashara unveiled the full scope of her earlier realisation. 
‘So, this must be love,’ she thought. 
Ashara never intended to grow attached this way, yet in hindsight, she understood this was inevitable; only she had been blind to it from the very first greeting. How could she not love Elia? How could she not love those understanding onyx eyes, the pristine waves of her cocoa hair, the way her delicate hands fit in Ashara’s palms, her kisses, the scent of blood-oranges and honey emanating off her. 
‘Surely, this was love?’ 
There would never be another to show her fierce protection, attentive care and unwavering support, in the way Elia did. 
If this was love, oh seven hells, Ashara was royally fucked. 
However, when dawn gave light to day, Ashara concluded her feelings were wrong and she could not allow for feelings of love. Not with Elia, for in the dark she had come to think of every reason she could not pursue such feelings.
‘I would ruin you.’ Ashara thought admiring her sleeping princess. It was not pondered with malicious intent, only she knew, with time, she would certainly sully everything. Elia was too pure and sweet and good for Ashara. 
In the rear of her mind, Lady Dayne’s cursed words from long ago played like a Dornish mockingbird tormenting her to heel. 
‘You will be like me, selfish, melancholic down to your innermost core… incapable of love.’ 
Ashara knew what was likely to happen, and for the love she had, she refused to allow her feelings to consume them both. It would only result in a broken heart and a boat with a single destination to Starfall.
Ashara believed a little pain now, would spare them greater strife in future. Thus, she decided to run from love. 
Ashara was positive her quick change in mind would hurt the princess, yet she continued to vow into the dark that Elia would never need to fear anything; that Ashara would fight whatever life had to throw at her with her, and dance until her feet bled to keep that smile on her face, because Ashara had little to offer the world but she could offer that. She could do that. In the foggy depths of a confused mind maybe that was enough. 
When morning arrived, Ashara fell into a long perfected act, like nothing at all had occurred the day previous, ad if she noticed disappointment in dark eyes, she ignored it. 
This would not be the first time she broke a heart, nor the last, yet it would be the first her own broke alongside the one she returned battered. Elia would recover from it and Ashara would stumble into the next doomed love affair to split the earth beneath her, until there was nothing whole left in her to break.
Ashara thought to a conversation they once had. They debated the definition of humanness. To Elia, humanness was the capacity to be hurt. Though Elia was brilliant, knew things about the histories of Dorne and Westeros that might put a king to shame, knew about love and caring for children; Ashara knew humanness was the ability to hurt, to harm, to ruin. Why else did temples and empires tumble down if not for the efforts of humankind? Why else were little girls violated before they even understood what the word meant? Ashara knew it was inherently human to cause ruin. That is why she was just like the rug they cleaned over and over. No matter how much cleansing she did, she could never truly wash away her chaotic contaminating darkness.