#part of the U.W. Universe

[lboogie1906]

Judge Oscar William Adams, Jr. (February 7, 1925 – February 15, 1997) was the first African American Supreme Court Justice appointed in Alabama and when he stood for election to a full term, the first African American elected to a statewide constitutional office. He litigated many civil rights cases in his career as a lawyer and was part of the first African American law firm established in the state.

He was born in Birmingham to Oscar William Adams and Ella Virginia Adams; he was the older brother of Frank E. Adams. He graduated from Talladega College with a BA in Philosophy. He attended Howard University School of Law and graduated. He was admitted to the Alabama State Bar and began his legal career that would span five decades. He married Willa Ingersoll Adams (1949-82) and they had three children. He married Anne-Marie Bradford.

He litigated many civil rights and labor cases, and his clients included Martin Luther King Jr., the SCLC, Fred Shuttleworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and the NAACP. The firm handled school desegregation and discrimination cases, as well as voting rights cases. Notable cases included Armstrong v. Birmingham Board of Education (1964), Terry v. Elmwood Cemetery (1969), and Pettway v. ACIPCO (1974).

On July 8, 1966, he became the first African American member of the Birmingham Bar Association. He ran his law office until 1967 when he went into practice with white attorney Harvey Burg, creating the state’s first integrated law practice. In 1969 he and James Baker became Adams and Baker Law Firm, were joined by U.W. Clemon, and the firm became known as Adams, Baker & Clemon.

He retired from the bench on October 31, 1993, after retirement, he worked with the Birmingham law firm of White, Dunn & Booker and served as co-chairman of the Second Citizens’ Conference on Judicial Elections and Campaigns.

He was inducted posthumously into the Alabama Lawyers’ Hall of Fame (2005) and the Birmingham Gallery of Distinguished Citizens (2008). #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[eternalstrigoii]

For Posterity

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

                 “Isn’t it morbid?” you wondered aloud as you sauntered into Ulstead palace’s great hall. “Even for you?”

Borra followed you, the quiet pad of your bare feet on marble floors accentuated by the soft brush of your dark pinfeathers. “Do you not want to?”

You pretended to consider it. He was intense. Always had been. It was an attractive quality even when it meant watching him clutch iron until he broke out in a sweat, pitting the expectation that he would be severely wounded in battle against his desire not to falter even if he was.

There were two chairs at the end of otherwise lightly furnished room. The larger was made of solid wood, slightly gilded, and well-cushioned, but it was the one beside it that held  your interest. There was almost no chance that its glimmering plating wasn’t iron, though it had been done in ornamental dragon-scale. It was smaller, less well padded, though you imagined someone your size might be able to climb on it comfortably if you didn’t try to turn around after.

You lifted your hands to the leather buckle at the back of your neck. Even parted your hair over your shoulders to let him watch you undo it.

“I always want you, Borra.” You dropped your hands to the other leather fasten at your side, both part of the same beast that forged your chest-plate. And, before the approach of his feathers upon the stone reminded you too much of a sashaying ball gown, you dropped the top half of your armor to the floor.

Now you were on even ground, in your trousers and gauntlets and nothing else.

Well, nothing else but the bandage mortal healers wove around his arm and the one wrapped around your mid-back where someone’s bolt had broken skin. You were lucky it hadn’t clipped a wing.

Your back collided with his chest, his warm, rough palms settling at your hips. He pushed your hair back from the leaf of your ear with his lips and whispered, “Tell me if it’s too much.”

His touch trailed up your sides. Talons brushed your ribs. You were molten before he even reached your chest, and the place he found on your shoulder was one of his favorites – always exposed in the overlap of your armor, so every mark he left there was for all the world to see.

You purred your approval.

“Is this how you want me?” you whispered, letting your voice drop another octave. “Bared for you, on my knees?” You almost asked if he wanted you to pretend to be one of them so he could rut his aggression out, but you had the sense not to (and it wasn’t just because he’d gathered your hair in one of his hands to expose your newly-bared throat).

He growled, the low rumble in his chest making your hips shift against his. “You’re not on your knees yet.”

You knew what he wanted. If you agreed, it was to be of your own volition, not because he’d asked you to.

You turned your head. Brushed your lips over his. The summer heat of his breath caught between you, and you nearly purred again at the sight of his lowered eyelids – how readily both of you responded to the other.

You undid your trousers. Shucked them off even as the brush of his talons teased your sides. And, without missing a beat, you fanned out your large, dark wings and climbed onto the now-goat queen’s gilded throne.

Iron bit your flesh, even through the wrapping of your gauntlets. It stung the worst at your knees, which you settled on the edge. You made a pretty offering of yourself, your back deliberately arched so he could see the power of your muscles while you braced your weight on the arms of the ornamental chair.

He had no business letting his eyes linger on you. You thought they must’ve, even as you heard the rush of fabric collapsing to the floor.

He wrapped your hair around his hand, the other coming to rest on the iron throne in front of yours.

“I do like you like this,” he whispered, and the sudden snap of his hips joined you with him. You gasped with pleasure despite the burning of your skin.

There was no teasing preface. Not this time. You were not his conquest, but conquest was the objective all the same – no kingdom had fallen, though both sides knew loss. Your victory had come at a stalemate, and you hadn’t even been able to vanquish your enemy properly – dispatch her like the rabid animal she was. So he fucked you on her throne, laid claim to a symbol of your enemy’s power after she’d fallen since you could get satisfaction in no way else.

Not yet, anyhow. But that was a concern for another time.

The way he moved inside you made your claws screech against the iron scaling. You were both panting, the heat and the pain cropping up like afterthoughts, making your legs buck when one of the curved edges pressed into your calf and making him grip you tighter as you shifted to clutch the curved back, your nails digging trenches that made several iron scales chip away. They dropped to the floor with a musical sound, one after the other.

You made no effort to quiet yourself. Quiet growls became sharp, half-human cries when he hit that spot inside you, peeling your burning thighs off the rounded junction of the arms. “Ah, stars, come closer.”

He obliged, settling his weight between them. He boosted you better onto the cushions, as though that did much but help peel layers of your flesh off. You could’ve laughed, though you were more intent upon working your hips against his as the chair protested your collective weight. He settled his knee between yours, giving you the option to climb over him and make the bulk of the iron his problem.

You took it, paused just long enough to push him down onto the biting iron beneath so you could climb onto his lap.

He hissed in pleasure-pain.

“Is this what you wanted of your victory?” You gripped his chin. His eyes were ablaze as you moved, sinking onto him, grinding, withdrawing only to be pulled back down.

“Harder,” he growled.

You obliged. He moved with you like you were truly joined by your shared epicenter, his hips as fluid as yours even without the grip of your knees. His hands palmed the new burns on your legs, and you gripped him there, shielding only those parts of you while you rode him.

He arched off the back of it, pulling you down to work your hips in tighter circles. His wings flared, and yours beat once, unnecessarily hard.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. “So beautiful. I feel you nearing. Go on. Scream for me.”

Your talons bit trenches into the leather around his wrist. You did, and you let him rise to meet you when he reached his peak so the flutter of tension in his stomach made your body melt.

You stung. Actually, you hurt, and the wounds on your calves were only getting worse. You’d never be able to explain them, but there would be a few on the backs of his thighs that couldn’t be accounted for either.

Neither of you lingered. Not there. You gripped his shoulder and he, your back, and you let him lift you to rest on the cool, stone floor.

“Not bad,” you admitted. “Glad to have tried it, probably won’t do it again.”

He laughed. His body folded over yours, fingers laced in your hair. You got a generous amount of kissing for your trouble, not that it would magically erase the new round of bandages you’d both need, but you smiled into it anyway.

At least, until you heard footsteps. Then you grinned, and he caught the wickedness in your eyes and moved to gather the pile of your forgotten clothes.

“Why should we run off?” you whispered, grinning as he tossed you your clothes.

“Shrike is coming.” He flashed you a grin that you knew came with trouble, and you stifled your laughter long enough to pull on your trousers and make a swift departure with him at your back.

You heard the clamor of armor getting tossed into the royal throne, and then a long and painful silence.

“Suren!” she was angry. “Borra!”

Early birds and worms and all that, you thought, cackling as you took off into the night with the decoration of your well-earned scorch marks on display.

[hisimperialmajestyemperordawlove]

Key of County NEW HALFA Full Name: House Of The World – United World Region: Plant and space Board: Unitary Constitution Monarchy with Unitary Parliamentary System Realm as United Nations Capital: Mega cities Area: Earth with space levels Geography: Earth (world Map) Climate: World weather Forecast (Climate Change) Population: is Population of the earth Religion: Freedom of religions Population growth by human Average life expect any 100 years Population density by destiny Official Language world Languages Currency: world GDP IMF infinity International phone code +000 Zone in internet : UW Time Zone Universal time zone International organizations include: by Continents and countries Political condition: The head of the states Crown Earth Access to the seas and oceans: earth atlas Shear lands boards by region Main Attraction : World Heritage by continents and region and country Descriptions Architecture Classifications An Island Urban Creation: Location coordinates: Ottoman Empire, House Of The World - United World Location Black Sea 30 Degree Vertical direction Coordinates 44°N 35°E Bosphorus North Istanbul, Turkey Coordinates: 41°07′10″N - 29°04′31″E Surface area: 50,000 Square kilometers from total Surface area 436,402 km2 (168,500 sq mi) Max. length 1,175 km(730 mi) Max. depth 2,212 m (7,257 ft) Water volume 547,000 km3 (131,200 cu mi) , European Union, H.W. - U.W. Istanbul, Turkey 41°00′49″N - 28°57′18″E Scopes Of Works and Supply United World groups of holding companies: It's All Belong For The Project House of The World - United World As New Groups Of Holding Companies. Capital Mega Cities: At 30 Degree Vertical in Black Sea for House of The World - United World, Area...around 50,000,00 km2 An Environmental Island Creation With Towers View. Establishment With Typical View The Coat of Arms As Site Plan. House of The World - United World Palace Is The Tallest Tower Within 1,5 Km Highest World Map View surrounded With Castle World Times Lines. Note: Still in Education Research. Competition On Design Urban Planing House of The World - United World: The terms of the key urban planning Capital Mega Cities With Supervising On The Designs Project & Constructions With Standardization As Well As Typical View The Coat of Arms. The Aim of Program: 1) Navy Port Surrounding The Project Coat of Arms Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 2) Stars Towers 80 m Highest "81 Stars" Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 3) Privet Airport and International Airport 80 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 4) Privet Tower 100 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 5) Hotel Tower 150 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 6) The Crown Building Site Plan View 250 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Connected 7) The Castle 500 m Highest Baroque Architecture Style 8) World Map Tower 1500 m Highest With Green Roof Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper Main communicator United 9) Crescent and Star Towers 200 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper connected 10) Sun and 16 Stars Towers 90 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper connected 11) Red Nature Flowers, Roses and Walking Way Garden Landscape 12) Earth Play Ground, Olympic Sport Games, Paralympic Games, FIFA organization Sport Games 13) Blue Nature Flowers and Walking Way Garden Landscape 14) The Books Shape's Buildings Towers 250 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper connected 15) Medals Towers 300 m Highest Architecture Style Super-tall Skyscraper connected Puple Diagram Programing Towers Projects: 1) Offices 2) Markets 3) Oil Services 4) Environmental Fishing Area 5) Hospitals ...6) Cleaning System 7) Museum 8) Accommodations 9) Navy Port 10) Privet Airport and International 11) Duty Free 12) Airport Service 13) Schools 14) Universities 15) Geography Centers 17) Securities Gard Systems 18) Gardens 19) Hotels 20) Ministerial 21) Embassies 22) Organizations 23) Diplomatic Area 24) Companies 25) Establishments 26) Parliaments 27) Theater 28) Palace 29) Villas 30) Castle 31) Post Offices 32) Administrations according to the step level services 33) Constitutional Courts Towers 34) extra ... etc Services Program: Electricity is by solar panel in the project and wind electricity + water movement electricity. The Telephone and Mobile is surrounding the castle and some towers Underground Connections system. The lights of the projects is wight - yellow gold - rainbow colors. The tunnels and roads is solar traffic lights working by Main and sub Computer Programming The Under ground Transportation Connections with each projects on island creation like tunnel. The world map tower has geological elevations and top roof has green roof, The building has organic columns and the world map borders are looking ventilation with each borders according to the united nations geography map - on each capital of Countries there is a left system what it mean elevator, the space since at the top roof of the world map tower and into the castle. Furniture inside the walls opening and covered like storage buildings Towers. In The Projects should be has Thermal insulation, Sound Insulation, Water Insulation, Weather insulation according to Location to be updated. Emergencies is surrounding the stars towers "81 star's" and on the other area on the castle of the world map tower view the north - east - south - west sides and on the navy port and airport and on the others towers projects as the most viewed circulations for emergencies. Each flour in tower is 5 m Highest in all the towers projects 1 m for Air Conditions System and 4 m Highest of the Flour. Modern materials Useful in all projects programming. On the island creation should be have flood protraction system, ice freeze protraction system according to the location, fire alarm system, navy port system, sentry system and earthshaking Protection System. Food supply by transportation system and by environmental fishing guards. An Island Urban Creation: Location coordinates: United World Location North Sea Location Atlantic Ocean Coordinates 56°N 03°E Eastern United Kingdom Surface area 10,000 square kilometers From Total Surface area 750,000 km2 (290,000 sq mi) Capital Mega Cities, European Union, U.W. London, United Kingdom. House Of The World - United World Constitution 1- Preamble & Act Of The Union 2- The Crown 3- The Households 4- Rights and duties of the people 5- Preliminary title 6- The Emperor... 7- The Cortes Generals 8- Government and Administration 9- Relation between the Government and courts General 10- Judicial Power 11- Economy and Finance 12- Territorial Organization Of State 13- Constitutional Courts 14- General Provisions 15- Fundamental Rights 16- Rights and Freedom of Man and citizen 17- The Federal structure 18- Local Self - Government 19- Constitutional Amendments 20- General Principles 21- Care Standards

1- Crown Earth Preamble & Act Of The Union: - Continents by Outline of each continents - Countries by Outline of each country Member - We, the Multinational of House of the World – United World by Genetics of Strains and Families. United by a common fate in our lands, establishing human rights and freedoms, civil peace and accord preserving the historically established unity of our lands sovereigns recognizing ourselves as part of the world community in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice , insure domestic tranquility , provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish the constitution Guarantee of rights and freedom and fundamental freedoms as we are mindful of our responsibilities towards creation Architecture resolve to renew our alliance to strengthen liberty and democracy under Holder Monarch, independence and peace in solidarity and openness towards the world are determined to live our diversity in unity respecting one another and conscious of our common achievements and our responsibility towards future generation With peace to shear peacefully to defined all times and days months years and centuries desire peace for all times and are deeply conscious of high ideals controlling human relationship and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace loving peoples of house of the world united world as act of the union of peaceful relation and effective cooperation among all the peoples of the earth between Man and women as rights of humanity and absolute respect for one anthers rights and freedoms mutual love and fellowship, and desire for, and belief, in "Peace at home, peace in the world" overseas territories which is Architecture Classifications with developments with freedom sociology and social science by legal aspects of planning and human health as part. 2- The Crown The United World Emperors of House Of The World - United World Is Head of States, The Symbols of its Unity and permanence. They arbitrates and moderates the regular functioning of the United World institutions, assumes the highest representations of House Of The World - United World In International Relations, Especially With The United Nations of Historically of Age of Human Evolution's and Centuries of Strains Families Members Humanism Imperial Community, and exercise the Functions expressly Conferred on there by Treaties and constitutions and laws. There title is that of the Emperor's of House Of The World - United World and they may use the other Titles appertaining to the crown The United World Emperors, Sultans, Caesars, Royals, Presidents, Ministers and Ambassadors persons of the Emperor's Household's Sovereigns is inviolable and shall not be held accountable. There acts shall always be countersigned in the manner established without such countersignature they shall not be valid, Except as provided. The Crown of House Of The World - United World Is Architecture " Historical and Modern" Explain The Real estate of Ownership Such As Strains Families and Parents Internationally by Continents and Countries Holders Demonym Crown Earth. The Crown is by Birth from the time they acquires the claim, Shall hold the title of Emperor and other titles traditionally held by the heir to the crown of House Of The World - United World. Should all lines designated by law become extinct, The Cortes Generals shall provide for Succession to the Crown Earth Projects in the manner most suitable to the interests of House Of The World United World. The Crown Earth of the House of the world - United World's Shall be inherited by the successors of H.I.M. Emperor Dawad III The Ottoman and respecting the other names of the personality H.I.M. Emperor Craig I Egest Henry, the legitimate heir of Historic Dynasties. Succession to the throne Shall follow the regular order of primogeniture and representation, the first line always having preference over subsequent lines, within the same grade the male over the female and in the same sex, The elder over the younger and by qualifications in all step level systemic. The Empress's consort, or the consort of the Empress's, May not assume any Constitutional functions except in accordance with the provisions for regency. The Crown is function and form of new Architecture Classification as its Justice as it's appear systemic of the Emperor's of House Of The World - United World and it's function and form of the United Nations Organizations. The Emperor receives an over all amount from the states budgets for maintenance of there Families and Households and distributes it freely. The Emperor freely appoints and dismisses civil and military members of the Emperor's Household's. The Emperor flag standard and Coat Of Arms is symbol of personality in all Sciences and Technologies as it is Motto and anthem part of universal Monarchy Imperial of the House of the world - United World " Educations and dynastic. The Crown Belong to this Name Personal Officially Full Name Detailed: HIM (Emperor) Dawad (3) (Emperor) Ahmed (3) (Emperor) Dawad (2) (Emperor) Ahmed (2) (Emperor) Dawad (1) (Emperor) Ahmed (1) (Emperor) Mohammed (Emperor) Ali (Baik- Basha) (Sultan) Essie (Sultan) Mosa (Sultan) Karah (Sultan) Kashif (Sultan) Mohammed (Wali- Weliab) (sultan) Suliman (Magnificent) (Sultan) Salim (1) (Sultan) Bayazid (2) (Sultan) Mohammed (2) (Sultan) Murad (2) (Sultan) Mohammed (1) (Sultan) Bayazid (1) (Sultan) Murad (1) (Sultan) Orkhan Ghazi (Sultan) Ottoman Artagual Suliman Shah Katalmish Gondoz Alb AlTurkey Alogozy 3- The Households: It is All about HIM Emperor Dawad III The Imperial Ottoman House. - House Of The World - United World. It is All about HIM Emperor Craig I Egest Henry European past Houses - House Of The World - United World. The following departments currently make up the Emperor's Household's Sovereigns United Nations realm: 1) The Department for Economic, Social and Cultural Affairs ( Health Care ) 2) The Emperor's Militarizes Household's by Officials Presidencies of Continents Organization's & Countries. ( Private Ranks ) 3) The Department for Foreign Relations. 4) The Architecture International Relations & Lists of Educations. 5) The Ottoman Emperors Strain & Families. 6) Timeline Of The Ottoman Empire & States Sovereigns Sciences as United World. 7) The Heritages Renewable. 8) Protocols. 9) Official Transportation By Head of States & Governments (The Sovereigns Travelers) 10) Universal Monarchy Imperial International Treaties & Constitutions ( By Courts of Continents & Countries) 11) Monarch Of Peace Honors of Continents Organization's & Countries. 12) The International Boarders Of Atlases Geographies Sovereigns Sciences as United World 13) The Personal Name Detailed By The Translations of Migrations. 14) The Histories of Continents & Countries. 15) The Civilians Rights As Human rights. 16) The Governments & Controls Internationally. 17) The Freedom of Media communications and Technologies. 18) The King of Fashion & Activities. 19) The Councils. 20) The Monetary Notes of personal information About Economics & Finances. 21) The Passports and Migrations. 4- Rights and duties of the people: As Amendments Architecture Articles on 2005 to present with Revision. Citizenship Fundamental Human Rights Goal to Preserve Freedom Rights. Individual Rights. No Discrimination and Privileges. Electoral Rights. Right to Petitions. Recourse to the Courts. Personal Freedom. Freedom of Thought and Conscious. Freedom of Religions, Secularism of States. Communicative Rights. Rights to move, Freedom of Profession. Academic Freedom. Matrimonial Equality. Welfare Rights. Rights to Educations, Compulsory Educations. Rights and Obligations to Work, No Child Labor. Unions. Property. Taxation. Due Process. Recourse to the courts. Arrest. Detention. Search, Seizures. Torture. Trial. Rights of the Accused. False Imprisonment. 5- Preliminary title: It's All about Strains, Families And Parents "United Nations" 6- The Emperor: The Crown Earth Council Symbol of Continents and Countries Architecture of the unity of Architecture, deriving their position for the will of people Architects Engineers Classifications with whom resides Sovereign Power. Dynastic Throne: The Imperial throne Shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial House law passed by the government form. Cabinet Approval and response: The Advice and approval of the Cabinet shall be required for all acts of the Emperor's in matters of States, and the Cabinet's Shall be responsible therefore. Rules of Laws for the Emperor's: The Emperor shall preform only such acts in matters of States as are provided for the constitution and they shall not have powers related to the matter. The Emperor may delegates the performance of there acts in matters of States as may provided by law. Regency: When in accordance with the Imperial House law a regency is established, the regent shall perform their acts in matters of States in the Emperor's name. Appointments: The Emperor's shall appoint the president as designated by the form of Government and the United Nations and the membership Acording to the coat of arms. Functions: The Functions, form, imagination, logistics and nature is copy picture from the nature Architecture. Property Authorization: Crown Earth Crown Emperor Mega cities - Emperor of The World Crown King Majesty - King of the World. List of Constitutions: Legal Aspects of Planning by Continents Organization's and Countries. List of Treaties: Area studies HIM Emperor Architect Engineer: The Personal Projects. Head of the house Imperial United World: Personality Researcher, Development and Technologies: Personal interest. International monetary systems: The World Noble of peace: Honors Traveler: Places of origin Health Care Internal - External And Foreign Relations: World Health Organization King of Fashion: Officials & Festivals Geographies: Alternative Architecture Empire Named United World: United Nations Crown Earth and education: Educations systems 7- The Cortes Generals Legislature * The General Courts is United Nations Upper House: House Of Continentals boundaries - Countries Lower House: House Of States - Cities - Nations 8- Governments and Administration World Government States of Defense The Imperial House Of The World - United World Honored orders and decorations Architecture as Sovereign Private Ranks : Grand Marshal 1- B.C. - 21st C. Ecology Environment (Flag Of Earth) Solar System Human Era 2- Ottoman Empire 1299 to 1923 Departments 3- Crown Earth H.W. - U.W. 4- Seal of Presidency Of Turkey Departments 5- 1902 to 2003 Grand Family Master Departments 6- European Union - Council Of Europe 7- Date of Birth Coronation 8- World Map Borders Departments 9- 1905 to 1923 Departments 10- 1923 to 1945 Departments 11- The United Nations 12- 1945 to 1956 Departments 13- 1956 to 1982 Departments 14- NATO & 21st C. Departments 15- Foreign Orders. If approved for wear, worn in order of date of award. 16- Foreign Decorations. If approved for wear, worn in order of date of award. 17- Foreign Medals. If approved for wear, worn in order of date of award. 18- Long Service and Efficiency Awards 19- Commonwealth Orders, Decorations and Medals instituted by the Sovereign. Worn in order of date of award. 20- National independence medals 21- Coronation and Jubilee medals. Administration of Justice Sovereignty Position Establish-er Rules of Procedures Relations between Parliaments and government Constitutional Council Finances Legislative powers of Federation Organizations Membership Qualifications Term of representatives Term of Councillors Electoral Procedures Approving Treaties Budgets The Fundamentals of Constitution System Revision of federal Constitution and temporal Provisions Lower Court 1- Court Of First Instance 2- Labor Court 3- Commercial Court 4- Police Court 5- Justice of the peace Local Government (World Administrative divisions) ..... etc. 1- Capitals 2- Regions 3- Provinces 4- Cities 5- Municipalities Other Issues 1- Defense Force 2- Regions Departments 3- Foreign Relation 4- Public Holidays 5- Republicanism 9- Relation between the Government and courts General International Criminal Court International Court of Justice Continents Organizations 10- Judicial Power Independence of the court Security of throne of Judge and Prosecutors Publicity of hearings and verdict Justification Organizations Courts Courts of the security of the courts Supervision of Judges and public Prosecutors Militarizes Justice The Constitutional Courts, Organizations The Constitutional Courts, Termination of Membership The Constitutional Courts Functions and powers The Constitutional Courts Functions and trial procedures Annulment Action Time limit for Annulment Action Contention of unconstitutionally before other Courts Decisions of the Constitutional Courts The Higher Court of Appeals Council of State Military High court of Appeals High Militarizes Administrative Court of Appeals Jurisdiction conflict Court Supreme Council of Judges And public Prosecutors Audit Court 11- Economy and Finance: World Economies & Finances... etc. Outline of Self Outline of Economics Outline of Finances Outline of Household's House Of The World - United World Economic system By application 1- Agricultural 2- Behavioral 3- Business 4- Computational 5- Cultural 6-Demographic 7- Development 8- Ecological 9- Education & Welfare economics 10- Environmental 11- Evolutionary & Personnel 12- Expeditionary & Public 13- Geography & Natural resource 14- Health & Regional 15- Industrial organization 16- Information 17- International 18- Labor & Urban 19- Law 20- Managerial & Rural 21- Monetary & Financial 12- Territorial Organization Of State • Human being and the list of sovereign of the states. • The right to life of a human being shall be protected by law. • The freedom of human being shall be inviolable. • The person of the human being shall be inviolable, the dignity of the human being shall be protected by law. • The privet life of a human being shall be inviolable. • Property shall be inviolable. The ownership shall be protected by law. • The home of a human being shall be inviolable. • The human being shall have the right to have his own convictions and freely express them. • Human being and Civil Defenses Sovereign. • Civilization and Diversity • Care of Health and Emergencies. • Human being and services. • Human Rights and Relations with courts. • Human Rights and economies • Human been and freedom of Movement. • Human been and Architecture and Classifications and Relations with standards. • Human been and Urban Creativity.. • Human been and Welfare. • Human been and real states or Accommodations. • Human been and Traveling Origin. • Human been and industries, trade and customs. 13 - Constitutional Courts The Constitutional Courts is Under the Holder Monarch HIM Emperor Dawad 3 The Ottoman - HIM Emperor Craig 1 Sovereignty Independents of House Of The World - United World as well as by The list of the diplomatic missions of House Of The World - United World Constitutions Dynamic Felix and Static Monarchy Imperial With International Treaties Imperial There is 1- Current Constitution 2- Constitutional Court 3- Historic constitutions 4- Human rights Judiciary: There Is 1- General Council of the Judiciary 2- Supreme Court 3- Constitutional Court 4- National Audience 5- Constitutional Court 6- Council of State 7- Court of Cessation 8- Court of Accounts 9- Constitutional Court 10- Supreme Court 11- Prosecutor General 12- Supreme Court of Arbitration 13- Legal system 14- Supreme Court 15- High Councils of State 16- National Ombudsman 17- Council of State 18- Court of Audit 19- Organizations Courts 20- Laws 21- Order 14- General Provisions Autonomous Continents Countries Independence World Map Borders As Mega Cities Diplomacy Cities Lists of Cities in the world Administrative divisions Cities Lists of Sister Cities in the world Capitals And Diplomatic Missions Cities Historical Capitals Cities Mega Cities Autonomous Capitals Autonomous Cities Heritage Cities Projects Creations Cities Political Cities Organizations Economical Cities Ports Cities Travelers Cities Tourism Cities Environmental Educational Cities Museums Cities Health Care Cities Birth Cities 15- Fundamental Rights Lists of Continents Autonomous Lists of Countries (County) Autonomous Lists of Oceans Autonomous Lists of Languages Autonomous Lists Of Organizations Autonomous Lists of Regions Autonomous Lists of Seas Autonomous Lists Of Currencies Autonomous Lists of Boards Autonomous Lists of World Maps Autonomous Lists of Imports And Exports World Trades Autonomous Lists Of Facts Autonomous Lists of Human Owen - Owner - Ownership Autonomous Lists Of Strategies Autonomous Lists of Elections Autonomous Lists of Coordination's Autonomous Lists of Tourism Planing Autonomous Lists of Creations Urban Planing Autonomous Lists of Flags Autonomous Lists Of Coats Of Arms Autonomous Lists of Monograms Autonomous 16- Rights and Freedom of Man - Women (Human) and citizen Political of Continents Strains Names Comes From Should be as Part of Series without be mixed With Other Human in politics as places of origin is Part of series of Citizen and Citizenship Freedom Meaning. Political of Countries Names of Relative of the Strains Alternative Should be as Part of Series without be mixed With Other Human in politics as places of origin is Part of series of Citizen and Citizenship Freedom Meaning. Political of Cities Names of Strains and Relatives of the Strains Alternative and Families Should be as Part of Series without be mixed With Other Human in politics as places of origin is Part of series of Citizen and Citizenship Freedom Meaning. Political of Members Has the right to reduce the All Strains, Relatives, Families and Parents As Part of Series of Human Service Join as Political System Service. Political Name of Personality of The Member should be register by The System Political Name should Be series to Know the History of The Political Name Fallow name As Maidens Name History As Has The Right Of The (parents ) Name - Surname - Maiden And The Alternative Of The Country And The Empire Name. With Explanation of the Recourse 2005 of the constitutions up to date as by the system service as it is part of freedom and right of the Citizen. The Member has the right to be careful about Freedom and that is not part of enjoining as it is explanation and freedom of human and relation with citizen. Politics Standards Of Imperial House Of The World - United World See The Books in the Profile By Elections Curriculum Vita Projects Carrier's All By Step Level Service see the System Service By-election (special election) • Direct / Indirect • Fixed-term... 1-Crown Earth Council 2-Confederation Imperial 3-Federal Imperial 4-Unitary imperial 5-Political Union Imperial 6- Sample Imperial 7-Foreign policy council Organizations and Countries 8-Constitution's 9-Direct Power Structure's 10-The Crown & The Other Crowns House Holds 11-Government's 12-Legislature's 13-Consultant's 14-Judiciary's 15-Devolution's 16-Administrative geographies 17-Election's 18-Foreign Policy Organizations & Countries 19-Mayor's 20-Citizen's 21-National Human Evolution's In Case Of Politics Form Of Government Monarchy So The Level System from (1) to 11) . In Case of Politics Form Of Government Republic So The Level System from (11) to 21) . In Case of Politics Form Of Government United World So The Level System from (1) to (21) House Of The World - United World Elections By Country Empire: House Of The World - United World Head of State: Monarchy System Step Levels Electives Qualifications of Sciences & Architecture Hereditary luxurious lifestyles (Parliament/Legislature) Lower House: Direct election with selected creations logical traditional luxurious appointments Architecture styles & luxurious lifestyles Upper House: Direct and indirect election appointments as well as Representation of state governments hereditary Architecture & luxurious lifestyles 17- The Federal structure Lists of Buildings By Continents Lists of Buildings By Countries Lists of Buildings By Cities Lists of Presidents Offices Lists of Ministries Lists of Municipalities Lists of Embassies Lists of Hospitals Lists of Factories Lists of Arable land Lists of Buildings By World Map Boarders Lists of Water Storage's Lists of Transportation Equipments Lists of Central Banks Lists of Banks Lists of Agriculture Products Lists of Industrial Products Lists of High Rise Buildings Materials Lists of Skyscrapers Buildings Lists of Real Estate Buildings Lists of Tourism Heritage and Culture Buildings and Places 18- Local Self - Government Right To Chose The Qualifications with Limitation with Taking The Responsibilities according To Step Levels Services. Political Analyses Has The Right To Elected The Responsible of The Political System Service on Each Levels according To The Mater. Legal Aspects of Planing Should be Exercise by Understanding without any kind of disaster as Positions to be elected according to the matter with training. 19 - Constitutional Amendments By Appeal The Court of Appeals: 1-Crown Earth Project – House of The World – United World Services. 2-Crown Emperor Mega cities Emperor of the World - Crown Earth Service. 3-Crown King Majesty King of the World – Services United World Emperors. 4-Personal Union – World Member and Membership. 5-United World Emperors & Presidents. 6-Emperors – Services all Sultans & Presidents. 7- Sultans – Services all Era & Presidents. 8- Caesers – Services all Royals Kings and Queens & Presidents. 9- Royals – Services all Princes and Princesses & Presidents. 10- Presidents – Services all Ministers. 11- Congers – Services all Ambassadors. 12- Militarizes – Services all Parties Public. 13- Governments – Services all Parties States Public. 14- World Borders International – Services all States Public. 15- States – Services all Ministers. 16- Ministers – Services all Parties Public. 17- Parliaments – Services Presidents, Ministers and Ambassadors. 18- Ambassadors – Services States Public. 19- States Public – Services Advice's. 20- Public's Parties –Services Other Organizations. 21- Organization’s - Services Internationally Public's Advice. 20- General Principles By Appointment Personal Appoint-er: 1) Heredity Council Welfare 2) Universal Monarchy Architecture Heritage Site's 3) Monarch Official Architecture International Buildings Codes (World Architecture Community) Independence 4) Monarch Officials Architectures Traveler Independent 5) Monarch Official Personal Heredity migrations independent Free Sovereign & Languages 6) Monarch The Imperial House Of The World - United World 7) Monarch The United World 8) Monarch The Personal World Economics Sovereign 9) Monarch The Official Fashion Styles Sovereign 10) Monarch The Transportation Sovereign, Spaces & Industries 11) Monarch The Energy, Agricultural & Ecology Sovereign 12) Monarch The Telecommunications system's Sovereign Freedom of Media communications 13) Monarch The Personal Families Courts Sovereign 14) Monarch The Educational System Service Sovereigns Sciences & Technologies 15) Monarch The Administrative divisions Geographies Sovereigns 16) Monarch The Addresses Sovereign 17) Monarch The States Sovereign 18) Monarch The Foreign Relations Sovereign 19) Monarch The Trade & Custom Sovereign 20) Monarch The Monetary & laws Sovereign 21) Monarch The Health, Foods, Drinks, Cuisines, Activities, Sports, Interests, Events & Tourism Sovereign 21- Care Standard Every Things in The World Every Things of The World The Imperial House Of The World - United World 1- Ottoman Empire 2- Flags 3- History 4- Rise - Growth 5- Expansion and apogee 6- Revolts and revival - stagnation and reform 7- Government 8- law 9- Military 10- Administrative divisions 11- Economy 12- Demographics 13- Language 14- Religion 15- Culture 16- Literature 17- Architecture 18- Decorative arts 19- Performing arts 20- Cuisine 21- Science and technology Reference Coat Of Arms of The Ottoman Empire: Every sultan of the Ottoman Empire had his own monogram, called the tughra, which served as a royal symbol. 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(20th - 21st C. HIM Emperor Dawad III Tugra) With 81 Stars Explain The Birth 21-22/07/1982 With The Coat Of Arms House Of The World - United World Dynasties House Of Osman - United World's Emperor, Sultans, Caesars, Royals, Presidents, Ministers, Ambassadors & States - Ottoman Empire - Presidential Seal of Turkey - Earth Flag - World Geographies Horizontal & Vertical lines with earth times - Continents Organizations - European Union Organizations - Council Of Europe - NATO - Euro-pol - Interpol - Commonwealth of Nations (English Language) - World Trade Organization - World Bank - Imperial Ottoman Bank - World Architecture Community - United Nations Organizations - World Nuclear Association - OPEC - World Government. (This Is Part Of Serious About The Personal Family) Sovereign Politics Alternative Empire Architectures Named: The Imperial House Of The World - United World Attached The Flag's & The Coat Of Arms of The Imperial House Of The World - United World As Question's Where did I come from? And It is The Answers As Human Been Rights! Speaker Of The Imperial House Of The World - United World is : Crown Earth TV & Wikipedia -Crown Earth Magazine - Crown Earth Architecture Design Drawings Newspaper - Crown Earth Radio. Speaker Of The Imperial House Of The World - United World include the Cabinet's & Parliaments. 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By Treaties and constitutions Of The Founder and CEO. United Nations Architecture Organizations Is Gallery of country coats of arms, Architecture Engineering Sites Plans: similar view the coat of arms of each one. Mega cities Urban Planning Architecture Style City escapes: Copy Picture Form The Nature - Imagination - Logistics - Nature High-tech architecture Super-tall Skyscraper Baroque Castle Neo-futurism Urban design creation project: N.E.W. H.A.L.F.A.

[lboogie1906]

Oscar William Adams, Jr. (February 7, 1925 – February 15, 1997) was the first African American Supreme Court Justice appointed in Alabama and when he stood for election to a full term, the first African American elected to a statewide constitutional office. He litigated many civil rights cases in his career as a lawyer and was part of the first African American law firm established in the state. He was born in Birmingham to Oscar William Adams and Ella Virginia Adams; he was the older brother of Frank E. Adams. He graduated from Talladega College in 1944 with a BA in Philosophy. He attended Howard University School of Law and graduated in 1947. He was admitted to the Alabama State Bar and began his legal career that would span five decades. He married Willa Ingersoll Adams (1949-1982) in 1949 and they had three children. He married Anne-Marie Bradford. He litigated many civil rights and labor cases, and his clients included Martin Luther King Jr., the SCLC, Fred Shuttleworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, and the NAACP. The firm handled school desegregation and discrimination cases, as well as voting rights cases. Notable cases included Armstrong v. Birmingham Board of Education (1964), Terry v. Elmwood Cemetery (1969), and Pettway v. ACIPCO (1974). On July 8, 1966, he became the first African American member of the Birmingham Bar Association. He ran his law office until 1967 when he went into practice with white attorney Harvey Burg, creating the state’s first integrated law practice. In 1969 he and James Baker became Adams and Baker Law Firm, were joined by U.W. Clemon, and the firm became known as Adams, Baker & Clemon. He retired from the bench on October 31, 1993, after retirement, he worked with the Birmingham law firm of White, Dunn & Booker and served as co-chairman of the Second Citizens’ Conference on Judicial Elections and Campaigns. He was inducted posthumously into the Alabama Lawyers’ Hall of Fame (2005) and the Birmingham Gallery of Distinguished Citizens (2008). #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence https://www.instagram.com/p/CoXIMdxL0t_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[eternalstrigoii]

Wild Strawberries

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

             “They are strange people,” you said of the flower sprites fluttering about. It wasn’t that you didn’t like them – they were lovely, kind little things – but they had the most judgmental habits of tugging at your hair with their tiny hands and practically demanding you wear a skirt next time you came through their territories.

Diaval shrugged, picking berries from one of the wild strawberry vines coiled around the bridge at the heart of Aurora’s kingdom. “They don’t understand you either.”

“What’s there not to understand?” You crooked your finger and the vine sped along the wood, blooming as it went. Sweet, white petals ripened into thick, luscious fruits that bent their stems under their weight.

“For starters, why you never brush your hair.”

It had been braided, once. You hardly recalled it, though the fact that you knew surprised you. You supposed your mother must’ve done it, because no one else had ever taught you, and no one else had ever told you what else you should’ve done with it.

“Because you don’t preen yourself, Raven.”

Well, you do, but the circumstances were a bit different with nesting pairs. It was easier to preen each other, and, frankly, the bonding time was nice. You could tend to Borra while he plotted, comb out his plumage and bathe the dust from his skin.

He flushed. Brightly. Remnants of your teasing about his and Maleficent’s relationship lingering in his thoughts, no doubt.

“You’re a liar to pretend you haven’t committed yourself. That woman loves you, and you love her. With your big mouth, you must’ve said it.”

“With your big mouth, why haven’t you?”

You grinned, as pleasantly surprised by his willingness to retort as you were the way Borra draped his arm over your shoulder. “Because her mouth’s occupied, Raven.”

You took a bite of the strawberry you’d summoned to your fingers, deliberately letting the juice well at your lips. You thought he’d kiss you, take it from you, but no – his lips closed around your fingers while he held your eyes, and the warmth of his tongue loosened the other half from them, leaves and all.

If your friend had words for either of you, he’d gone completely ignored. Borra’s eyes darkened like a sandstorm; he brought the tip of his tongue against the pads of your fingers, letting them linger in his mouth before letting go. The tips of your talons caressed his lower lip.

“I think that’s enough,” Diaval said of his basket, having given the both of you his back. You supposed he might continue, but you’d slid your fingers through one of the leather straps crossing your mate’s chest right before reaching out to pat him – a bit too hard.

Were it not for the fact that he was your friend, you might not’ve warned him of your departure at all.

You guided Borra after you, your wings canted deliberately so he could watch your hips sway. It was nearly summer, you had become rather deliberate with your dressing – or, rather, the low sling of your trousers and the extra swath of skin revealed by them.

You beat your wings once, knowing he’d follow.

                  He plucked you right from the sky when he decided you’d gone far enough.

You laughed; his arm around your waist and swift descent made your wings flatten backward and your arms encircle his neck. There was a glimmer of mischief in his eyes that you knew meant only good things.

He gave you a rough little shove when you landed.

It was a game you were playing, then. Maybe hunter and prey. You let yourself tumble and dug your heels into the soft earth, pretending to back away as he stalked toward you with flared wings.

“Oh, protector of the moors!” you faux-cried. “I’m a good fey, I’ve done nothing!”

“Are you?” he purred, and the thrum of your nerves heightened. “Because I am not.”

You could’ve curled your toes right then.

His chin raised, and the curl of his fingers summoned the roots of the tree you’d crawled towards to ensnare you. You gave him a play-squeal, a sound you’d never make if you hadn’t thought he wanted to hear it. His new branches lifted you, pulled your struggling body flush against one of the old trees.

“Quiet, now,” he removed your leather chest plate with far too much talon. “I’m sure we have an audience.” He cast it to the ground without regard for the hard and heavy sound it made. His branches curled, tugging your arms back at the wrist.

“Oh, but Borra!” you kept up your silly tone, “You’re protector of the Moors! You may have caught me, but there is only so much you can punish me for!”

He gripped your chin suddenly, the bite of his talons into your jaw leaving your game forgotten in the wake of your hunger.

“Do you deserve to be punished?”

The right answer was, unquestionably, yes. But you wet your lips and tried to raise your chin in false defiance.

There wasn’t much left to take off. You canted your hips toward him when he puddled your trousers around your ankles, and he caught you trying to untie his rerebrace with your teeth. His low, fond chuckle undermined the firm, “No,” that followed.

“Please?” you sassed, and you knew it was just what he’d hoped for. His branches tightened, the pressure pleasant as another lashed across your collarbone to hold you still – to keep you bared before him.

“I always catch you.” His eyes burned. “You’re mine.”

Your eyes fell half-lidded. You felt molten. When he gripped your hips as though the cover of his body truly needed the addition of his wings, you almost thought he’d be kind enough to take you.

Instead, he sunk his teeth into  the junction of your neck and shoulder, and the moan that left you was entirely involuntary. You loved it when he marked you.

He left a trail from your throat down, lingering in each spot long enough to leave a deliciously dark bruise. His tongue traced your rib, and you gasped in delight when he finally sunk his teeth into the flesh of your hip. You’d enjoy that one most of all – and the blush you knew it’d garner from the young queen as well as Diaval.

He traced his thumb along your seam.

You arched toward him, willingly offering yourself. But that was too easy; he retreated, just enough to leave you straining against confinement. Your breath came in quick little puffs like he’d put you in heat, and when his stroking paused as he slipped a finger inside of you, you swore you could’ve cried out.

“Do you hear what I do to you?” He placed much too soft a kiss at your waist. “What a beautiful, whimpering mess you become?”

“I need you,” you whined. Yes, you were, and he knew it – he knew he was your truest weakness.

You were in an extremely vulnerable position, and yet, your Borra knelt before you. He never failed to remind you of your security when teasing hedged too close to truth, and the gentle slotting of your thighs over his shoulders gave you something else to focus on.

Like his tongue.

Quick, light, and much too gentle. He flicked his tongue over your seam and your body sagged pleasantly. “Oh stars.”

He grinned and repeated it. Many, many more times, pressing the tip against your apex, circling, stroking, tasting you as you tasted agave when you lived in that desert cavern with one another, like you were the sweetest part of the desert and the moors.

“Please.” You were breathless, his mouth fixed where you needed it to be, wet tongue and sharp teeth so much and yet not enough, not after all his teasing. “Borra, please!”

He growled, and the sensation made your toes curl. You boosted your hips of your own volition only for his grasp on them to tighten. He kept you still while his tongue buried inside of you, wholly at his mercy. Every deliberate stroke, every languid circle wound the coil of your pleasure. You were panting, your lips parted around moans that refused to fully form.

When he met your eyes, you throbbed with need. Your mate, ever attentive, closed his lips around your most sensitive spot, and you nearly stripped the bark off the tree with your horns.

“I want you to scream for me.” He flicked his tongue and a jolt of pleasure made your captive legs jump. But you were his to control. His to own. The liquid heat pooling in your belly leaked onto his tongue.

“Then take me,” you purred. “Claim me, Borra. Show them where I belong.”

The branches on your wrists squeezed gently. He forced you to endure the sweeping caress of his tongue, the gentle rocking of his fingers. He kissed you until you were a squirming, writhing, whining mess, your toes buried in the moss and body secure in his grasp.

“Yes,” you whispered at first, breathless. “Yes, oh, yes. Please. Skies, Borra, do you want me to beg?!”

This time, he didn’t deny you.

You cried out for him. His fingers, buried in your warmth. His gentle kisses. You pulsed around him, desperately trying to rock your hips, practically begging for more. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough until you felt him inside of you, until he was joined with you and all the moors could hear the pleasure you gave him in return. If he was to own you, let him own you, let him mark you with his teeth, sink his talons into your flesh, fill you with him.

The branches around your wrists were slow to slacken. The ones you summoned in retaliation, not so much.

You had the nerve to sweep him onto his back right out in the open, like he wasn’t going to fight you. You held him fast, grinning with no lacking measure of wickedness at his struggle, or at the way his trousers hung exceedingly low on his hips.

It was your turn to stalk toward him. Flare your wings. But you weren’t making a show of yourself, not after how he’d undone you already.

That didn’t stop him from staring. He even forgot to pretend to struggle.

You tugged at his waist, loosening his trousers and then tossing them into the mess of clothes he’d made. He was already yours, his body prepared for your union.

You dropped your head to taste him anyway.

He groaned, the languid roll of his hips betraying that he was still in control. Even pinned there, under you, with your hand on his hip like it was warning enough, you were the source of his fixation, your mouth engulfed and caressed him.

Horrible man; he made such a lovely sight of himself. His head tossed back, hair splayed beneath him. The way the sun found freckles of gold otherwise hidden in his skin.

You could’ve – should’ve – teased him after the pleasure he took in teasing you, but he was always more patient. You mounted him swiftly, the sudden fullness enough to make you gasp.

He pulled on the branches you’d ensnared him in, and you curled your fingers to tighten them. “Lie still.”

“Suren,” he growled, all performative warning. You felt him twitch inside you, and your body responded. You’re soft around him, pliant and warm, and he wants you. Now that you’re in control, all he can think of is giving you what you’ve been asking for.

You rolled your hips. The low, hungry purr he made dissolved into a groan, and he did his best to rise to meet you.

“Lie still, Borra.” You pushed his chest down, though it did little to stop him.

He’s so strong. His hips bucked. You fluttered around him and your nails curled, leaving small, stinging scratches that were quick to heal. You started to rise away from him, and were it not for another branch that came to your call, trapping one of his legs at the ankle, you thought he might’ve been able to overtake you whether or not that would’ve been fair.

He growled again, low in his chest.

You put your finger to his lips, and he took it between them again. This time, he trailed the tip of his tongue along your talons. He sucked them lightly, and there was a part of you that hoped there was some strawberry left over for him to taste.

You thought you’d be able to move against him slowly. Linger, as though he could’ve resisted had it not been his mouth giving you attention. But you don’t.

It’s so good. It’s so good rutting yourself against him, the way you come apart and stop yourself only to do it again, every time tightening that coil of need in your belly a little tighter. He will need to grip you when it’s ready to burst, he will need to keep you there against him so you don’t back off, but until you need him to, you growl like a wild animal, your head thrown back and body welcoming.

“Look at me,” he snaps, and you quiver around him as you do. You love it when he commands you, and you know your body tells him so.

He loves what he sees. Your eyes blown, your mouth parted. His eyes burn like wildfire. He’s ready to take you, mate you, claim you, leave large, hungry bruises all over your breasts. You haven’t fucked him like this since you were last in the nest, grinding against each other in the confines of one another’s wings.

You let the branches go and he seizes you. Your hips are flush against his. You move hard only for him to take over, rolling over on top of you, pressing your wings into the soft grass, and you can feel it go to seed wherever your skin touches, the dandelions rising, coming to a head, their petals blooming, divulging, becoming seeds to be cast off. You can’t be close enough. He’s buried to the hilt inside you, grinding on you like your talons aren’t embedded in his shoulders and you aren’t keening like a dying animal while he watches, his eyes so hungry and his sharp teeth beyond his curled lips belonging in your skin.

And then you’re there, and he is, and neither of you stop. Not at first. Because it’s all happening in a rush and your head falls back and he’s buried so deep inside of you and all you can do is scream. More warmth, more heat, joins with you, and you squeeze your knees to keep him there, not that either of you are in any state to part ways.

And then his head drops. He’s breathing hard as he kisses your throat, your shoulder, your collarbone. He should be biting, but no – his mouth is gentle and his fingers soothe the marks his talons made in your flesh.

You clutch him. Your fingers bury in his hair to keep him there, flush with you. The sun on your skin is nothing compared to the warmth of his body against yours, and you can do absolutely nothing but bask in it.

“All that for a strawberry,” he purrs, and you groan out loud. He laughs, the beautiful, damnable man, and captures your mouth again.

You kiss for much too long. You honey even longer. You are hot and limp and so very pleased when he finally moves to lay beside you, and there is nothing you can do but grin at him with your sharp teeth and the promise of future mischief when he touches your chin and guides you back to him again.

There is a part of you, only dully aware, that hopes Diaval wasn’t expecting help.

                If you liked this and want to see other work, click here.

[eternalstrigoii]

With Someone Like You

A Not-Sequel to Bittersweet Platonic! Diaval + Desert Dark Fey Reader; Platonic! Conall + Reader; Borra x Reader

                     “Will you tell me about him? Conall?”

Your mouth quirked. There was a little, rueful part of you that imagined you would never hear his name on the lips of the moor-folk, of which Diaval was included. She had only known him a handful of days, though they were certainly extraordinary ones.

“He was kind,” you began, for that was the place you ought to. “Selfless. Generous, and truly, unmistakably good. When they shot him, it was as though they’d torn the collective heart from our chests.” You were not shy toward pain, and not only the physical – there was only one raw spot upon your heart that you treated tenderly; the rest were metaphorically thumbed, handled until callouses built over the wounds to soften their blow. “He was about Borra’s size, but a bit bigger. Himself, not his wings; forest wings are shorter.” You imagined that he’d noticed, though he had not said so; he saw you, and his mate, often enough to make the distinction. “Eyes the green of spring. Brighter than hers.” You mimed the shape of his horns when you could not put their proper arrangement into words; told him, in no uncertain terms, of Conall’s power and his grace. His physical beauty and the well-beloved warmth of his heart.

The raven wandered the moors at your side, deftly crossing over streams with little more than a short leap. He listened without interrupting, his face nearly unreadable, though the darkness of his eyes offered plenty of emotion.

“He loved her, you know. He could have done a hundred different things to protect her, and yet his instinct was to shield her with himself.” He had always been selfless, and he had always been good; losing him was the only other wound that had not yet fully healed, for the depth and the profundity of that loss still tore you up when you acknowledged it. She had known him for a handful of extraordinary days; you had fledged with him.

“I know,” Diaval replied. “Sometimes she says his name in her sleep.”

You set your teeth and made a sound like laughter with your breath; she was not the only one.

                                         You were an orphan, once. All people become orphans eventually, but your parents were taken from you well before their time. Udo was still young, then, not yet the surrogate nest-mother that you knew, and so you remained where you had been raised with your last surviving brother, tended by the collective care of your people, and, oftentimes, also Selene.

Selene was Conall’s mother, though you were young enough to also consider her your own. She was the one who corralled you when you had not been preened, settled you in her arms and sang to you while she washed the dust and bracken from your hair and your feathers. There had been a pack of you, in those days; feral children taking flight throughout the Nest in her entirety. Whether or not you had parents to return to had not mattered, the Nest was different in those days – there were more elders, more children, and the migrations had not yet stopped.

Conall was your leader, for he was a year and some ahead of the rest of you. If you remembered correctly, for it had been an age since you thought of it last, Borra was something like seven months ahead of you, and Ini a year and two behind. There were others, of course; people you knew and could name but were no longer as close with.

You remembered traipsing along the edge of the jungle not too much unlike the way you did the moors, now. Settling in borrowed hammocks in the high trees, feasting on absurd amounts of fruit. Though you’d always had the penchant for sweets, Conall was the one who found the fullest trees. The group of you lay together in a heap, weighing down the woven boughs, and ate yourselves sticky as though Selene would not come fetch you and make you all bathe like it would teach any of you shame.

The lot of you were thick as thieves, and you recalled the bright glimmer of your nearly-brother’s eyes when his mother oversaw your scrubbing – your collective had done it before and would do it again, and no punishment could fracture your camaraderie.

Not even when the migrations stopped.

When your mother was murdered, two of your brothers were slain with her; the eldest was twice your age, still a child in the most painful sense. Nearly the whole of your family was taken in one blow; had you and your brother not been swept from the sea by another of the deserts’ communal hunting party (for large game could not thrive in captivity the way rabbits could, and rabbits only offered so much meat), you all would have perished.

And yet, the news of your elders’ belief that all migrations had come to an end was the first time you recognized true fear in yourself, as well as your companions. You were older, then; you sat before your own fire like a council of your own and listened to the still-boys rehash what they had heard from their parents.

“Migrations can take months,” Conall explained to your collective. “But there have not been any in so long, our people believe we are all that’s left.”

“What does that mean?” Ini asked. She was the youngest of you, and had no shame in being so; though her hands enwrapped your wrist, you would never have dreamed of pushing her away.

“It means humans killed the rest of us,” Borra replied. “They’ve killed my mother, Conall’s father, both of Suren’s parents and two of her brothers, and now they’ve killed everyone else who isn’t here.”

He had not mean to strike you all silent, but he had. You were still children, and the gravity of your situation was not supposed to be so obvious; it was a game, was it not? Like playing Defeat The Human Army, smacking at one another with felled branches and pretending they were iron swords.

It would have been different if Conall protested, but he did not. His bright eyes settled upon you where you sat, holding Ini’s hands, and he nodded. “That is what my mother thinks.”

You swallowed back a lump that was equal parts terror and grief. Another of the boys of your group dissolved into sobbing, and the rest of you sat there, still and silent, struggling to understand.

“We are all that’s left,” Conall said. He was not yet old enough to soften the gravity of his voice. “Our parents, our friends, and us. There are no others.”

“That can’t be,” you whispered. “There are so many of us. Everywhere. We…” You had never noticed the migrations, really. Groups of people arrived at random, refugees returning to their ancestral home. You had met many other children that way, and, though their parents were eager to try to merge them with the existing young, there was something different in the way they moved. A heaviness that you had not yet understood. “They cannot do this to us.”

“They always have.” Borra’s voice was more gentle than you thought it would be. He knew he’d frightened you, and that was not what this was meant to be – you had to make sense of this together, as it should be. “My father told me of your mother. They called her the Immortal. They said no human could slay her; that she carried blades forged from the ribs of the men that killed her parents and the men who your father. That she ripped pieces from their banners and wove them into a sash.”

You did not remember her that way. You had few memories of her at all, then, but the one that survived – that stayed with you always – was of a violent storm. You heard the crash of thunder like you never had before; there were other children crying out throughout the Nest. The lightning flashed so brightly that the desert was illuminated more fiercely than it was during the days of bright sun filtered through the high peaks. You and all three of your brothers had joined her in her bed, and she’d heaped the hides on top of the lot of you, settled you against her chest and sang to you in a hushed, sleep-roughened voice. Words in a language you did not know; words that her mother sang to her once upon a time before the Shrublands burned at mortal hands.

“They still killed her,” he said, like that was an adequate conclusion. “And my mother. And they will do it again.”

You were all children, and you were all afraid. You looked to Conall for guidance, as he was the eldest of you, though no older than your own blood-brother.

“We will protect each other,” he said, as though it would be so easy.

But you were children. The abridged version of the world was all you knew, and so you believed it would be. You believed that you could – that you would, always, without fail, and that you would never falter.

“Come.” He drew closer to the rest of you in the half-circle that you sat in. You were all socialized well to bonfires, to gathering with your parents and dancing pell-mell as though you did not know what you were supposed to be doing.

This was different. He held out his hands to all of you, and, since there were more of you than he had hands, Borra took one and someone else took the other; you took Borra’s, and Ini’s, and Ini, someone else’s, in a chain that linked the entirety of you to one another.

“We will protect one another,” Conall said again. There was such certainty in his voice that you never would have doubted him or his abilities for a moment. “Always.”

“Always,” you echoed with all the rest.

“What if we can’t?” someone asked, as though it could not remain unspoken.

Conall looked them in the eyes (though you did not remember who had asked, you remembered, vividly, the look upon his boyish face when he levied his bright eyes upon them). “Always.”

                                          Some part of you remembered the lash of iron around your wrists.

Fear choked the breath from your lungs. The only thing you could cry was your brother’s name, though he could not help you – the human hunting party loosed an arrow upon him. Shot him in the chest. You could see him from where you landed, the dark blood that came, steadily, over his lips.

Your mother was slaughtered in the mountains. You knew this, and yet it was there you had both gone – to fetch mullein for the healer’s nest, as well as catch game, forage roots. You’d come with several empty rucksacks and intended to fill them all. You were at the cusp of your fledge-hood, still a girl, not yet a woman, but the hunting party’s leader descended from his horse with a gaze that you had seen countless times in the fox that led you to the hidden warren.

“Hold it down.”

He was fair-haired and, you imagined, fully grown, for he was nearly as large as some of the men you knew.

Your struggling resumed anew. Two of his men still held the thin, woven iron ropes that scorched your ankles, and another two moved for your hands. You swiped at them, pulled your body along the ridge with all your might. They were dismounted from their horses, and even when they dug in their heels, they could not fully hold you in place.

“Are there more like it?” he asked one of the men, and you did not hear the response. They dropped the loop of an iron rope and you had not been able to pull your hand back in time; one wrist was caught. You shrieked at the top of your lungs, fought with the whole of your strength. Fury and fear swirled violently inside of you – harsh, vehement no mixed with strangled, begging please!

“Hold it down,” he repeated. You would not see that same manner of cold glimmer in human eyes until you reached the shores of Ulstead. “I want to watch it struggle.”

Your left wrist wore fainter marks then the rest because of how little time the iron burned there. The last bond was slipped around it; your eyes welled and your throat was raw from screaming, but you had done it again.

And you were not the only one.

Borra’s wings cut through the air more audibly than a sword’s blade. His talons rent flesh; he lifted the man who intended to hurt you, swept him clearly off the ground and twisted them where they’d landed in his chest.

Blood rushed from the human in a brighter shade than it did from your brother. When he hit the ground, he was already struggling for breath.

You fought for your life, for you knew you must. You fought to keep them from donning their weapons, though there were only four of them and two of you and they no longer had the element of surprise.

You knew him. You had always loved him in some way, for he had always been your friend. You were not surprised by the violence that came from him, or the violence that rose in you in return. When he swept two men away, you handled the last – the burning of your flesh spurred you on. You were not cruel, you did not make them suffer, but you did take their lives, and you did rush to pull the lashes from your limbs.

You did cry when they were gone.

He gathered you close against him, cradled your raw wrist. “Are you alright?”

You could not respond. No, you were not – you were hurt and scared and your brother was dead and you would have been, too, if not for him. You wept harder than you had in an age, your wings folding as tightly against your back as your body would physically allow, and you pressed yourself into him.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re safe, now.”

You were not, but you did not know that, when you left. You stumbled to the cliffs with him with your eyes still blurry and pain still jolting through your limbs. You did not realize that he heard other horses, knew that other men would join this group, and that there was no time to ensure your safety and gather your brother’s body to return to the Phoenix.

He did not realize what would come of leaving it behind, or the woven rucksacks that adorned it. You did not realize, still, that it had been an exchange of a brother for a brother, or that it would be an adequate excuse for a mortal princess to become a terrible queen.

That was the first time you did not go to Selene with your troubles, for Borra could handle them just fine. You wept until you hiccupped; wiped your traitor eyes on your arm while he slit the sides of spiny aloe to peel out the leafy innards, which he would use as a bandage for your wounds.

“Suren,” he said, as gentle as you knew him to be. Never would you have believed that anyone could see differently than you did. “Did he hurt you?”

You shook your head. He had not given the human the chance, and, for that, you were exceptionally grateful.

“Try to hold still. Don’t hold your breath.”

You’d had to force yourself not to, when the aloe was smeared across your raw flesh. The pain was so intense that it made you shake, for most of your wounds were deep. He dressed them carefully, tried to ease your pain with a dust of powdered willow, and then wrapped the long, translucent strips of aloe-bandages around them.

He was nearly done when Conall arrived. Word had reached the others of your brother’s passing in the worst way; he, who fledged with you, who was nearly your brother in all ways, had known Borra would follow you when you left. It was not intended to be a safety-measure; they were even closer than they were with the rest of you, and Conall had known of his intentions to attempt to court you for some time.

It was not supposed to involve saving your life. Dressing your wounds, afterward.

You were not the one who told him what happened in the mountains, nor was it repeated in front of you so soon. You were all still young, then, and peace was not yet an option.

Conall perched beside you on the edge of your nest and drew you close – enwrapped you in both his arm and his wing.

                                   You were nestled in Borra’s arms when you felt the softest touch upon the union of his hand with your forearm. You shifted instinctively, curling closer to him under the pile of fur and hide that blocked out the chill of the desert nights.

“There is a barrier around the moors,” Conall whispered, rather close to you both.

You stirred together. Let the sleep leave you in full so the words could set in; you scrubbed your eyes with the heels of your palms while Borra asked, “What manner of barrier? More than the stone border?”

“A wall of thorns as high as the peaks.”

You both paused. In the darkness of your stony nest, you could not believe that Conall – graceful as a passing cloud, gracious as the river in spring – could ever do such a thing.

“No one from the Nest created it.” He sat back on his haunches to ensure you both met his eyes. “I swear upon the Phoenix.”

You both shed your blankets and re-donned your armor. He had not asked you to come, to prepare for whatever could be out there, but you did. You had to. Some part of you was still as eager as a child, still as hopeful toward the prospect that your people were not dwindling – perhaps, by some miracle, someone else in the vastness of the world beyond had survived.

“Could it be a migration?” Borra asked, already dressed while you still fussed with your leather straps.

“I did not see anyone. I did not get close – there are men at the borders. If the moorlands themselves have created it together—”

“Then we have to help them,” you whispered. In the cold and the black of the night, with only the three of you, that did not seem like a feat you could accomplish. Dressed though you were, hopeful as you might be, it was in your best interest to hesitate. You knew, without question, that other fey lived on the moors; that was why you did not take from them. You imagined they would be imperiled by the humans that surrounded them on all sides, and your peoples’ hunting parties were never big enough to properly combat an enemy as you imagined they already must.

You had imagined correctly, then. If they were strong enough to raise a wall of thorns, then they were strong enough to fend for themselves, and you were glad for them.

“We will see it,” Conall agreed. “And we will return to plan from there.”

It would have been a sound plan, had unspoken hope not lingered between you. Te Tue of the Cloudless Sun spoke often of what would happen when your people could no longer sustain themselves – whether you were forcibly cut off from the outside world, your numbers grew too large for the Nest or too few to continue, your people had gone from reverence and respect to hiding away in a cave. Generations ago, there had been peace – there had been a future as bright and as eternal as the Phoenix’s still-smoldering bones.

Hope was all you had left, as a collective. Hope that something would come – some great war or some great plague, perhaps a famine, something that would destroy enough of mankind that you could reclaim the skies again. Rip the iron from their hands, shove it back within the earth, take back what had been stolen from you.

But when you flew, all you saw were thorns and darkness.

The men at the border retreated before you’d come. Their horses’ hoof-prints were still visible in the soft earth; the places in the grass where their heavy boots had sunk. Borra crouched near them, studied them while you, in turn, studied the thorns.

You did not know if you could even truly call them thorns, for they were massive. They were like spears, and sharp as nettle. You touched your finger to one and recoiled fast; blood welled at even the lightest touch.

“Could little faeries do this?” You stuck your finger in your mouth and kept your tongue against it until the bleeding stopped.

“I don’t know,” Conall admitted. “This was not here last night.”

“You’ve kept watch over the sea for two nights?” Borra asked, the disapproval in his voice unhidden.

“I am restless,” he admitted. “One can only endure so much waiting.”

You heard something, quick and faint. You touched the ridged flesh of his arm – for he had been victim to nearly as many close-shots as the both of you – and Borra straightened quickly. You fell in together, as you always had; gave one another your backs with no gaps in cover. You listened for a moment before the anxiety that gripped you became less of a feeling and more of a physical presence.

“Go,” Conall whispered, and the three of you took off from that same, fixed place – so quickly that the trees rustled all around where you had stood; so suddenly that you barely noticed the large, dark creature that barreled toward where you had been, like some great, black dog.

You did not plan when you returned. You did not plan to hold council, either, though you knew you must. The three of you went home to his mother like you would’ve when you were children, and you sat together at the dying bonfire not far beyond Selene’s nest.

“If it is a migration,” Borra began, though he paused to rub his eyes before continuing, “they may not know how close they are.”

“They may have settled where they saw fey,” you agreed.

A heavy silence settled over your collective. Where they saw fey implied there were places they did not possess any, and that those places existed in abundance. You rubbed your eyes, also, and fought to remember if your mother had ever told you of fey in the Shrublands where she’d grown. Had she ever told you? Or, like all but the memory of her holding you in the storm, had the whole of your people slipped through your fingers like sand?

“It could be the moor-folk.” Conall settled back against one of the felled log benches around the forest’s fire. “Their conflicts could have escalated.”

“We’ll have to go during the day,” you muttered, though you knew how horrible a prospect that was – the last time your people departed during the day, you were nearly killed. Your brother was, and it was as though his death inspired the Nest as a whole to stop venturing out when the sun was high – not unless someone meant to sit in the peaks just beyond and watch the sea for ships.

“We will not,” Conall replied. “Migration or no migration, it is not worth it. We will not go during the day.”

You were both silent.  The fire had nearly burned out, and you did not intend to go curl up with Selene in her nest, though some part of you still desired to. You were a grown woman, now; fully fledged. You did not need your second mother to hold your hand when you could rely on your mate, your partner in all ways, to plot and plan and save you.

“Swear to me,” Conall said, just as he had when you were children. “You will both swear to me that you will not go during the day.”

“I swear to you,” you said, nearly automatically, for Conall was nearly your brother and you had fledged with him. You loved him, and you were tired and disheartened by everything you had not seen.

Borra said nothing for a moment longer, but he was outnumbered. He sighed deeply and laid back his head. “I swear.”

                                                Your mutual vows changed when he saw her.

It had changed before then – he already wanted peace, and you were not at liberty to tell Diaval why – but it, the whole circumstance around that peace, around that nagging, persistent hope you’d all possessed for your future, changed when he saw her for the first time.

He kept his word to you as you had to him. He did not venture out into their world during the day, but he checked on the wall of thorns. He wanted to know what they were, why they were – why they had risen, and, eventually, why they crumbled.

You were right, in the end, in some way – though you did not know if that was precisely why her parents settled on the moors, the thorns-walls had risen because one of your kind willed them to. You could not believe that she had always been there, within reach but always out of sight, and you did not understand why she had gone where she had come from – why she stunk of human beyond the crispness of the ocean-brine.

You had found out, of course; you and Borra both broke dawn curfew in order to. You were out half the night and then half the afternoon with only that council meeting in between – it was a necessity, thanks to her. The migrations were over; she was all that was left. Perhaps. She must’ve been, but no one was certain.

Conall answered everything she asked. He was her companion and her friend as he had been yours – all of yours – though, with her, it was different.

He did not look at anyone the way he looked at her.

“Our ways are not human ways; he did not revere her because of her gifts.” You had settled with Diaval in a field that was no longer under mortal command; your wings stretched out alongside you, flattened swaths of purple prairie-clover so you could bask in the sun amid the high bodies of feral sunflowers and wild, seven-headed daisies. “Though our people can, and frequently, intermarry, there is little as satisfying as pairing off with someone like you.”

This was not the conclusion the raven wanted. Of that, you were painfully aware, but it was what you had to say, and so you said it.

“There was never a time when Borra and I did not belong to one another. With him, I do not have to compromise; I do not have to explain my needs, though it would take very little explaining with another of our own.” You touched him unlike anyone else would know they needed to; you kneaded the tension out of him, as the strength of his muscles and the stone-toughness of his skin meant anything lighter would only be sentiment. You knew that the leaf of his ear was strangely sensitive, and if you wanted him to come to bed, all you needed to do was ghost your lips over it. “I imagine it’s much the same for you.”

He did not expect you to say that. He fluffed a little, the feathers in his hair betraying his pleasure.

“I will never understand you two,” you broke from your narration to eye him sidelong. “Jealousy is such a human attribute. Your people mate in pairs, but that does not mean hers do. If you’d had to share her, would you?”

“If I had to,” he quirked his head, “I could. If that was what she wanted.”

Conall was always one of your dearest friends, though he and Borra were the tightly-woven pair. You imagined it would not be hard to fall in love with him, though you’d never tried. It was certainly no difficult task to love him as you had.

“Was that what she wanted?” he asked.

You were not her, so you could not answer. “She accused me of seducing you, you know.” You almost made it through the statement without laughing. “The human nonsense is mutual.”

He flushed from his cheeks to his jaw like he had a fever. Your heart momentarily lost rhythm for entirely unpleasant reasons, and you’d had to look away lest unpleasant memories rear their ugly heads.

“I should have gone with them.”

As though those thoughts were any more pleasant or any less raw; you recalled, vividly – painfully vividly – Borra’s hand upon your arm, the quick flash of his eyes requesting that you’d stay behind. You hadn’t intended to, at first, but Conall went ahead of him. He went ahead of him, and you’d presumed that, if they both left, either she would not get far, or she would be convinced to return.

You never imagined, though you should have, that they would be fired upon.

Conall was nearly blood to you both, one of your dearest friends since you were young. Watching him struggle for breath had stolen the air from your lungs. It had been some small comfort to know that Maleficent would stay with him – you imagined she would not follow you at all; that she had, in fact, chosen him and peace over war.

You did not blame her. Even as the fury in your heart spread the way lightning causes wildfire, even as your kinsmen departed to prepare for long-awaited war and Borra paused beside you in the path between the coves to wipe the dampness from his eyes. You had slipped your arms around his waist and pressed yourself close as though you were the one seeking comfort, providing an excuse for him to fold himself into you until the molten pain hardened into fury. You had not blamed her, but you were angry, and you meant to lash out at anyone and everyone but him.

An axe to the back, Conall dead; a wedding, a tantalizing little hope, and then…

You rubbed your eyes fiercely. Just to get the sun out of them, not because they were wet.

“D’you…want t’ seduce me?” Diaval offered, and the absurdity of the question sent a smile across your face whether or not you were already occupied with feeling poorly.

“I love you dearly, you horrible, rotten little bird,” you pretended that you had to shield your eyes from the sun to see him, “but I wouldn’t nest with you if you were the last bird-creature left.”

“I was the last bird-creature left, until you showed up.” He fluffed all over again, and you reached up to tug a lock of his hair near one of his feathers – threatening to pluck him rather than actually doing it. “Ow!”

“Magpie,” you teased. “Maleficent is the only one who can tolerate you.”

“You’ve tolerated me so far.” He finger-preened his own hair and the smattering of feathers intermingled in it. “And you gave me that big, long story, too. Hard t’ believe you don’t want me around when you talk my ear off.”

“You asked me to tell you about him. I can’t tell you any more than I know.”

He shook his head lightly, as though you honestly would’ve plucked his feathers.

You reached up again, for he sat upright while you lay in the bramble, and you mussed his feather-patched hair again. “She is not the only one haunted by that night. Before and after, also. That is where I wish to leave it.”

He leaned into the warmth of your palm like a fledgling. It was no wonder why she loved him, though you could not comprehend Diaval and seduction in the same thought – he was a sincere, good-hearted creature, and you were very fond of him.

“Well, we’re just a glide away if you need us. If you ever need us.”

You patted his cheek, glad that he understood when to leave well enough alone.

When you thought of Conall, you did not recall that last, disturbing day. You thought of a bright, peaceful childhood nestled high in the trees; awkward, fledge-downed wings supported by colorful, woven hammocks and a belly full of tropical fruits. You thought of napping under the high sun in a pile with them, and taking flight when you were rested – a group of feral children permitted to run loose wherever they desired to be. It never occurred to you that someone, somewhere, might believe that was not how childhood should be. Not even when his mother stood guard over the stream to make sure none of you returned home sticky.

When you thought of Conall, you remembered a conspiratorial glance you’d shared once upon a summer evening so very long ago – the promise in his springtime eyes that nothing, not even his mother’s watchful gaze, would ever come between you. Long before you’d put your vows into words with joined hands and a murmured, “Always.”

But you did not speak solely of yourself, and so you nudged Diaval rather than allow either of you to dwell upon the connotation. “I think the more important question lies in whether or not you could seduce her.”

“We’re not talking about this,” he replied, so quickly it made you grin.

“Oh, you’re right. We shouldn’t. After all, courtship is innate – no more difficult than preening. And you certainly preen her often.”

“You’re an awful, pushy vulture, and sometimes I quite dislike you.” The flush was back in his face, somehow more intense than it had last been. “No more difficult than preening, and what’s your excuse?”

You grinned with far too many of your sharp teeth. “That’s not the only part of courtship, not that you’re familiar with the rest.”

He made a half-bird sound and swatted your arm, as though it did not fuel your laughter and his blush.

                                           -----------------------------------

Tag List: @boxxyass, @swim-reaper, @mor-ranr, @thetempleofthemasaigoddess, @deathonyourtongue, @blacksirenswolf

[eternalstrigoii]

Flowery Language

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

                   After a point, peace talks became little more than a formality.

John and Philip fussed with the treaty’s wording while Aurora listened, as it was not her first declaration of peace between the kingdoms and its peoples. While you recognized the importance of brevity, clarity (and wit), you were bored out of your skull. (It was different when they spent hours fussing to ensure no one could break peace because of loose language – when they genuinely entered talks about phrasing based solely upon the conjunction, you stared at the walls and wondered if living in exile had not been such a terrible fate.)

The dread former queen’s cat, Arabella, circled lazily between your legs, rubbing on you and Borra because you were the only fools left over when talks descended into this. Had you not loved him, he would’ve been entirely on his own.

Had he not loved you, he wouldn’t have allowed his attention to lapse.

You were trying to set the tasteless tapestries on fire with your eyes when the first little tendril of unnaturally-behaving peony stem brushed your ankle. You thought it was the cat and lightly toed at it, discouraging her from bothering you while you glowered. Was iron as painful as listening to this conversation? You almost wished they’d left a handful of bullets lying around for you to play with.

A flicker of mischief passed over Borra’s lips. Aurora frowned as she mentally backtracked through Philip and John’s discussion – what had they said that warranted so knowing a look?

The advancing flowers lashed around your ankle, the quick snap of their woody stem nearly enough to make you startle. Your eyes flickered to him, and you raised your brows as though wholly unamused.

Leaves bloomed against your skin. Vines that should not have been vines continued to climb up your leg like a trellis. Right now? you asked with your eyes.

His glinted. He knew you – boredom made you impulsive. You were a restless creature by nature; you favored action over talk as much as he did, if not more. You did not have to be reminded that your shared place at their table ensured the safety of your people both fey and moor-folk, and you did not expect him to apologize for the benign stupidity of ornamental leadership.

Though he made it quite clear he intended to repay you for your patience.

It was an exercise in self-restraint not to shift when those woody stems crept over your hip and brushed over your inner thigh. They were no replacement for his fingers, but their light caress was enough to soften your glare at the walls. They should redo those murals, at least.

A blooming leaf caressed your bundled nerves, fluttered lightly as if caught by the wind. Your eyelids half-lowered, and you made a show of rubbing them as though you were well and thoroughly frustrated already.

Thank skies your human companions did not have senses anywhere near as keen as his.

He did it again. Lighter and sweeter than he would’ve with his fingers, but it was a caress all the same. The lingering hostility in your thoughts went temporarily forgotten.

You spread your legs on the chair-seat. Hooked your bare feet around the legs and pressed into the caress of a slowly advancing tendril. Agonizingly slow; he had to give you something else to focus on, though the sight of your darkening eyes and the instinctive weight-shift of your hips did little but offer him plenty in return.

You made a beautiful sight, spread just for him. If you could keep your wings from giving you away, he might even move closer to converse with you when you were ready to finish.

Your eyes lifted. The molten heat in them made him set his teeth to bite back a low purr. Such a good girl, keeping your pleasure to yourself.

He let you watch the motion of his fingers. The leaf and the tendril did what he asked them to: curled around your bundled nerves, stroking, flicking, before parting you along your seam and making you strangle a half-animal whine as it rose to your lips. You could not even squirm against him and that was wildly unfair.

The little sound you did make tensed his stomach like you’d been caressing him with your talons and let them fall away. He thought, faintly, about how lovely you would look when you could squirm for him – panting, keening, your pretty legs still spread and his fingers tracing the air instead of you while he let those plants tease you. You should do this again in the privacy of the forest; he had the urge to press kisses to your bud until your voice was rough and pleading.

Since when did you get off on tormenting each other? Since you had the time, perhaps. Peace was to be maintained long-term, which gave him the opportunity to slow down all those sweet things he’d learned from bedding you. Kiss where you enjoyed being kissed; leave bruise-darkened love bites on the soft flesh of your inner thighs. Maybe you could enjoy the lash of those little branches under different circumstances.

You gripped handfuls of your trousers in place of handfuls of him. A budding flower bloomed against you, velvet-soft petals nestled against your skin. Oh, Great Skies Above. He shouldn’t have thought about how it would feel to trace it back and forth, trail those petals over your flesh like feathers. You wanted, desperately, to squirm, press forward, beg for more.

You grit your teeth and stared at the wall again. No one had better ask you what you were looking at, the whole of your attention was focused on not grinding that flower into oblivion.

Which amused him to no end, even as he shifted his wandering hand to make sure the low-hanging waistband of his hide trousers kept all but the scent of his desire from you.

Your silent exchanges had not gone unnoticed, though their context most assuredly was. No one on the other side of the table knew that the plant at the nearest corner of the balcony had grown across the floor from a singular point so that the small handful of palace staff flitting in and out of the room would remain unaware that it had. Philip frowned at your shared tension, dropped his eyes back to the document, and re-read the sentence quietly to himself in a handful of different tones.

“Oh skies,” you whispered, taking a moment to deliberately run your hands through your hair. Yes, right there. The press of pliant stem was nowhere near as satisfying as his fingers, but it was nearly enough to make you arch.

“I’m sorry,” Philip repeated. “We need to make sure no one can deliberately misinterpret the text.”

The light stroking slowed. Began to retreat. The horrible tease. Oh, you are going to claw new cracks in his back when this is over.

“We know,” Borra replied.

Your fingers curled in your hair. Another shoot emerged, grew into a whip-thin tendril and crept up the leg of his chair. You kept your mischief entirely to yourself until it was long enough to caress over his thigh and wrap around him through his trousers at the same time.

It was his turn to strangle a hiss, and he failed miserably at it.

“Bella,” Philip whispered rather sharply. The cat was lounging under the table’s middle, well out of range. She wasn’t stupid enough to get wrapped up in your shenanigans.

“Let her be,” Borra’s voice was audibly rougher. “She’s just playing.”

Aurora did not understand quite how she knew what you were up to, or how you were accomplishing it, but you weren’t making any snide quips and Borra no longer watched the three of them like a hawk, so she knew you must’ve been up to something. Make love not war, I suppose.

“If she’s bothering you—”

“It’s just a kitten, Philip,” you replied with much too much satisfaction in your tone; Borra flicked the retreating stem against your bundled nerves and the suddenness of it killed whatever reassurance you meant to tack on at the end. The unfinished sentence hung over the table like a pendulum.

Strange as it was, Aurora was your greatest ally. Her time spent handling affairs alone in Perceforest was adequate motivation to learn how to operate as a team in Ulstead – and to not blame you for indulging yourselves during extended periods of mundane ho-hum. She called them back to an issue she really had taken with phrasing of the line that came before, and you cast a sidelong glance to the man you loved. She knows.

His eyes were melted honey. That little lash’s slow undulating was not enough – he wanted your hands, your mouth, your welcoming, wet heat. If you could just slip away to the balcony together for a moment…

You teased him with a soft little squeeze. Even if he didn’t slip that tendril back inside of you, it lingered along your parted seam so you might take some pleasant friction from rubbing against it – you just had to be careful to keep your wings from giving you away.

You intentionally deprived him of the same. You, too, were consumed with thoughts of lowering his trousers to caress him while you kissed against the sun-warmed stone outside. How hungrily he would run his hands over you, how easily your bodies would join after you were both so well-teased. He would rut you hard, right there where anyone could see. Would he quiet you with his mouth, or would he watch you struggle not to cry out? You could imagine the hunger in his eyes. Nearly feel the collision of your hips. He would growl quietly, just for you, let it dissolve into a quiet, breathless moan…

You dropped your foot from around the chair-leg and pinned the woody stems to the floor, abruptly pulling them away. The sound of it did not go unnoticed, though your companions’ attention only fixated when you stood as calmly as you could while maneuvering the rest of the withering vine out of your pant leg.

For a moment, you genuinely intended to preface your departure. But you had no good excuses, so you drew back to push in your chair (to tug the spindly limbs right off your calf), and you walked out.

Your stem slackened only once you’d already left.

“Was it something I said?” John asked, genuinely bewildered.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Aurora offered, averting her gaze when it landed upon Borra as he stood. She had no intention of finding out just how far you’d gotten with only a table for privacy. “It must be difficult to sit still for so long when you’re not used to it.”

She handed the both of you a gilded excuse, and Borra’s only acknowledgement of it was a low, animal sound that definitely meant what she thought it did.

The balcony wrapped around half of the palace like a second courtyard, leaving plenty of room for the both of you to find an adequate crevice to sneak off to as you used to in the nest’s high peaks. You hadn’t gone far; you perched upon the stone ledge to wait for him the moment you heard the brush of his pinfeathers against the smooth floors.

He’d only meant to tempt you, but like a hunt initiated for its thrill, that urge was not far from the instinct to sate the hunger sharpening your gaze. His wings perked and flared in display, as though your fingers didn’t trace the leather strap across his chest the moment he drew near enough.

He made a low, hot sound of pleasure. Nudged your hips to the very edge. You growled against his mouth in praise.

“Did I please you?” He undid the waistband of your trousers.

You let them drop. Ran your fingers along the folded waist of his. “Take these off and find out.”

He did not hesitate, and, for that, you decided your gentle stroking had teased him enough. Your wings fanned along the white stone; you meant to climb him like a tree, but the support of his arms beat you to it. He joined with you in one swift, smooth advance.

You brought him closer with your legs, ran your talons down his back.

His bit into your hips. Thank skies for practicality; you couldn’t allow it to last any longer than it naturally would, thanks to your human allies, so you pressed him closer, clung to him with your knees. He rocked to the hilt inside of you to wind the tightness in your belly as taut as it could get, kissed you like it would be too long before you could touch one another again – the way you imagined he’d planned to kiss you before the circumstances around your not-conquest changed.

“More,” you whisper-gasped. “I need you. I need you, please.”

He gave you a half-strangled growl in warning, as though you couldn’t feel him twitch. So close. You dragged your talons down the stone; you didn’t care if it rent trenches in the smooth façade, you were so close.

Then you were there, and the sudden throb and quiver of your inner muscles brought him along with you, and every blank space on the climbing branches that ensnared the courtyard-facing half of Ulstead’s palace suddenly contained new flowers. It did not matter what they were – with every shared, summer-hot breath that passed your lips between kisses, more and more of them unfurled.

His love for you, and yours for him, was the strongest power that did not hail from the phoenix herself.

You laughed breathlessly against his lips. Tangled your fingers in his hair. Your afterglow felt warmer than the sun on your spread wings and you tipped your head back to bask in it, knowing all too well that you invited him to kiss along your bared throat.

A moment before the flowers bloomed, Prince Philip put his hand upon his wife’s and excused himself from the still-silent table. His human senses were nowhere near as keen as yours, but his wife was not the fool most believed her to be. Of all the royal perils that could befall her husband, she did not want to add knocked off a balcony because he intruded to the list.

“Philip,” she tried, rising to follow him.

“Just a moment,” he pressed, and was out onto the connected balcony before she could stop him.

Aurora sunk back in her seat and contemplated resting her face in her hands until the secondhand embarrassment passed.

Borra’s wings were a bit more broad than yours, though, and your legs around his waist kept his pants from going far. The flowers bloomed as the young prince followed the outdoor passage, and, at first, he thought the mild flare of your mate’s wings might’ve been for privacy.

Then he saw your legs, and the close proximity of your horns, and the claw marks that punctuated the white stone, and the young prince had the sense to turn around and leave before he saw anything else.

He lingered just beyond the door for a moment, waiting to make eye contact with his wife. His face hid nothing of the range of emotions he’d gone through: awkwardness mingled with amusement, tinged with mild disbelief, all dressed in the finery of poorly-contained embarrassment.

She tried not to laugh, holding his eyes only to deliberately look away as her smile grew. I told you not to.

“Well?” John asked as if the expression on his son’s face did not say plenty.

Philip made a noncommittal sound and a quick retreat to his chair. Perhaps if he stared pointedly at the treaty for a while, he could soothe the pinking of his cheeks. “Where were we?”

John pressed for an answer only once before the both of you returned, a bit more ruffled than you’d left but otherwise unchanged. The flowers along the floor had fully retreated to their place around the balcony’s ledge, and you fluffed your wings before you sat despite the temptation that offered Arabella.

“Come here, kitty-kitty.” You patted your leg.

The awful little thing jumped up into the chair next to Aurora and folded herself up there, her wary little hackles bristled.

You quirked your head, suit yourself, and stretched your legs out in front of you. The whole of your body was pleasantly warm and well relaxed, and you took Borra’s hand on top of the table when he settled beside you. “Go ahead, John. Conjunctions are a riveting conversation starter.”

“I’ll say,” Philip muttered.

Your glinting eyes flickered to your mate. I’ve underestimated either their senses or their observation skills.

He spread his wings comfortably over the arms of his chair and gave the blushing young queen a wild grin. “Only the fun ones.”

                                              -------------------------

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[eternalstrigoii]

Bittersweet

“It’s just gonna be a nice little fluff fic,” I say as I start this last night. I am. So sorry.

Platonic!Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader + Diaval; Maleficent x Diaval; Borra x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

                As with all proper bonded pairs, there were times when you were not with Borra.

In the nest, those times used to be spent honing your skills, chasing captive deer through the tall, dry grass along the rocky outcroppings; scaling from the caverns to the plains using nothing but your wits, your talons, and your knees. You sparred with others, you sat with Ini in the rocky outcroppings of the nest outside, watching the cold and violent sea, and, from time to time, you entertained your kinsmen’s children with your strange ability to recall and emulate the sounds of the birds you heard on the moors.

These days, you spent an increasing amount of your free time with Diaval.

It wasn’t that you miraculously spent none of it with your kinsmen – you did, but Ini was always the curious sort, and the moors offered her a great deal of new stimulation, and Shrike had Percival. Udo always had his fledglings, and you loved him for it, but when Borra convened with Maleficent, it was in your best interest – and often also in Diaval’s – for the both of you to find something else to occupy your time.

For the moment, the days of war and battle plans were over.

So you wandered.

Whether he was a bird or a man didn’t matter, Diaval was good company. Sometimes he saved you shiny things that he’d thought you would like, and you did like them. Sometimes you lay together in the sun and you ran your talons through his feathers until he shivered (which was more amusing to watch when he was a man, and your smirk never failed to rile him).

And, sometimes, he took you to the kingdoms.

Perceforest was not a welcoming place. It better resembled a dumping ground when compared to Ulstead; the buildings were weathered and the stone streets uneven. Even its people seemed burdened by invisible forces. For a land that knew communal, council-based living (or some form of it), they still suffered. You didn’t like to go there because you knew if you went frequently enough, you would feel motivated to do something about it, and that would inevitably work its way back to Maleficent, and you would have to hatch some sort of plan.

You quite liked your free time, so you contented yourself with perching high in their trees and drawing shapes in the air until their crops flourished. Despite their farmers’ toil, it brought them some measure of relief, and there was almost always some left over for you and the raven to share.

The open-air markets of Ulstead were also a draw, with their ready-made sweets and shiny baubles, and you had yet to bother with the Midlands.

You stayed with him near Perceforest most often.

The farmer that nearly killed him twenty years ago was dead, and his daughter now owned the land. She was a pretty thing, round-hipped under her shift. Very clean. She kept house almost obsessively, and at first Diaval agreed with the thought that it was to keep nature from entering, but then she did something neither of you planned on.

She left pastries sitting on the window. In plain sight. Of you and anything else that just so happened to be looking.

You looked to your raven companion, who was, at the time, literally a raven.

He awk’d, partly flapping as his best approximation of a shrug. Do what you will, it won’t be my idea to start something.

“They smell good,” you replied. “We can share.”

He fluffed his feathers at you. No, I will not do your dirty work.

You pursed your lips so they quirked at the corner and thought for a moment. You could take one with your vines, or you could respect peace and not touch them at all, or you could find a third option that would please you both without having to cope with either extreme.

You resolved to do the latter, hopping down and quirking your fingers so that her squash vines continued to flourish while you strode up to the window.

You plucked one from the platter and made a mad dash back, going even higher into the branches than you were originally perched. Diaval laughed at you, and you swept your wing so he had to fly or be shoved off the branch by its wind.

Awk! You said something about sharing?

“You did nothing to help.” You took quite the bite only to pause and look down at it strangely. You weren’t sure what you tasted or if you liked it, so you surrendered the other portion to him.

He picked at it, and after several swallows, quirked his head back to you. Awk! Not much of a baker.

“It’s terrible,” you agreed.

Another few mouthfuls. Awk! No sugar?

You ate it, though it wasn’t as pleasant as you thought. Not pleasant like the molasses cake at the palace, or the stall-vendor with fresh raisin buns. You had no use for currency, and Diaval saw no problem with pocketing some for you from time to time.

“It’s just grain,” you said after a moment, nearly in disbelief. “Who eats just grain?”

Awk! Bread. It’s bread. Surely you must have had bread.

“That is not bread. That is…” Small and lumpy and wrong. Not much of a baker at all. “A rock.”

He quirked his head to the other side and made a low chitter of disapproval.

“What in skies do you want me to do about it? You never help.”

You swore before your ancestors if he tried to levy peace against you as an excuse, you’d smack him from the branches. Instead, he hopped onto your leg and scaled your side until he was perched upon your shoulder. And he nuzzled you, the conniving bastard.

“I will not be goaded into acts of kindness,” you hissed.

He chattered at you gently, and you could hear the honey in his tone. Oh, come on. She’s just a girl. No better than Aurora.

You scowled. Severely.

More chattering; if you help her, we can steal sweet buns.

“I should throw you in her window and see how well you manage.”

He gave you the full force of his beady, black little eyes, and you set your teeth and growled at him.

But he was Maleficent’s mate, and the scheming little brat knew you would do nothing of the sort.

“Where in skies does one find sugar?”

Awk! Awk! Don’t act like I’d make you farm it. Come on. We’ve got plenty of work to do.

He took off from the trees, and you did your best to quietly follow. You left the bread for the squirrels, though you figured if she had the guts to leave her concoctions unattended, she knew how palatable they were.

       You came back several days after dropping off the sack of sugar with a note in Diaval’s marginally neater hand. From one neighbor to another, may sweetness always be shared.

You thought he was being too obvious. He thought it was a brilliant plan.

There was no bread that time, but something was certainly roasting over fire. You breathed in the smell and your wings nearly sagged against the thick limb of your perch.

“What is it?” Diaval, the man, asked.

You had to think of it. You ran your tongue across your teeth and tried to conjure up the memory of what it might be, though it failed you. “I don’t know. It smells good.”

He fluffed with pride, and pretended to wait patiently beside you.

But it took so long. You swore hours passed, and you began to ache with hunger as though you hadn’t eaten just that morning.

She put something on the ledge before you had to run off – narrowly before you had to run off, and, this time, Diaval had no hesitation about sneaking up to the window and grabbing one of them for each of you.

You waited until you were nearly halfway back to indulge yourselves. You found a nice spot in one of the sunny meadows full of flower sprites, and toasted one another to your success with the still-hot pastries in both your grasp.

You bit into it deeply, and promptly spit it back out.

Diaval actually choked.

“How hard is it to cook sweet bread?!” you yelled so loudly it startled the willow sprites napping in their tree. “Sugar, flour, leavening – sweet cream and berries!” It smelled so good, and you wanted to enjoy it, but it was half-baked at best and the gooey center was clumped with poorly mixed batter. You yelled in frustration, threw it halfway across the field, and promptly flopped backward into the grass.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day?” Diaval offered.

“I don’t know where Rome is,” you lamented. “Structural planning and baking are two entirely separate things.”

He patted the leather strap over your shoulder. “We can go to Ulstead next time?”

You were being stubborn. You didn’t want to go to Ulstead, and you didn’t want Perceforest to be a miserable little town. You looked up at the treetops, and the sky, and the vastness of it all to avoid looking at him, because then you would have to acknowledge what the horrible little bird wanted you to do, and you would rather eat handfuls of grass than be of assistance.

“Rome is a very famous city,” Diaval began, and you reached up to put your hand over his face before he could continue.

Skies. Awful, horrible, persistent little bird.

“Speak a word of this, and you’ll be missing a wing when I return you.”

He smiled at you, the beast, like he took pleasure in your kindness. “Oh no, wouldn’t dream of it. Suren of the Cavernous Dark, helping a human. So soon after peace. What would your husband say?”

“My mate would tell you to shut your horrible little mouth and keep it that way.” You got up slowly, brushing the grass and its creatures out of your hair, and turned abruptly on your heel to go back to the little farm near Perceforest.

“I don’t think he would.” There was a note of laughter in his voice as he got up to follow.

“He would,” you pressed. “Only without so many words.”

         Are you a fool? was the introduction you’d settled on. It doesn’t take an army to bake a batch of sweet bread. You planned on the inherent sharpness of your tone to convey your displeasure.

But she was out in the fields when you got there, and you stopped short at the edge of the trees.

She was crying.

You turned around to leave, but Diaval was right behind you. You gave him a wide-eyed, furious look that implied he had better leave your path immediately or else he would never get the opportunity to be his beautiful bird self again, but he looked at you with the same manner of even-natured patience as he gave Maleficent.

You could’ve slapped the plumage right off of him.

You jerked your head quickly back toward the field. No. No! I am not dealing with this! This is the exact opposite of what I stuck around to do!

He sighed and leveled his gaze.

You could’ve beat your wings at him. Pushed him, smacked him, hurried him off. Instead, you flared and you quirked your head with a set jaw.

“Will it batter you so much to be nice?”

“Yes!” you whispered, much too fiercely. “Or did you forget that her father nearly killed you!”

He waited.

The things you enjoyed the most about Diaval’s company were also the things that infuriated you. He was lovely, intelligent, wholly without judgment and often also without reserve. He was a peaceful, good-natured bird, and there was even a part of you that would’ve admitted that you loved him the same as the rest of your kinsmen if he asked you directly.

But he could be a real bastard when he wanted to. Making you do things you didn’t want to. Having the audacity to ask. To propose you extend your kindness to a human. Skies. Disgusting. It spit on your fallen ancestors.

And yet, you turned back to her. Lowered your wings so you could actually see her. See her the way you’d seen Aurora on the battlefield, a child-queen with more heart than strength (though she grew into the latter). She was no more than a sniveling child, hardly much older than the girl you’d grown so fond of.

Beloved by all who meet her, you reminded yourself. Bitterly. Intentionally bitterly.

You waited until you were several paces away from Diaval to breathe out your fury. The warmth of summer left your body and made the lovely little flower grove perk with life anew, and the crying child looked up only to startle in fear.

“Your sweet bread tastes terrible,” you said by way of greeting.

She stared up at you with her mouth open like a fish plucked freshly from the river. You set your teeth to avoid laughing, and then you forced yourself to look away.

“You are very bad at baking, and I would like to understand why. It’s not a difficult task. Anyone can do it with the right resources.”

You heard Diaval sigh, and you beat your wing at him. Shut up. I’m being as nice as I am.

“…no one taught me.” She was crying again, for skies’ sake, and you really, truly, genuinely could’ve wrung Diaval’s neck like you meant to eat him for dinner.

Surely someone can, you meant to say. You meant to say it, but she went on before you could stop her.

“I’m trying. I really am trying. It’s just been so hard. I’m all on my own out here… the whole farm is mine to run and mine alone. And it just keeps growing.” She was…flush with her tears. She dabbed lightly at her wet face. “Now the cow’s calving and my goat’s getting old and I can’t harvest all of this by myself.”

“Have you no family?”

She gestured at the place where she left her terrible sweet bread, a plot of untilled yarrow and blooming sorrel. “I’m on my own.”

“No neighbors?” you offered. “No kin at all?”

“My neighbors don’t count for family.”

How strange humans were. How utterly, pitifully alone. Each and every last one of them made themselves into an island, as though the individual and the collective could not coexist.

“Your cow is calving?” You were more deliberate with your words. “Then they will soon have milk?”

“She already does.” She wiped her face again.

“Then you will also have milk for yourself. One calf won’t drink it all. Add it to your mixture before you bake. And stir it until it’s smooth. Whatever sugar you add that you feel is enough, add twice as much. And berries.”

She looked at you strangely, and you sighed so forcefully it made your wings move.

“I will help you harvest if you make edible sweet bread. Do we have a deal?”

“Why would you help me? You’re moor-folk. You have everything you need.”

You ignored the note of resentment you heard in favor of leveling your gaze upon her as Diaval had you. “Everything but sweet bread, which you will give to me in exchange for my help. That is how a bargain works.”

She was silent for a moment, studying you. You were no pixie-witted fairy godmother, nor was she some helpless child in need of your defense.

But she was alone, and your kind didn’t do that.

So you were pleased when she nodded, if only for the food.

“Then try your hand again. We’ll be evenly matched; everything I do for you is repaid in return.”

She nodded. “But…if I’m not good--?”

“You will improve.” It came out as much of a threat as you meant it.

        “He’s gotten very attached to you.”

You nearly startled out of your skin at Maleficent’s voice, though, to your credit, your wings didn’t fold in defense.

“Who? The little bog-thing I shooed off?” Even you had to scrub your leather from time to time, and you put effort into the task. You washed it, dried it, re-sealed it with waxes and mended all the broken spots. “It kept throwing mud at me.”

She raised her chin, and the humanness of her expression gave you pause. You huffed back a lock of your hair from your face and tilted your head oddly.

“Diaval,” she replied. Her voice betrayed nothing.

You stared at her for much too long before you shifted back onto your haunches. “Romantically?” Your feelings on the subject were much too clear in the way you said the word – you were too fond of him to be disgusted, but that wasn’t by much.

She quirked her head at you in return.

“Skies, Maleficent, talk to me. He’s your mate.”

“And Borra is yours.” The cool evenness of her tone was so familiar and yet so frustratingly difficult to constantly have to decipher. “It would be a shame to tell him—”

“To tell him what?” No sooner had you asked than you realized the implication, and you laughed out loud at its mortality. “Do you think he would be jealous?”

She stared at you. You saw the swirl of power in her eyes.

“Are you jealous, Maleficent? You? Protector of the moors, Queen Mother to all kingdoms? Great skies.” You nearly threw your leather down on the riverbank. “Diaval is my friend, and we’ve been bothering a girl on a farm outside Perceforest for sweet bread for several weeks. She’s a terrible baker, and promised to try to do better.”

“You spoke to her?” Something told you she didn’t believe an ounce of what you said.

“I did. She’s the daughter of the human farmer who nearly killed your mate when he was just a bird. The man’s dead now. She’s by herself. No kinsmen to help her.” You left out the part where you were, though you imagined she’d be able to connect the mutually beneficial dots. “I’ll take you out there, if you like. You can endure her cooking with me.” And then, without thinking, you added, “And then you can tell me why the kingdom of Perceforest is in such disrepair.”

“It’s had more corrupt leaders than it’s had good ones.” She hid nothing from you in that respect, at least. “We’re working on resolving that.”

“We as in you and your daughter, or we as in you?”

You knew how easy it would’ve been for her to throw you headfirst into the river, and yet you still talked to her like your equal.

“You’re not one of them. You know that, don’t you? You can ask for help. We’re your people, Maleficent, your family whether or not we’re blood to you.” You picked up your leather and your leather-cloth and settled back on the shore. “Conall didn’t pluck you from the sea because of your great power, he did it because you’re you. Your place with us isn’t a matter of evening out a bargain or repaying a debt. You were one of us whether or not you fought at our side.”

There was a crease forming in your side that you’d have to reinforce before it split. You’d almost forgotten what you were getting at, only to have your head snap back up so you could reply with much too much vehemence, “And ravens mate in pairs. You’re the one he wants. That won’t change because he steals sweets with me.”

She was silent for so long that you’d almost thought she left without acknowledging you. But she hadn’t, and so you sat up without thinking to pluck the bird skull at her forehead and pull her leather wrappings off.

She let you.

“I never tell Borra that I love him as a reminder. I wish I didn’t have to say the same for you.” You closed her hands around the wrapping and brushed back a lock of her hair.

Whether or not she believed you, you thought she might’ve understood. Even when she took wing much too quietly, some part of you knew that she would eventually. She had just been on her own for far too long.

           You grew nothing for the girl, but harvested much.

She spent most of her time helping you. She spent most of her time toiling still; you only came on occasion, and you had enough of a physical advantage over her to accomplish much in significantly shorter a time.

The next sweet breads she made for you were not terrible. They were not very good, but they were edible. You left half a plate for Diaval and pretended to be upset when he bounced along on raven-toes with a whole one in his mouth, just taunting you with it.

You did not help her clear the field after the second set. They were not very good, and you left the one you hadn’t finished. The squash you harvested you took with you, and it was roasted with herbs over your bonfire that night.

That was the first night Maleficent joined you.

She said nothing of your encounter at the riverbank, nor did you. She wore her hair down and Diaval the man was at her side, where he belonged.

You kept your smile to yourself for their sake.

         “Try these.”

You gave a well-warranted pause. It looked like the girl – whose name you pretended not to remember, but secretly knew – had grown bold about how elaborate she could be. The bitterness of the last batch was still fresh in your mind, and you looked at her skeptically.

“Oh!” she huffed and felt around in her apron until she had their recipe in hand. “I got it from the baker. I told him that I was trying to refine my skills,” an understatement if you ever heard one, “and he offered me this. It’s very simple, and I think you’ll like it. It’s not a bread, it’s a cake. It takes much less time.”

“You didn’t forget about it?” you clarified.

Her cheeks reddened. “No, not this time. I sat there and did my mending while I waited.”

You took one of the small cakes from her plate and looked it over for scorch marks. The bottom was brown and firm, a little flaky, and the rest was a nice, spongy lump. You took a bite in front of her, and, for once, weren’t immediately repelled.

“It’s good,” you admitted.

“It’s good?” she repeated, much happier about it than she should’ve been.

You nodded. So, you could leave her be after harvest or pawn her off on the other moor-folk. You weren’t the only one in pursuit of a coveted sweet, and you imagined, lonely as she was, she’d enjoy the company of their many over just you.

“Oh, I’m glad! I’ll have to keep one and let him know how it turned out. Tell me if there’s anything special you want, will you?”

Molasses cake, you thought with renewed enthusiasm. But you shook your head fondly and watched her rush the plate back to the windowsill as though Diaval’s approval was as necessary as yours.

He wasn’t as rare of a help as you’d thought he’d be. So, perhaps, he deserved equal share.

        The calf bleated, shoving his head into your hands.

“I know.” You rubbed the velveteen fur along the back of his neck. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

You’d stolen the girl’s leather-brush to help the little creature itch the velvet fuzz from his horn nubs. Like any child, he was consumed with the thing that bothered him, and you took a surprising amount of pleasure in knowing how to help.

Surprising, considering you’d been dancing around the raw place in your heart that still burned like an iron wound. The raw place flared up again when you thought about your people’s own fledglings and the balms and tonics used to soothe their growing horns.

Harvest was coming. Your people had yet to decide whether you should stay in the moors or return to the nest for the winter. A great many of you believed the moors would stay unsullied; that you couldn’t just survive, but thrive if you stayed. The others worried about the change in seasons upon your elders and your fledglings, and called to make the journey before the headwinds changed and the sea became violent.

There were several reasons why you did not choose a side.

They were the same reasons why you refused to enter Ulstead even though Aurora’s young husband sent along casks of spiced cider and mulled wine. They were early, some of the first made, and the boy could’ve talked about the orchards near the sea where they were harvested all night, if you’d listened. You refused to acknowledge them, lest the raw place begin to bleed again.

“Are you alright?”

She stopped with her wash-basket on her hip, and you heaved a sigh that moved your wings. “Can you manage the work by yourself, now?”

There was a part of you, however small, that hoped she’d say no.

Instead, she beamed like Aurora as she rested her basket on the fence and leaned over it like a child. “Actually,” there was an edge of false shyness to her voice that made you bristle, “I won’t be alone for much longer.”

The ancestors enjoyed your torment, then.

“The baker’s name is John. He’s a very good man, and we’ve gotten very close. I told him of how well the farm has done, and he’d like to join me here rather than live in the village. I agreed.”

The calf rubbed his head into your palm, and the raw spot in your heart wept.

“I planned on telling you when the molasses cake was done, but I suppose now is as good of a time as any? You can still come for sweets, but I don’t suppose you’ll need to help me when I have a husband around.”

Diaval was your blessing, then more than ever. He flew down from his perch in the barn – he’d been mousing, the loaf – and plucked a garment from the basket to take to the line. She exclaimed with laughter and ran after him, uttering some gentle variation of silly bird, and you put the leather brush down.

You did not wait for the cakes. And you did not plan on going back.

         “I’m not good company today,” you said as soon as the twig-nest rustled against folded wings.

Your warning didn’t faze Borra in the slightest. He joined you in your bed, folding a wing around your middle and using it as an excuse to pull you close. You tucked your chilly feet between his, since you’d already been laying there for a while, and got his face pressed into your hair for your trouble.

“Where do you run off to?” he murmured after a moment, certainly smelling the human in your hair.

“A girl in the valley makes sweets.” You told yourself that you kept your tone even, but you could hear yourself lamenting.

He waited, patiently, for the rest.

“Now she’s getting married.”

She was getting married and Maleficent checked in on her daughter at least a dozen times a day. Why she didn’t just leave to live in the castle, you’d ruefully considered asking. That lonely little thing would forge a life, Diaval would be a grandfather, and you…

You awoke with the dawn every morning and made your way down to the half-naked field of glowing blooms. A cemetery desecrated, countless lives robbed of their honor, innumerable families robbed of their memories generations-deep. Your little bloom finally opened during the summer. It was slow to grow, and very small, and you tended the rock-circle you made around it obsessively. Plucked the stray grass that dared attempt to bloom between them; replaced your shed pinfeathers when the ones sticking up out of the ground started to look weathered. Little Thing should’ve been inside you, growing. Warm and loved in the cradle of your body. Big or small, warrior or pacifist, whatever they would’ve been, you would’ve loved them so fiercely. You ached for them, and you would continue to ache for them even when the ache was, once more, an open wound.

You had done your share of crying. But the time for battle strategy was over, and you had no other outlet for your pain.

He pulled you close until you were so flush you could feel how he moved with every breath. Neither of you spoke for a long time; you trusted that he knew why you phrased it as you did, and he did, and so you lay there and navigated each painful reminder with the same inopportune dodging that you’d given the queen’s iron bombs.

“We can try again,” was how he broke that silence.

Your lips quirked half-heartedly.

When you didn’t respond, he propped himself up on his elbow and guided your chin until you were looking at him. You pressed your lips to his thumb when it brushed over them.

“If you want to.” He searched your face, and you thought it was entirely unfair for him to be so beautiful. You brushed your fingers over your favorite little decorative crack on his nose, breaking the respite of your misery to revere him. “If you’re ready.”

           She left you alone for about a week. Then a paper-wrapped parcel appeared at the edge of the moors with your name on it, and it was full of sweet, sticky spiced rolls.

I’m hope I didn’t offend you, the note in her hand replied. I very much liked your company, and Diaval’s. You’re always welcome to come back. Sweetness is meant to be shared, after all.

The moor-folk bothered you for portions, and you ended up stealing three rolls and leaving them the rest. Four, you decided after a moment, before the hoard descended.

One for you, one for him, and one for the people you both loved.

           Baker-John of Perceforest brought with him a cart well-stocked. He would not abandon his duties in the village, so he would simply have to go back and forth between the village and the farm. You watched them unpack said cart, your little human carrying big, stone dishes and sacks nearly half as big as she was. Her intended, not much older, brought heavier.

“And who is she?” Maleficent asked of Diaval, who told her all about Baker-John of Perceforest, who was apparently a kind and gentle, patient and loving man who your human was dearly, truly, madly in love with.

“Sarah,” you replied. John and Sarah, Sarah and John. The humans. Didn’t have the same ring to it as Maleficent and Diaval, Diaval and Maleficent or Borra and Suren, Suren and Borra, but it would do.

“They know about you?” Borra asked.

“She does,” Diaval replied.

She’d learned from you, you saw while you studied the little farm from afar. From both of you. Gone was the scarecrow, for the crows ate the pests more than the food; there was a little pile of what could not be used some ways away from everything, left to return to the soil where it could be used in the spring. The leather brush had been nailed to the fence and the calf, still shedding velvet, mooed in pleasure while he worked his head back and forth over it.

You were glad for her. Really, you were.

When she kissed him, it was warm and sweet and bright like the sun – brief, gentle, and almost always followed by delighted laughter. He brought firewood to the barn in droves, and as she gathered another satchel, she paused. Her hair fell in her face and she swept it back only to stop when she saw you. All of you.

You crooked your wing around Borra and canted your head toward Diaval and Maleficent. I’m not offended. You were the one all on your own.

She was not Aurora. She was human – just a plain, ordinary little person living a plain, ordinary little life. But when she smiled at you, at all of you…

Well, you had to stop yourself from smiling in return. Diaval would’ve never let you hear the end of it.

             “Easy.” You patted the strong neck of the no-longer-calf that ran to greet you in his spring pasture. The fields were newly tilled, and your little human wore her hair up while she planted on bent knee.

Her eyes lifted, and you weren’t surprised at all by how eagerly she got to her feet. “It’s you!”

“The winter was kind to you.” She looked happy. Better fed.

Her feet sunk into the pliant earth when she ran to you, and you let her throw her arms around you like you were an old friend. Your wings even folded partially around her.

“I’m so glad you’re here. Diaval’s been coming for cakes, but he never tells me if you like them.”

“That’s because he didn’t tell me he was,” you admitted, though you could hardly be upset with him. Awful little creature, positively doting on his mate.

She laughed and hid her smile behind her hand. “Oh no.”

“I’ll deal with him later,” you joked. “That isn’t why I’ve come.”

She straightened, taking your unexpected presence seriously. Smart girl.

“With your permission, I would like to tell the moor-folk of you. They will help you with your fields in exchange for sweets just as readily.”

She glanced at the ground with her false shyness, her bright eyes glinting just like your child-queen’s. “Actually, I’d love the help. You know my husband travels back and forth, and it doesn’t give me the help I’d planned on.”

You nodded, all business. “Then I will. They are troublesome at times, but they understand gentle discouraging.”

“Of course.” She went to one of the buckets beside the well and washed the dirt from her hands. She knew nothing of your time rebuking poachers on the moors, and you didn’t feel the need to offer that information now.

“I feel I will be of little use to you this year. I also have business in Ulstead. The queen’s had twins, and I am to be their godmother.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Congratulations! Do you know her well, then? Aurora, isn’t it?” She was so pleasant, so calm. You could’ve told her that you’d taken fond to a seven-headed sea dragon and you doubted she would’ve been concerned.

“I do. She loves your village, and she’s doing everything in her power to extend the benefits of annexation across the kingdom.”

“Well, that will be lovely. I’d like to thank her myself when she visits.” She was gentle and kind, your little human, but she also wasn’t entirely foolish. She paused when you offered nothing else, and you let your smile betray you.

“Aurora’s fledglings will not be the only ones soon to discover the moors.”

You’d come all this way to tell someone you barely knew and shouldn’t have trusted, and yet the way she threw her kerchief in the air made you laugh out loud. She ran to you, pulled you close against her, and hugged you like you were kin.

She withdrew with an excited gasp, taking one of your taloned hands. “The man you were with was your husband, then?”

You quirked your head. In so many words. Your people didn’t rely on institution for a crutch the way they did.

“You – you stay right here.”

You laughed at her retreat, quietly for once. You were warm with joy and hadn’t come alone, not that Diaval could be pried away from his daughter or his grandchildren even if you��d asked him to.

Your no-longer-calf butted you in the arm, and you butted him back with your wing. “No.” Let the fledglings play with the farm animals.

Sarah waddled out of the house with a stack of nesting cloth nearly half as big as she was, as though she’d never felt the warmth of your skin and failed to notice that you could forage for your own materials.

“Here, feel free to keep or give away whatever you like.” She gave them all to you, and you had to push them down in order to see over them.

“Why are you giving me a gift?”

“Because you’ve given me one! Well, several, but if it hadn’t been for you,” and how terribly you’d confronted her about her lack of practical skills, “I never would’ve met John. They say true love is what woke Aurora, and you gave true love to me. You and Diaval.” She put her hands on the blanket-stack to help you squish them down. “I hope you both know true love in all its forms – with the people you love, and with the families you make.”

“Thank you,” you said before you could stop yourself. Aurora would get her peace yet. “I will see you again, Sarah of Perceforest.”

“I’d hope so. I wanna meet them. And your husband, when the time’s right.” You pretended not to notice that she pointedly did not glance over your shoulder, and you squished the stack of blankets against your side.

“And I, yours.”

Sarah beamed.

It was not a straightforward thing, happiness. Much the same way that peace was dependent upon the presence of war, you would ache over Little Thing for the remainder of your life – but, even though Borra didn’t say anything out loud, he still gave you a sidelong glance with just a bit too much of a quirk to his lips when you retreated into the woods with that stack of nesting-cloth under your arm.

You took one of the quilts out of the pile and flung it at him. “He goaded me into being nice.”

He caught it, folded it into a more compact form, and carried it under his arm. “As has Maleficent, I see. Aurora didn’t learn it from the air.”

               If you liked this and want to see other work, click here.

[eternalstrigoii]

Salt of the Sea - I

Part of the U.W. ‘verse Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader; Maleficent x Diaval; Shrike x General Percival; Philip x Aurora; King John adopted everyone

                       A great battle warred in the courtyards of Ulstead.

Iron armor fended off fey wing, though gouged deeply from talon-claws. Those fighting were not unarmed this time – you wore a chest plate made of bronze over one of the spider-silk shirts Queen Aurora had woven for you. It was equally resistant to penetration, and for that, you were grateful.

Because Percival was a terrible shot.

King John’s – or, rather, Queen Aurora and Prince Philip’s – royal guard trained with your people on as frequent of an occasion as time allowed. They were nothing like you; they relied too heavily on their weapons and their armor. They had yet to learn to move like limbs of the same beast.

You and Borra did not have that problem.

You had fought for so long with him at your back that he knew when to hold out his hand so you could hook your arm through his and splay your massive wings. You threw your weight over his back, slamming your bare feet into the iron shields of the men that sought to overtake you. He righted immediately, blocking the sweep of Percival’s shield.

Aurora watched intently from one of the palace’s grand balconies with a child in either arm.

Your new, bronze gauntlets deflected blows much better than the leather ones. You hadn’t noticed the deep gash someone’s sword had cut when you’d crossed them before you the last time you play-fought. You’d felt the bite of iron on your skin and smiled with far too many teeth, but, still, John insisted upon the upgrade. (It delighted you far too much to watch the blood drain from their faces.)

One sword deflected from them, then another; your fist connected with someone’s face, and the whole three guardsmen training with you took a collective step backward. You pursued them anyway, kicking the dazed center one’s shield.

You heard the sizzle of iron in contact with Borra’s skin, and you knew he’d disarmed Percival again. He held the tip of Percival’s blade under his chin with a wild, wicked smile before tossing it down in the loose stone just as Philip had nearly a year before.

“You need to trust them,” he said, much more patiently than you’d thought he would. “If you don’t trust your men, you’ll die in battle.”

“He doesn’t have that problem with his faerie wife,” the man whose nose you’d broken said, and you smelled the flush that immediately took hold of Percival’s skin.

“Then Shrike will fight with you next time.” He turned, his eyes skimming over you before lifting to the others, “Next time, there will be more of us and more of you. You’ll learn to fight together.”

“Ain’t she about ready to pop?” one of the swordsmen asked.

You were a warrior, trained nearly from birth. The swell of your belly didn’t slow you down, not even when the child inside started to squirm and writhe – just as he did then, like he knew he’d been acknowledged.

“Not until harvest,” you replied, with no lacking measure of irritation.

Aurora, particularly, worried for you, though John and Philip had never seen a warrior of your caliber continue to fight. Your child was strong, this time; there was no poison in the water that fell in the moors’ peaks where you’d relocated. To be closer to Maleficent, you’d joked.

Borra rested his hand on your belly at one of your child’s favorite kicking spots, and their persistent movement made you sigh with theatrical exasperation. You dropped your head against his shoulder. “They’re trying to fight their way out.”

“Borra’s child already has an appetite for war,’ Percival joked.

He grinned so largely that the sun glinted off his sharp teeth, and the swell of pleasure in your heart became a tidal wave. “They can’t wait to meet you,” he murmured in your ear, then pressed a kiss to the apple of your cheekbone.

“They’re hungry,” you replied, deadpan-teasing. “So am I.”

“Come dine with us!” Aurora called from the balcony. You were starting to suspect some of Maleficent’s magic was rubbing off on her, the way she listened in.

You sighed fondly, your eyes still locked with Borra’s.

He grinned and tilted back his head. The sun glinted off the gold freckles in his skin and summoned your fingers to trace their path from his temple to his jaw. “Is that an order, daughter of Maleficent?”

“It’s a please,” she replied.

“Goat and turnips?” Percival asked, drawing the sharpness of your gaze.

He grinned. He’d eaten with you enough to know what sort of habits you’d fallen into. But, yes – goat, turnips and agave were your child’s favorite things (although with the variety of food in the palace, you truly could’ve fixated upon anything). It was in your best interest, and the best interest of your people, to decline lest you find a new and even less appealing vegetable to enjoy.

Shrike already had words for you about the turnips.

“Come.” He grinned at the both of you. “There’s a region in the East that’s already grown large pumpkins. Have you ever had one before?”

You’d found that, sometimes, they called things you were familiar with something different – like roast duck and herbed fish. You shrugged, and pretended not to notice Aurora’s retreat into the palace to join you.

“Must it be inside?” you asked.

“Nah, we’ll move the party out onto the veranda.”

You gave him another frustrated look. He knew you had no idea what in stars he was saying, and he did this only to you. He was kind to Shrike and too afraid of Borra (not that Borra didn’t laugh at your response from time to time).

“The balcony,” he clarified. “The one next to the dining hall.”

You growled at him just because you could, and it did nothing to faze him.

His men followed, one limping, one still holding his bloody nose.

“They aren’t wrong.” Borra kissed your jaw, his hands remaining in the cradle he’d made under your belly. “We’ve fought hard for them. You deserve peace as much as the rest of us.”

“I won’t be shelved because I’m carrying our child. I’m not Aurora.” Not fragile and delicate like she was. Your skin was like stone, and you wore stronger armor now – armor with bands that adjusted so even your growing child was safe.

“I haven’t asked you to be.” He kissed you again. “Just be careful. Hm? I love you.” Yet another kiss to your lips made them quirk with a smile. You kissed him in return. “You’re always at my side, Suren. That will never change.”

“If I don’t fight with you, Aurora will start making flower crowns and expecting me to wear them,” you said with exceptional gravity, as though it was the worst possible punishment you could think of. “She’ll have her pixies tailor gowns for me.”

He gave you a playful little growl. “Spider-silk wedding dress. Crown of roses in your hair.”

You swatted his armored shoulder. “You’re not supposed to like it!”

He had no reason to gather you into his arms, but he did, and you had half a mind to put on an act and pretend to be his damsel princess. You linked your fingers behind his neck and fluttered your wings with false helplessness, and fresh, warm laughter bubbled from him. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I am careful.”

He quirked a brow.

“I promise.”

There was no changing the way he felt. You knew what manner of man you loved well before he lobbied for Maleficent – before you heard the fury in his voice when he told the others of the council that she’d been shot, that humans would find her, that if Conall hadn’t found her, she would be dead.

You hadn’t trusted her then. Almost none of you had. But Borra was right, and he always was – she was what would save you. She had saved you all. And the child she raised brought justice with your peace.

You let him carry you to the veranda (a word you thought with an internal sneer), the great, pale balcony choked with white rose-vines leftover from the young queen’s wedding. Some of the flower sprites borne from it had to have contained the spirits of your people, though that hardly mattered when it came to the endurance of your dying race.

“Truthfully,” he pressed, sitting on the ledge with his massive wings draped over the many blooms. “How do you feel?”

Truthfully? You were growing more and more certain that your child would not wait until harvest. You’d been awoken overnight by their shifting, as though they were already trying to stretch their under-developed wings. How stifling your body must’ve been to them; you doubted they’d know the womb of the earth from which you’d come.

“I feel,” you righted yourself somewhat to gently bunt horns with him, “like you have no reason to worry. I know you will anyway, but I promise – they’re strong. They’re healthy, and they love you as much as I do.”

“And you?” the softness in his gaze when he brushed his fingers over your neck was unfair, he knew what his eyes did to you.

“I’m heavy, Borra. I’m always hungry, and I’m unused to being tired. As far as suffering goes, I’m not far gone.”

“I’m glad.” Aurora joined you on the balcony, then, with her little boys on either of her sides. The young princes were rapidly approaching their first birthdays, and you knew it was only a matter of time before your people started trying to convince her to celebrate on the moors with them and her mother.

She spent much too much time among humans these days.

“I have something to ask of you, if it wouldn’t be too much.” She’d prefaced many things in the last year that way, by handing you your favorite baby (the one you’d first held and given your blessing, though you loved his brother much the same) and preparing an unnecessary speech.

Borra claimed the other child without being asked, as though you and two more weren’t draped across his lap.

“I’d like you to be there, at the christening.” She twirled and twisted her fingers as though toying with invisible rings. You thought she had the nerve to look up at you, but, this time it wasn’t the case. “Maleficent and Diaval won’t be the only magical beings there, but they would be the only…” Dark fey. Dark fey, as though she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “Not-little ones. People will be afraid.”

“And you think we’ll make them any less?” you responded.

She glanced at you, and you nearly crawled out of your skin. The gentle innocence in her eyes was a lie; her eyes flickered down to the swell of your belly before rising back to your face, and she had the nerve to bite at the skin of her lower lip as though she had shame in giving herself away.

“You’re their godparents. And defender of the moors. You lead your people—”

“On a council,” you replied, damn near asking her out loud why Shrike and Percival weren’t their token interspecies romance.

“And I love you. You’re my family. All of you are. I’m not asking the others not to come, but out of everyone who will, I’d like you both to be there.”

But especially you, with the child inside of you disarming the terrified nobility. A symbol of peace and prosperity, the first of your kind born outside the cradle of isolation in centuries.

You owed her, you supposed. You didn’t, but every time she asked for something, that little part of you cropped back up. She’d done the right thing, and you were grateful, and though you should be insulted, you weren’t, because you were fond of her and her children and her silly young husband and her father-in-law, and, especially, her mother.

You looked to Borra. Let it be his call.

The baby in his arms could stand, now, which surprised you considering how rarely he was put down. He’d grabbed hold of one of Borra’s horns and stood on two feet in the safety of your mate’s curled wing. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow, hopefully. It’s….” Aurora’s hesitation melted away with a laugh. “It needed to be perfect.” Because it wouldn’t be like hers. King John of Ulstead was no King Stefan, whose exploits you’d been told in detail long after Diaval had begun to trust you, and though you had still hardly known Maleficent then, you’d taken wing to join her in her perch high in the peaks and embraced her as though she was your sister. You had known you hadn’t needed to, but you had, and something like a distant friendship formed afterward. You had grown, in some way, at least mildly fond of one another, primarily connected by your men as you were.

He met your eyes, and you gave a falsely-irritated sigh. “Couldn’t convince them to bring it to the moors?”

“No,” she said, and the obvious frustration in her voice satisfied your suspicion. The people of Ulstead still did not want you there, and for that reason alone, you quirked your head in approval.

“We’ll be there,” Borra replied.

“Good, I’m glad!” John exclaimed, leading the procession of food onto the balcony’s newly-set table. There were wooden plates and cutlery, though he must’ve known you wouldn’t use hardly any of it. “How is the armor we’ve designed working?”

You took your cue to gather the children and separate from your place on his lap, though you’d committed to not being ornamental. Aurora took hers back one at a time, lingering beside you as Borra closed the space between them.

“I’m not a fan of the plating.” They were all business again, strategy fresh in their minds. “We have to fly with it on. The way it’s designed now is too heavy. There’s too much stress on the joints.”

“You have to have something,” John pressed. About that, he wasn’t wrong.

“Yes, but they’re muscular. The bones are hollow. We need them to move a certain way, and if you reinforce plating with too much banding -- if you plate over whole sections of the wing at all—”

Philip joined you and his wife, pressing a kiss to Aurora’s temple. He was listening, just as you were, though his attention made up for the lapse in yours when one of the many servants got to work assembling a platter of a thick orange squash.

“Pumpkin,” you said to yourself, tasting the word on your tongue.

You never would’ve called it that, but humans were strange creatures.

                You awoke again that night with a jolt, startling at the force of your fledgling’s thrashing.

Borra’s arm tightened around you gently. He’d taken to holding you in the cradle of his wing, folded around your body like a blanket as though you’d ever want for warmth at his side. You shifted your hips, sighing in frustration when the movement didn’t cease.

You weren’t at all surprised to find him awake beside you. He always was quick to rouse, even without the potential for attack on the horizon.

“He’s restless,” you whispered.

Still, he watched you with an excess of caution. When you stood to stretch, he was slow to fully withdraw his wing from around your body. You fanned yours, beat them in the air, rolled your neck, and wandered the nest with equal restlessness.

Maybe your child did yearn for freedom as you had.

“Calm down,” you whispered to them, your hands running over the curve of your belly time and time again. “Let me rest. You’ll be here in no time, and then you can keep me up all night.”

All your movement worried him. It worried you, too, though you said nothing of it. As sacred and necessary every child was to rebuilding your people, the elders said the process would be uncomfortable. It required patience and resolve, commitment to your undertaking. There was little difference between pregnancy and the preparation for war.

But they’d said nothing about the little monster never sitting still. Maybe that was your fault. Maybe you’d given them an agave flower too many.

“Suren.” His voice was low as he shifted, drawing his great wings in.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’ve been like this almost every night.”

You felt like there was a weight between your hips. You’d felt it every night for nearly the last week – your child made you painfully aware of its presence. You’d thought, the first handful of times, their arrival might come with little warning.

He rose, intending to join you – to stop you from pacing, perhaps, though you thought you might completely lose your mind if you did. Though, almost as soon as he rose, you saw something in the distance.

Not a meteor, for it didn’t travel. Not a bonfire, for it wasn’t fixed. A strange glow bobbed along the other side of the moors – high above the ruined castle and the village still preserved. The people who still lived within it.

And you were torn back to Ulstead, to the explosion of red bombs. Men you’d known your whole life crumbling around you, reduced to nothing. Vaporized. Most of them didn’t have the time to scream.

It wasn’t the first time either of you were stolen by those vivid dreams, memories replayed in the darkness of your closed eyes. Iron nets. The fire of crossbows. Bolts, bullets, and arrows. The sting of pain at a shield’s contact, the bite of a sword into your leather, the hiss as a blade made contact with your skin. Sometimes you didn’t even have to be asleep.

But Borra interrupted them, with your face in his hands. He drew you back as though breaking a spell. His flared wings met yours, and his voice was gentle. “It’s alright. It’s over. It’s alright now.”

You hated that he understood. You hated that he shared it all with you, though some part of you was also grateful. The burns iron left on his skin, the mark on his arm where Percival pierced. It was all so much, and you had the nerve to bring a child into this world – a world where even you still felt hatred for what you most feared.

“It’s alright.” His forehead rested against yours, your horns practically one. “Come back to bed.”

“There was a fire,” you whispered, “over the wall of thorns.”

He drew you close to him. You almost thought it wouldn’t be there when his wings folded back, but, no – there it was, lingering above the wall of thorns.

A torch.

You felt him stiffen. You knew what he wanted to do, and yet he looked to you for your approval first.

“Go,” you whispered. “But take her with you.”

He kissed you, sudden and firm. You pretended not to feel its gravity as he ran, as he launched himself from your nest on his powerful wings.

You pretended you didn’t feel as though you’d been shelved, though that was exactly how you did.

         You scrubbed the tired from your eyes and stared into the breakfast fire.

The thick, juicy flesh of some large animal made your stomach growl. It was nearly done. Percival brought it with his arrival at dawn, and all the moors called out to him in welcome.

They woke you, curled in your mate’s wing. He had gone with Maleficent in the night, and they claimed to have found nothing (though you were still waiting to ambush Diaval to make sure).

“How do you feel?” Shrike slung her legs over one of the large, fallen logs that had begun to serve as perch for your people when the earth was too damp to be comfortable.

“Almost too heavy to fly,” you responded. “They keep me up at night.”

“It’ll come soon enough.” She ripped a generous portion of meat from the bone and offered it to you.

“I hate being taken care of.”

“Good, I’m the last person you want taking care of you.”

You conceded and took the meat from her, and she responded by pressing a hand to your belly. “Percy tells me you’ve got quite an appetite for war.”

The kicking started. You growled quietly, though you definitely preferred it when they moved to when they were silent. They. He. Whatever it was. Whatever it turned out to be, it was yours, and you loved it, no matter how tired and frustrated it left you.

“We’ll celebrate you next, little thing.” She drummed her talons lightly on the spot in response. “Once we’re done with Aurora.”

You couldn’t hide the face you pulled. Lovely, more celebrations.

“You’re bearing the first child born outside the nest in centuries. If you didn’t want fanfare, you should’ve taken them home.”

Percival rescued you from telling her that you believed that option to be fast-fading, though you weren’t particularly pleased with how. “King John sends his regards.” He set down a thick parcel of nesting cloth – blankets, they called them, and several thick, warm furs.

As difficult as you were about their fussing, you didn’t extend the same to the king. John was a good man, and surprisingly fond of you all despite what you’d done to his kingdom, his people, and his wife. He was the first human you’d allowed to touch your belly (besides Aurora, as though she could be stopped), and the first of his many gifts had been a set of mutilated (“altered”) shirts that fit comfortably over your growing belly when your leather chest-plate grew too tight. They laced behind the neck and left plenty of room for your wings. You wore them often, especially in Ulstead.

You still remembered his delight when your fledgling learned to squirm. It was as though he’d never felt anything like it. He loved children, his grandsons and the young fey especially. You’d thought of the heartless shrew he’d married, and you imagined that she regarded Philip as more of an obligation than a child, and the thought hadn’t surprised you at all.

You could’ve wept for him.

“What in skies are you doing?” Ini asked, drawing your attention from the parcel of furs.

General Percival retreated back toward the fire with a small, glass container of crystals that he sprinkled over the flesh of a raw beet. “Sugared beets. They’re delicious.”

“He eats like moor-folk!” she exclaimed with open delight.

“He is moor-folk,” you reminded, still holding tightly to your gift, “He’s made an alliance.”

Still, she laughed as he took another bite, and you paused to stare at him with new gravity. “You didn’t forget what I’ve asked of you, did you?”

He practically startled, leaving the beet in his mouth to go into his satchel. “Not at all.”

Your friends watched curiously as he passed you a smaller parcel wrapped in ornamental paper, the likes of which you were exceedingly eager to open. It was the second-best part of prolonged peace, your new fascination.

“What is that?” Shrike asked, rather distastefully.

“Candy,” Percival replied, trying to give you a measure of dignity. As though its proximity to the fire hadn’t warmed it enough to be soft and linger on your tongue and your fingers.

You motioned Ini to you, the excitement in the gesture unabashed, and she came to your side. You broke off a generous piece and whispered into her ear, “John calls it Chocolate.”

She nodded, mouthing the word to herself in retreat.

“It’s candy,” Percy repeated, “made of milk, sugar, and crushed beans.”

Shrike raised her brows at you. You licked your fingers and wiped the corners of your mouth. “Beans. Sugared beans.”

You extended some to her as well, and the face she made at you when you licked the smear from your fingers was worth every royal string pulled to acquire more.

“It’s good,” Percy offered, and it was his praise alone that got her to taste some.

“You little beast!” she exclaimed after a moment. “We grew these in the trees!”

“Not like this,” Ini rose to your defense.

Had it not been for the warmth of his gaze upon you (or the fact that Percy looked up and some of the joy still drained from his face), Borra might’ve been able to join you without warning.

“No wonder it keeps you up all night,” the disapproval was plain in Shrike’s voice. “It’s good for energy.”

Borra kneaded your shoulders lightly, and you tipped your head back to feed him a piece. His mouth quirked, and the glint of challenge in his eyes when he snatched the ornamental paper from you gave you no motivation to resist.

Not yet, anyway. Not in front of them.

“What’s over there?” he spoke to Percy, removing chocolate from the equation. He gestured out beyond the peaks, toward the wall of thorns.

He frowned, and you thought he was about to be deliberately literal. “Perceforest. King Stefan’s kingdom. Aurora liberated it.”

“Are they an ally?”

He shrugged. “There hasn’t been much communication with Ulstead since Stefan’s death. Aurora handled most everything – or, so we thought.”

Your wings sagged with the anticipation of relief.

“Ingrith presumed Maleficent had control over the region. To what degree, or whether or not she did, we never found out.”

And then they didn’t.

“Then there’s a chance they might still be our enemy.”

Percy shifted toward him, as did Ini and Shrike. You were glad Udo was still assembling the children to come join you; they didn’t need to hear this, even if he deserved to.

“Suren and I saw a torch along the wall of thorns last night. Someone walked along it.”

“I don’t have plans for the city,” Percy admitted, “I can see if there may still be guard towers.”

“There was no battlement on the other side. It was as though they’d climbed.”

A flutter of distrust ran through you all, for obvious reasons. And the flutter in your belly reminded you to eat regardless.

He sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Borra rested his elbows on his knees and leaned deliberately close to him. “Tell me the odds that it was nothing.”

You watched him. You, Ini, Borra and Shrike. Though he wasn’t unshakable by any standard, Percival was careful with his response. “You know I can’t.”

“I won’t go,” Ini immediately replied. “Tonight, to Ulstead. If they know we’re leaving, they can attack.”

“If they know we’re leaving, they may anticipate some of us will stay,” Shrike responded. “We have to consider how well armed they may be.”

“Would they be so bold? To show themselves before attacking?”

“They may not have planned on being seen.”

“No one is attacking,” Percival interjected. “We can go to Perceforest if need be. Talk to them. Ask questions. For all you know, you saw a child trying to catch a glimpse of the faeries.”

You said nothing, and Borra noticed.

He wasn’t the only one.

Their eyes landed upon you, and you ate a generous strip of flesh from between your talons like carrion swallowed whole. You considered the things you wanted to leave out against the ones they deserved to know.

“Every night for the last several,” you began, “I awake with a feeling. I thought, at first, they might be coming,” as much as you hated the thought that your human companions found you fragile just for carrying a child, your hand went to the baby’s kicking-spot anyway. It comforted you to feel them move. “But they haven’t. It’s like a weight inside me. It makes us both restless. It’s like they want me to leave.”

“Who?” Ini asked.

“The baby,” you admitted.

The gravity of their collective stare – sans Percival, who rarely knew what to make of your council – nearly made you flinch.

“It’s like whatever they’re doing, the child can feel. Like the child’s telling me to leave for higher ground.” Like they anticipated another slaughter and wanted to escape themselves, with or without you. A warrior’s spirit. Their father’s sense.

Borra was the first to straighten. You hadn’t wanted to tell him how right he was – how well fear gripped you for their safety and all of yours.

“They’re not going to wait until harvest,” you told him, then. You might as well, since you were revealing all of your not-secrets at once.

His eyes locked with yours.

“I know they won’t. We’ll have to over-winter in the peaks. I won’t take them that far when the winds are shifting. They’ll still be too small.”

“When?” he asked in a low, frustrated hiss. You weren’t entirely sure if he meant when did you know or when are they coming, so you gave your best guess for both.

“When he squirms. It’s like he’s fighting to be loose. He’s strong, much stronger than either of Aurora’s children.” It wasn’t as though you’d had much practice with children of your own kind before you carried one; your war had been your child, Borra the subject of your devotion. “I’ve only suspected these last few days. He gets stronger every day, more active. I’d like to believe it’s wishful thinking, but after last night, I’m not sure.”

“Or they’re doing something,” he agreed, but the ferocity in his voice reminded you of the iron bullet he’d rolled between his fingers in the council-hall. The sizzle of flesh and the sear of his voice. He would protect you with his life, but that would never be the first resort – the first resort would be retaliation.

“I’ll go to Perceforest,” Percival said suddenly, rising before Borra could. “I’ll speak with them. And if they’re doing anything that could harm any fey,” you pretended not to notice the way his eyes lingered on you, as though reminding your mate that no harm would come to your child, “I’ll stop it.”

“You’re not going alone.” Shrike stood, and he turned to her.

“And if they are planning something?” he lowered his voice. “If, by some chance, I walk in and uncover a plot, you need to be here to lead them.” He rested his hands on her arms, let them slide down to hold the gauntlets around her wrists. “Protect your people. I’ll take the guard. It’ll be an official matter of Ulstead, with John’s seal and signature.”

She looked to Borra. He, to you.

“Go,” you said. “Better him than us.”

You hoped your tone said that his punishment would be just where yours would involve teeth and talon. You were not entirely convinced that it did.

       You tilted your head back in pleasure at the feeling of cold water beading on your hot skin.

Borra knelt behind you, washing the dust from your hair. The sweat from your skin. You groomed and preened one another with increasing frequency in preparation for the child that would take both of your attention, their presence an inescapable constant.

“Are you upset?” It was the first thing you’d said since breakfast, not that Percival’s decision hadn’t left you all feeling strangely fractured. Humans operated independently; if they wanted to hold union with you all, they needed to learn to function as a unit.

He made a sound not too far from a jungle cat’s purr. “With you? No. Though no good comes from trying to spare my feelings.”

“I never want you to worry.”

He gathered your hair off your neck and pressed a kiss to his favorite biting-spot, where you were almost certain to have a lingering mark from how frequently the skin there had been pierced. “I don’t worry, I plan. You can’t tell me much that I haven’t planned for.”

Gone were the days of battle strategy held in council around the fire. The plans were all his now, your people willing to embrace peace as long as they knew there was a contingent option.

“I’m afraid,” you admitted in a whisper. “Not for them or me. For all of us. We should leave, Borra. I can’t tell you why I feel that way…” You hesitated. But he was patient, with you above any other. “I feel it. Like they’re lurking in the shadows, waiting for us to sleep. Waiting to kill them on the moors and shoot the rest of us from the sky.”

It frightened you how well you could imagine that, and you temporarily took leave of your senses toward why; humans slaughtered the moor-folk before. Ulstead ripped your people from the sky, as had countless other kingdoms. Your nerves were drawn and quartered with little sleep, and the child inside you, though dearly beloved, had the habit of literally dancing on your last measure of sanity.

“I won’t let that happen.” He pressed his horns against yours, though, for once, the gesture offered little comfort. Your fingers laced with his, and you gave his hand a desperate squeeze.

“I don’t like these odds,” you whispered. “I don’t like variables. I don’t like not knowing.”

“I know.” He held the back of your head. “Trust me. If nothing else, trust that I will never let you be taken from me.”

You wanted to protest, and he pressed horns with you a bit harder, encouraging you to sink back into the safety of his wings. “I did not fall to Ulstead’s queen, and I will not fall now. Trust me, Suren.”

You did. His certainty had always been the shore in a turbulent storm, and it was for you then, also.

“I do,” you whispered. “I always have. That doesn’t stop me from being afraid.”

He drew in a slow breath, let it warm in his lungs before it fanned your skin like the kiss of summer. “We’ve been afraid nearly every moment of our lives. That cannot stop us.”

It wouldn’t. Nothing could be stopped now; your child was strong enough that they could be torn from your dying body if need be. All your plans had been put into action, now their variables shifted. All the parts in play were slowly becoming revealed.

“Do you want to go back to the nest?” he asked, with a deliberate softness that eased your nerves.

“No.” You liked it here. You liked your little cave, the flighty little people who lived on the moors and the cast of humans who’d worked their way into your heart. To return to the nest would be to abandon your people, and that wasn’t something you would ever allow. “Fear isn’t worth our freedom.”

Not after all you’d given to secure it.

“Though you have more patience with me than you should.” You shifted onto your knees, intent upon reciprocating. You weren’t the only one preparing for the christening, though you wondered, faintly, if you should’ve also tended your armor.

“I don’t make decisions without you,” he replied, thumbs brushing your knuckles.

“You should.”

He made a sharp sound of disgust. You’d had this conversation before, but now, more than ever, did you squeeze his hands when he tried to soothe you. “I’m not their leader. They didn’t choose me.”

“We are a council of equals. You are at my side, and I’m at yours.” It’d been a long time since you saw defiance in the set of his jaw, and you couldn’t recall if you’d ever seen it directed at you. “Always.”

“And if I lead you back to war on suspicion and fear? If my hatred kills us, you’ll have only me to blame.”

He searched your eyes. You’d never come so close to speaking out loud that he was your greatest weakness. You were a warrior, and your skill in that you took immense and well-earned pride in, but you weren’t him. You would never lead them. You could separate the forest from the trees, but you could never see the way they intermingled. He assessed the danger, he planned, he gave the orders. You carried them out, and for the bulk of your life, it was sufficient.

And then Conall went and died, and peace and reason left the council on shifting sands, and you never regained your balance.

“That won’t happen,” he said, and you took solace in his certainty – if for no better reason than that he had never wronged you. “You’re not the only one entrusting your life. Your instincts never fail.”

You said nothing. You told him nothing of how you felt that they would now. Your sleeplessness, your restlessness, your peace – you feared that it dulled you. That you’d acclimated to the scent of human on your hair so well that you wouldn’t be able to tell if one was coming through the brush.

“Suren.” He took your face in his hands, and you soaked in their warmth. You basked in the press of his forehead to yours, in the way your noses touched as though the brush of your lips would be quick to follow. “I love you. For reasons I can name and ones I can’t. I hoped you knew most of them.”

A few of them, you did. Loyalty. Strength. Devotion. The fact that you had been willing to give peace a chance when you truly shouldn’t have.

“Trust yourself as you trust me. I do.”

A part of you had always thought that when Conall begged for peace, he had thought it would be Borra that would undo you. You’d known that you would’ve followed him into battle even if his plans weren’t fully formed, even if he didn’t know the odds and acted only out of vengeance. You’d assumed they had, also.

These days, you understood what Udo must’ve meant when you’d declared that you would die for him. If you did, if you gave in to your hatred and your fear, it would undo you all.

         It was a strange christening.

You had never been to one, of course, but it still struck you as exceptionally odd. The chapel in which it should’ve taken place contained the still-living bodies of fallen tree-folk, whose branches had finally overtaken the roof. You saw it buckling, the green of emerging leaves splitting the roof-seam.

It was strangely appropriate against the décor of the ruthless former queen that her captive nature would, at last, fight back. Even in death.

The doors to the great hall stood open for whoever elected to come. It was a grand affair, brimming over with dancing and food. Children flitted through the rafters and scurried through the legs of earthbound adults, playing the same game at different altitudes. Udo watched them fondly with his great, snowy wings folded at his sides. Aurora was thrilled to have him, and, of his plumage, her children were equally fond.

You were restless. The current of distrust ran from you into the mortals like the scent of fired gunpowder.

Percival’s absence didn’t help.

“Ini’s got men on every turret,” Shrike whispered to Borra when she joined you. “The king’s guard is out in full.”

“They’re expecting trouble,” you agreed.

Borra’s eyes traveled to Maleficent at the dais with John and their children. His wife’s throne was gone, you realized – replaced with something else, one made from the very earth. Woven branches and blooming flower vines. No cushion. Its roots breeched the stone floor and leaves slipped between the window panes – a living, breathing throne for a young, not-wholly-mortal queen.

It was as though her gaze had been summoned. She looked to you, and Borra waited for the nod that followed. Diaval flashed you a warm, reassuring smile.

“She’s told John of last night,” the fold of his wing drew you closer. “They’re prepared.”

“I don’t like this.” Shrike shifted, the streams over her leather leg-plating rustling like willow boughs.

“Then tell him to open the windows,” was Borra’s only reply. The glass wouldn’t hurt, but it would be an inconvenience.

She did, stalking across the open floor at a clip that made even those who knew her leave her path.

Aurora had not asked you not to wear armor, and for that you were grateful; you had, as had he, as had Shrike and Ini. Udo could not be convinced, though you imagined it was mostly because even in war, he preferred to act in defense. You were her tokens, evidence of a great and ever-growing peace, and yet you openly distrusted them.

Few of them noticed. You were as grand of winged fixtures as the queen’s statues. Most of which, you noticed, were no longer there.

“What’s wrong?” Aurora joined you much later than you imagined she would, reaching for your hands. Udo still held her children, which freed her to be the young and noble queen once more.

You pretended not to notice the eyes that followed her every move, though you certainly flared your wings. Her frown withheld no disapproval.

“Perceforest climbed the wall of thorns,” Borra said, his eyes as keen as yours. Fixed on them rather than her. “They’ve been looking out over the moors at night.”

“Has anyone gone missing?” she whispered, as though poachers were the only problem.

“No. But no one has tried to make contact, either. We don’t know what they want, and we can’t safely assume.”

She wanted to reassure you. You saw it in her round, open face, the soft set of her shell-pink mouth and the gentle wetness of her doe-eyes. Instead, she squeezed both of your hands and straightened her spine, and she looked more like her mother in that moment than you’d ever seen her.

“I won’t let any harm come to you. You are my family,” another squeeze, tighter.

“The queen’s guard isn’t properly trained,” Borra replied to her, quietly. “They’ll never withstand another attack.”

“Then I won’t let there be one.” She was ambitious, and you had to give her credit – her ambition rarely failed. “Please, enjoy the party. This isn’t just a happy time for me, I want it to be for you, too.”

“You want a lot of things, Aurora,” you said. The reservation in your voice almost sounded like sorrow.

“What’s wrong?” Philip joined your group, wrapping his arms around the waist of Aurora’s frilly gown. She smiled, though you considered asking him out loud if anyone knew another phrase of greeting.

Something warm and soft wound around your ankles. Without thinking, Borra bent and lifted the last queen’s cat into his arm. The angry little creature looked up at you both, large eyes dilated…and gently cast itself against his side, purring in contentment at his warmth.

That made Aurora glow. “If you like her, you can keep her.”

“And not because she terrorizes Pinto,” Philip was quick to add. “She also terrorizes Diaval.”

You felt your mate’s gaze and intentionally didn’t meet it, though a smile overspread your mouth whether or not you wanted it there. “Is that your blessing to me, Philip? An attack-beast?”

The prince grinned. “Oh, no, there’ll be no fey blood on my hands.”

You sighed, fondly this time, and reached out to touch the little creature.

It hissed sharply and swatted at your approaching hand.

You hissed back for posterity. “Give it to Udo.” He would be patient enough to teach it manners. You couldn’t guarantee your inability to eat it if it bothered you.

“Your highnesses?” one of their footmen approached, their eyes deliberately avoiding the both of you. “It’s time.”

Aurora beamed. Philip, ever the diplomat, bowed to you both before retreating with her in tow – leaving the bastard cat tucked in the crook of your mate’s arm like it was a pleasant distraction.

“We could call it Pipistrelle,” he said to you, sidelong. “Or Parodia.”

Bat or cactus. You might add Philip to your list of people whose lives were no longer guaranteed before the night was over.

The royal horns bleated like frightened animals, and those of you already gathered in the hall flinched. Aurora reclaimed her children from your friend, giving your favorite to their father, and rejoined her parents in front of her throne.

Maleficent rested a hand on her shoulder, the love in her eyes unparalleled.

There was an official declaration. Very official, you would’ve thought if you had truly been paying attention. Beyond the open doors, you heard the clink-drag of armor – bronze rather than iron. There were no wing beats, no even rhythm to the steps. You searched the faces of the royalty, the nobility, the gentry, and the people of Ulstead, mortal and fey.

Percival staggered into the door frame, bloodied and half-limp. You wordlessly gripped the crisp leather securing Borra’s bronze gauntlet. His eyes lifted, some of the first.

Percy looked your mate in the eyes, his breathing heavy, and nodded once. His voice was low enough that only those of you who knew it knew to listen.

“Run.”

Udo’s great wings beat. He gathered the children quickly, sweeping them out through the open windows. The amusement and delight the mortals expressed at the sight of them, their rainbow of plumage taking flight, fell away as quickly as Shrike ran to join Percival in the door, shifting his weight from it to around her neck with her folded left wing.

“Percy?” Philip asked, much too late.

“The kingdom of Perceforest is in revolt,” he said, and you thought it was much too loudly. “They’ve moved against the Midlands. They seek separation from Ulstead.”

“Why?” Aurora asked, her doe-eyes widening.

Maleficent’s fingers curled around her daughter’s shoulder. Your eyes snapped to Borra, your banded wings at the ready.

“You know why,” someone in the crowd declared. “Because of them.”

He held you. Not yet. Wait until they act. Leave no doubt as to their reason.

But they had given you no doubt the first time peace was broken. You had no doubt then, though you stayed where you were, tense at his side. You could’ve ground the points off your sharp teeth.

A dark-robed man emerged from the crowd, a peasant you’d seen in the streets. You’d disliked the way he looked at the little moor-folk, and your children when they played with theirs. There was nothing you could’ve done, then, but this was a different occasion.

“It is the same reason,” the dark-robed man continued, “that no priest is willing to christen the princes. What you bring to this land is unholy.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Philip moved to stand, placing his child in his wife’s awaiting grasp.

John held up his hand. “You don’t speak for everyone when you speak, father, though your role in our community does not go without respect.”

Of course. The bloody priest. A loyalist to that puritanical monster if you’d ever considered one. This was what happened when humans allowed any charlatan peddling promises to carry on tradition.

“Does it?” the robed man lifted his head, and you could’ve swept the quiet arrogance off his face with your talons had Borra not kept hold of you. “I recall telling you when you asked me that no priest in Ulstead, Perceforest, or the Midlands would bless this unholy union. As though these foul, grunting things—”

Now it was Percy’s turn to take hold of Shrike, as though the entirety of his weight didn’t rest upon her.

“—offer us anything but strife.”

“We’ve lost many to your kind,” Borra said, and the strength of his voice reminded you, for a moment, of Conall. “People who’ve done no more than spare your children from starvation over winter.”

“Is that what you call killing peasants on the riverbank?” the dark-robed man had turned on you, and you knew he saw the violence brewing in your eyes. “They should’ve dispatched a bounty on the lot of you.”

“You killed your share in return,” you snapped.

“Suren,” Aurora interjected. “Stand down.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” you hissed, your gaze unwavering.

“I’m not giving them.” She kept her voice soft, trying her best to speak only to you. “Please. For your child and mine.”

Borra’s wings flared. Many of the villagers didn’t know of what she spoke, but the offending priest did. “Sacrilege. Your queen brings a thing of the devil into your palace!”

Your felt your fury rising. You took an involuntary step toward him, talons poised as if to call branches up from the earth.

“That’s enough,” John thundered.

You paused, as did the priest. Your mate drew closer to you, parts of his wing extending before you in defense.

“Do you think this is Stefan’s kingdom?” the good king’s voice was harder than you could ever recall having heard before. “Do you believe I, or my family, will tolerate men like you undermining the treaties we’ve made? The laws we enforce?”

Your eyes darted to where Shrike and Percival stood together. They were like you and Borra, hovering close to the other, prepared for the moment at which their action, or their flight, be necessary.

“You ask for us to bless a curse!”

Borra had to extend his wing in full to stop you. You were not Aurora’s godmother, but you were her sons’, and you’d grown to agree with Maleficent as you’d watched them grow and fatten – they were defenseless, helpless, and small.

And you would have killed anyone, man or fey, who laid a hand on her child.

“You deny your people the truth, king.” The priest was emboldened, turning to address the crowd, “There will be no christening, unless it is by the witch who raised her.”

One of the guards gripped his shoulder suddenly, jaw clenched. “I would be very careful with what you choose to say.”

“You see!” He turned on them, gesturing, “Their corruption’s reached even the lowest of the palace! No one is safe from their unholy sway.”

The ravings of a madman, you thought, not that it soothed you. Ingrith was a madman too, and that worked out just fine for her. Until you picked the meat from her goat-carcass.

“Cease, or you will be arrested,” John exclaimed. The queen’s guard began to gather, and your attention suddenly diverted to Percival.

“Where in skies is your horse?”

A great commotion arose beyond the palace walls. The priest went for one of the guards’ swords. By no means should it have been noteworthy – they should’ve been able to stop him.

But that would’ve meant he acted alone. You knew how well frightened mortals rose together.

“Run!” Aurora cried to the moor-folk, and much of the faeries did. They fled in colorful streaks just as they had from the poor girl’s wedding.

Maleficent’s eyes fell upon you. As deeply as you loathed the thought of withdrawal, you had an obligation to protect your own. She could handle it. If anyone could squash a simple peasant revolt (and how earnestly you hated that you thought those words), it would be her.

You pulled the young queen and her children with you.

The stone steps under your feet were unpleasant. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d run without the pleasure of launching soon afterward, but the palace’s halls were too narrow – especially the ascending ones. You pushed Aurora ahead of you, tearing the hem of her gown when it started to make her steps falter.

Borra was right behind you, the bronze bands around his wings not enough to shield him from fire should it come.

“Wait,” Aurora started to cry when you’d reached a wider hall, “Wait! Philip! And John! My mother!”

“They’ll follow us!” You took one of the children from her arms and pressed them close to you. “Hold tight to him, Aurora.”

You didn’t know if she’d ever flown before. Being Maleficent’s daughter, you imagined she must have, though it was hardly the time to ask.

She trembled, but obeyed.

Shrike and Percy were fast on your heels. She practically carried him up the steps, his arm around her neck and his weight on her side. She nodded to Borra quickly and cast them both over the window ledge, giving her mortal no warning.

The prince came next with Maleficent and Diaval. You breathed out relief at the sight of the raven beside his mate, the way he placed himself between her and the ascending footfalls.

“Take her,” Maleficent said to Borra, and a fraction of the pressure in your chest released. She waited until Philip was nearly up the stairs to make the thick vines grow in his wake. To buy you time.

“Go!” Philip called ahead. His shirt was torn and his sword bloodied.

“Philip!” she cried, clinging to the child in her arms.

“Go!” he spared a glance back to her and faltered. “I love you.”

Borra wrapped his arm around her, trapping her and her child against new bronze, and leapt as Aurora screamed.

“Suren!” Philip called, and you paused with your foot on the ledge. “Tell them of me.”

“Tell them yourself, Philip of Ulstead. I’ll see you again.”

And you dove.

It was as it had been the first time your wings flattened to soar above the walls of Ulstead. Your people flew in chaotic, indecipherable patterns, drawing fire so the both of you might pass unharmed. There were no bombs this time; by all intents, you and your warriors had the upper hand.

But there was peace. No one gave the order to retaliate, and so you didn’t.

“Withdraw!” Borra called to the others as you neared the river. “Withdraw! Fall in behind me!”

They did, crying the order to one another in your wake.

You flattened your wings. Picked up altitude. Once you cleared the wall, you turned. Shrike didn’t, and you didn’t blame her – he was the first wounded mortal any of you tended. It wasn’t as though you knew whether or not he would give his life for her.

A horse broke free from the palace stable. Aurora’s white one, carrying still-king John. He was not trying to cause harm to his people; he rode quickly, snatching a torch from the hand of an otherwise unarmed man.

The thorns Maleficent called began to close around the entrance to the bridge.

You waited. You had to see her. You had to know you were all coming.

John’s torch lowered.

The enchanted wood began to recoil at the touch of flame, seeking the safety of magical ground. His horse was as fast as the bridge’s recession into the moors, and you tried not to notice the proximity near to him that Ini flew, as though prepared to pick him and his horse up by the saddle and carry them across if he failed to move quickly enough.

“Maleficent!” Borra called for her, though your retreat was swift and the thorn-branches that grew along Ulstead’s banks were thick and high.

“Maleficent!” Aurora chorused, the terror in her voice plain.

Your eyes were fixed upon her as she lifted off on massive wings, the raven Diaval at her side. Philip held tight to her, so poorly armed that you thought, for a moment, that this battle had to be a joke. There was no way they hadn’t anticipated…they couldn’t have been fools enough not to suspect.

You almost didn’t see the priest notch an arrow.

“Dive!”

Her head perked.

Diaval dove.

And the iron arrow pierced the raven cleanly through.

You shrieked. Changed course. But Borra caught your arm, pulled you hard.

She dove for him, as you knew she would. As deeply as you hated it, as passionately as you yearned not to withdraw, you did. There had been enough sacrificing for a thousand lifetimes without involving those children.

She was begging, you realized once you both had cleared the walls of Ulstead and were back over the open air of the moors. Aurora was begging, crying, screaming at the top of her lungs. She’d heard you call to her mother and nothing else, heard the fury of your shriek, and must’ve thought…

“Can we make it to the nest?” you yelled over the winds.

“Not if we want everyone to live.”

Sometimes you hated how closely to your thoughts his ventured. Mortal or fey, Percival was one of you. John was one of you, and the moor-folk. There were too many of you to flee the moors. You had no other option.

You gave no protest as you circled, the moors’ sharp peaks emerging from the mist as though unveiled by magic. The weather would be kind to you tonight; they may not know you’d stayed until dawn, provided not many of you took the same route.

It was in your nest you landed with Aurora and her young. Your mate set her down in your nest-bed and joined Shrike with Percival, prying the young man’s armor off. Summoning the draping moss to grow more quickly on the chilly rocks so it might be used to staunch his bleeding. Your heart was pounding, and you held too tightly to Aurora’s son – you nearly forgot to give him over until her reaching for him reminded you.

She was pink-faced, her sobs raw and filled with terror.

And the pressure in your hips returned.

“Oh, skies,” you whispered. Not the time, offspring.

“Percy,” Shrike said, more softly than you thought she was capable. The roughness of her voice had grown warm, and you wondered, faintly, if she would be spared this fresh hell by her choice in mate.

Ini landed behind you, with King John clutching her armor for his very life. His fear was, even then, interlocked with fascination – exhilaration even, though inappropriate.

Oh, skies. The shifting got worse. You fought to remove your chest-plate before the heat of it got too stifling. That was all, you reasoned. Just the warmth. The activity was too much. You had to be mindful of them, of their presence inside you. They had no control over your temperature, their natural endurance against inclimate weather and how inhospitable a host it must’ve made you.

“Let me.” Ini joined them, leaving Aurora to the comfort of the king.

“My mother?” She asked them anyway, clutching her fledglings to her chest. “John, did you see my mother?”

“Your mother’s coming,” he replied, “Last I saw, she had Philip with her.”

“Diaval?” you managed.

The roughness of your voice drew Borra’s eyes.

And John’s. He went to you as though he was your kinsman, helped you pry away the bronze and free your banded wings. You flared them in hopes it might help you breathe, but the pressure only built. The pressure became pain, and you gripped John as he pressed a hand to your lower back like he knew the source of your discomfort.

“This may turn out to be a happy occasion yet,” he said, and you snarled openly at the half-jovial tone he managed.

“They’re coming,” Borra said, searching your eyes for confirmation.

The pressure gave way suddenly, and a pain much like the ones you’d felt before (though much, much stronger) overtook you. You knew your talons had to bite through the king’s robes, and yet he helped you to your knees.

“Tend her,” Ini said to your mate, too quickly. As though she could feel the urgency that had suddenly taken hold of you.

“Diaval!” you repeated. “He was shot!”

Aurora could’ve swooned. Damned skies, there weren’t enough of you. And how many of your men had fallen? What were your casualties? Aurora’s husband, her mother--?

“Horrible timing!” you hissed, shifting your talons to bite into the bronze at Borra’s shoulder.

He made a low sound of agreement. “We should name them after Conall.”

You listened for the beat of other wings, tried to separate the distinct pitch of the tundra and the forest, the fledglings and Udo. Skies and stars, you hoped there were no archers on the wall of thorns. You hoped the fog was thick enough. You hoped your people would run for the nest, go back into hiding, regroup and prepare all on their own.

It was to be a cause for celebration, the first child born outside the nest.

Instead, it seemed the whole of the moors echoed with your screams.

[eternalstrigoii]

;-; please, mistress, may I have some fluff? Some fluff for a sad bird? -prompt anon

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

         One of the little girls with bright green plumage was growing tired. She stomped and flapped and whined, and it made the other children around the fire restless.

When you all gathered this way, in the heart of the Nest, it was to be in celebration. Your revels were not what they once were, but they were reminder of your continued existence. Every dance, every song, every child as well as all of you -- you had survived in the face of great and terrible obstacle, and, for that, you gave thanks.

Most of you.

Your mate gave only momentary warning of his pause, comfortably certain that you’d salvage his half-finished thought. Revels were a time of strategy as were all others; you gathered the others to tell of the violence humans still committed beyond the sea, and why they could not follow him as you did.

“What’s wrong? Hm?” Borra swept the child into his arm before Udo could rise in protest. “Are you sleepy, little one? Getting cold?”

You certainly weren’t the only one that felt a pang at the sight of him with his broad wings splayed, rubbing warmth into the soft flesh of the child’s upper arm. She curled into him, still whining, and one of those rare smiles (rarer for others than you, you supposed) revealed the sharpness of his teeth. He boosted her, allowing her to hold on to the straps of his armor like she was his own.

“Do you think your teacher is the only one who can tell you stories?” he asked the now-silent children.

They watched him, rapt. They knew so little of him, as they should. He would do everything in his power to keep them from being involved in any battle, becoming the casualties of any war.

Your people were sacred; your children above all.

He lowered near them, crouched near Udo. The warmth of his skin comforted the tired little one.

“I’ve been to the skies beyond,” he whispered theatrically, as though the children were a part of his quiet conspiracy just as you, Ini, and Shrike. “Nights like these, the stars glint and gleam. Even among the clouds.”

“What do they look like?” one eager child asked.

Their teacher’s tension had begun to ease. Let him tell them stories of wild earth, as long as he told them nothing more.

“The sky is a great blanket of darkness,” at that, he spread his wings. His dark plumage nearly engulfed them, blocking out the light of their parents’ fire from them and the light of Udo’s from the others. “So black it seems as though she’ll swallow you. But the stars are everywhere, like embers trailing one another on the smoke of a dying flame.”

There are so many of them, you thought in amendment, that you saw strange beasts reflected in their gaze.

“The clouds – have you ever felt one? They’re a mist of ice, closely gathered. Passing through them leaves a cold, morning’s dew on your skin. Feels good in your wings.”

They listened with their eyes locked upon him, and you thought for a moment how wonderful it would’ve been to fly with one of them between you – no poachers, no endangered moor-folk, only the twinkle of stars and the breath of the wind.

He told them of rivers, true rivers, how they changed from stone to sand with time. He told them of the fierce heat of the uncovered sun, the temperate cool of the forest, the ice of the sea at night and how it warmed with the day. Strange creatures lurked within it, brightly colorful and strangely shaped.

“Strange creatures walk the earth, too.”

He told them of a fox without giving them its name. The porcupine and the bandit. He told them of the sound of birdsong (and it displeased you immensely that he didn’t try to mimic the sound, so you did, and the strange, trilling sound you made sent many into giggles). He told them of the apex of cliffs, the high, prairie grasses that grew freely with sedge. The taste of sweet, fresh harvest grain.

“And I will give it all to you,” he whispered to them, resuming his conspiratorial tone. “All of that and more. Just give me time.”

“Borra,” Udo interjected, his voice quiet and calm like the stirring of snow-crystals on an arctic wind.

“Stay here,” he continued, “Learn from your teacher, and when I am old – like Conall,” the children twittered again, “you will have command of the skies. That, I swear to you.”

“That’s enough, Borra.”

Despite his gesturing, and the pictures he’d painted so vividly in the low rumble of his voice, the child in his arms had gone to sleep. He unwound her fingers gently, touched his horns to hers, and passed her into the arms of one of the older children for safekeeping.

He straightened, slowly, rising to his full height. With his great wingspan and the tall points of his horns, he was unmistakably imposing, and yet you knew that even as the reverence in his face gave way to the warrior’s hardness, no child would be afraid.

“It’s not an empty promise,” he said to Udo almost casually, as though that was enough to be left to linger.

You watched them as he returned, intimately aware of the eyes of Conall and your elders – their disapproval at your lack of shame.

They had fighting spirits, each and every last one of them. You saw it in the new shine of their eyes, their renewed interest in study.

They would grow to reclaim the skies again. You would see it.

“Where were we?” he asked, drawing the three of you from your thoughts.

“The fortress,” you replied. “Men at its spires.”

You would not set anything into motion tonight. You caught yourself glancing back at the children again, watching the little one sleep in the arms of one that could have been her sister.

One that hadn’t failed to return your gaze even as Udo returned them to kinder, softer stories.

[eternalstrigoii]

It’s almost time for a sequel to Wild Strawberries. Loosely titled “Things We Should Not Be Doing During Peace Negotiations ft The Royal Peonies.”