It breaks my heart to say this, but I’ve got a bunch of college stuff going on right now, as well as a couple of projects I got involved in irl that I’d really like to apply myself to and they require a lot of time/creativity, meaning that most of my creativity/time will be channeled into said projects. Although I’m aware I was already running on low activity, I feel like idk, maybe I should formalise it with an apology note attached to it? I’m not abandoning Avallac’h, but replies will take much longer than usual and I apologise about it. ; __; </3
𝑹𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒅, 𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔. He’s such an ass. Soft gasps leave her mouth at his kisses, at his voice, but the volume increases once she feels the heat at her core. Uncaring of his comfort–she hardly thinks he cares at the moment–her backside rubs against his lap. Her fire ? Oh, it’s steaming all over again, but again he asks–tell me about your dreams.
She has to obey. She thinks she’ll burst if she doesn’t.
❝ You–Oh, Gods, you–lower, please–shit. Right. You devour my mouth, ❞ she wants to turn her head so those kisses can be applied to her mouth. Wants to suck his tongue, his skin, and go downward. ❝ And then…then your mouth, once it makes me wanting, it always travels lower. To my shoulders, my breasts–you bite and leave marks–and then down… it’s as if you are starved, how you grasp my thighs. ❞ In response, she opens her legs as wide as the bath and himself will let her. ❝ And sometimes–sometimes your fingers replace your mouth. You never make it easy, but gods, how I’ve woken up aching, Avallac’h. For years. ❞
The hand that teases her pulse is placed with the help of her own, the free one, on her bare breast. Fuck being patient. He’s declared war and, gods, how is it she’s a volcano ready to burst ? Moments ago she was content to just be with him; now she’s quivering and feels decidedly empty. ❝ Better, though, is when you’re inside me. You aren’t too big, or too small, but decidedly just right. I hold you t–oh, fuck–tightly inside me. My wrist has shown signs of carpal tunnel, you- you ass. Please. ❞
Please don’t tease me. I love you. I love you.
Ciri thinks she says the last part out loud, but his lips against her neck are distracting her a little too much to care.
With an ear tilted to her words, the Sage’s hand made quick work of adjusting to the new location. An exploring thumb softly circled its pad over the little nub, chilled into hardness each and every time it poked out from underwater.
Those fantasies of hers… dreams that washed over her psyche most likely even while awake now displayed so raw before him Avallac’h concluded that his ward, indeed, knew little about the elf in that regard. In her wildest fantasies, he was so oddly human in his deeds. But alas, it was only natural. Aside from Auberon, the human way was all Cirilla knew when it came to affairs of most intimate nature.
Or was it?
“Not very modest dreams.” He delivered in such hushed, tender note that well resembled a sigh, though everything from his voice to his motions seemed undisturbed. “Mm?” That was when Avallac’h stopped, if only to make sure he heard it right.
I love you…
He could have sworn Cirilla let that slip.
“I know.” Avallac’h replied, tightening his embrace around her.
Abandoning the lass’ attention-starved nipples, his hand found hers and guided it south of her body, connecting dainty digits to the live wire of her sex.
“There are, as you may know, a number of different forms of intimacy. Some of which not always end in intercourse.” The elf was patient, waiting for his companion to adapt. If it was of her desire, his touch was so gentle she could have pulled free from it as naturally as breathing and settled the moment with an embrace instead. “Though your dreams do not seem to know me well.” They couldn’t have known him well. “You see, I’m not a devourer, but a deliberate savourer of the finest things.” And in his deliberate savouring, Avallac’h was bound to make every precious moment last... Save the best for when desire took hold and pushed reason so far aside it was clear out of sight.
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒘𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒐𝒎 𝒍𝒊𝒑 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒚, 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒌. Angoulême is fully aware that the elf that saved her all those years ago has more of a story than he tells her than he wishes to tell her, and she respects that. She does. It doesn’t mean she isn’t curious. And it’s not like she’s snooping he’s right there with her. ❝ It’s our fault, isn’t it ? Humans, that is. That’s why the princess is in danger. ❞ Has to be. Unlike most humans Angoulême shares his critiques over her race.
Maybe she isn’t a fan of what she’s heard of the Aen Elle–snobs and slavers–but in this world, the world she grew up in, her kind held the power and abused it. To her, it only makes sense her kind would fuck it up. ❝ We have a habit of fucking things up and then fucking off–sorry for my Toussaintoise, Nuncle Sage. ❞ / @arcaenelle
Nuncle...? Whatever that meant, Avallac’h was left to assume it stemmed out of the word uncle and that his exquisitely quirky charge had, at last, fished him a little title to go by that very obviously wasn’t his alias or name. Humans, after all, felt the need to explain that which confused them… To peg something or someone with a signature term that would outline the complexity of their affiliation.
Uncle… or, as Angouleme herself would put it, Nuncle Sage. Of familial undertone, even though she was human, and he was elf.
“Yes.” Prejudice spoke with the certainty of truth, for that had been a morsel of his people’s truth… their beliefs woven in detrimental hatred towards a race they took to be the seeds of havoc. “But only partly. You see, sor'ca,” The elf came up with a pet name of his own for the lass.
“To claim humans are the root of all that which is evil is, logically speaking, a distortion of the fact which dictates that evil has always existed... Humans simply found extremely creative ways of putting it to use. This time, however, it wasn’t only a human so much as an elf. A she-elf at that. Needless to say, humans had a hand in persuading said she-elf, who promptly forsook her people in favour of the one she held dear.” As per usual, the subject rendered Avallac’h absolutely unable to keep up the facade, and that much could be seen in the way he delivered the last bit through gritted teeth. “Yes.” The Sage repeated, his teeth no longer ground. “Had it not been for humans, sor’ca, and Zireael might as well have been born a common lass.” Though in reality, the Sage knew she wouldn’t even have been born in the first place.
𝑪𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂 𝑭𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂 𝑬𝒍𝒆𝒏 𝑹𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒏, 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓, 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔. Not that she doesn’t agree corsets are unnecessary–she does, and greatly so !–but it almost seems like a muscle memory whenever he brings up elves versus humans in one of his speeches. ❝ Of course, silly us, with our silly human things, ❞ but there’s no bite. She’s too busy wiggling in her seat.
How he can read of all things–? She’s dumbfounded. Considers asking him to play a game, but Ciri feels close to fainting as she places a hand on her heaving chest. In her whining, she misses his gaze, but she supposes it’s a blessing she does, anyway; she’s hardly in any mood for flirtations, not when she feels the need to rip off her entire dress and run far, far into the wilderness screaming like a wraith.
❝ I’m bored. ❞ Just in case he isn’t aware. A pause, before she thinks of something: ❝ Will you tell me of your boyhood ? Certainly, you must’ve been young once. ❞ Ciri thinks of a woman birthing a full-grown, sarcastic elf and–oh, she does her best to hide her snickering with a smirk. ❝ –sages were young once, correct ? ❞
She has to ask, just in case.
Yet another piece he wouldn’t be finished, or at least not while sharing in Cirilla’s company, Avallac’h shut his book with a sigh, putting it aside and beckoning her over. Should she switch places and sit beside him, the elf was bound to brush her tresses over her shoulder and carefully slide the lass’ dress down her shoulders in order to access her corset, the laces of which hands from an elf who claimed his people wore no such thing seemed to be an awful acquainted with the puzzling zigzagging of knots.
“Naturally.” Not once did digits get caught in a snare of finger-chopping strings, surprinsingly enough. “And what is it about my youth that you wish to know, Zireael?”
After seeing his ward rid of the corset, Avallac’h pulled her dress back in place and magically got rid of the constricting piece in the exact same way he’d do to his own clothes.
“Eredin and I were, hm, close.” He stated, easing back into his seat and looking out the window unseeingly. “Though my tutor was Auberon himself. You are aware that he, too, was a Sage. No?” An even wiser Sage than Avallac’h, but one who chose death over life nonetheless. Yes… Auberon had known from the beginning an overdose would kill him. “I spent most of my youth by his side. And whenever I did have time for myself, Eredin would occupy it. It didn’t tarry until news reached us that he’d been appointed as the head of the red riders by Auberon himself. Whereas I was his second in command, until the King’s say so brought me back to the Palace of Awakening, that is.” Although seated next to his ward, it was plain to see that speaking of the past had made him travel far from the present, to a place that now only ever thrived in his memories.
𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏'𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒆, is what Ciri wants to add, but she doesn’t. Nor does she press her previous question further, even as he cups her face, looking at her as if he’s parched and there’s an oasis at his feet. Any heat in her veins has cooled and all she wants, wishes, is to wiggle around to place her wet back against his chest. Oh, don’t be fooled; she does look at those lips and she does have a quickening in her chest, but what she wills is resting against him and closing her eyes.
She could sleep like this. Ciri wishes she could always fall asleep in his arms, like this, being held for the first time in oh-so-long.
Ciri understands his desire. While cooled, content in only him holding her and pretending he loves her, hers still lives. She’s desired this man for years; she thinks she might’ve loved him a little longer, but she isn’t certain. Ciri just knows that he’s the first person she thinks of when she’s happy, or sad, or has something on her mind and she simply wishes for someone to know.
Gods. If he only knew–but he isn’t ready. She stands by this.
❝ No, ❞ she gives in and answers him. ❝ A witcher ought to have scars. ❞
The water cools, but Ciri makes no move. There’s still warmth and, frankly, she’s worried that once she leaves the bath he’ll leave. She could ask him to stay with her–just sleeping, nothing else–but she fears, with her upcoming wedding, that might be pushing things. Hell. This is pushing things. Once again, in an effort to be more comfortable, she maneuvers to her side and rests her cheek against his chest. She tries to be considerate; she knows they are cramped for space and her moving around isn’t wise, but at the same time she hardly gives a damn. ❝ You kiss better in reality than my dreams. ❞
Fine. She has to throw at least one flirt in there.
Pausing, Avallac’h allowed a contemplative stare to galvanize his companion in the wake of what it was he could be thinking of. Just about anything, from her words to tomorrow’s breakfast, could be rappelling through his thoughts at that very moment, but instead of making them known, the Sage chose to hum his acquiescence and coax Ciri on top of his lap, with her back pressed against his chest and his lips to the crook of her neck.
Mind reading.
“In your dreams?” His voice was made of silk, palms smoothing down Cirilla’s arms and breath tickling the skin.
Digits, bigger than hers yet surprisingly gentle still, intertwined with the lass’ own and brought her palm to the water’s surface. Then, an electrifying current that could only have been understood as magic shot from his veins to hers and, slowly, vapours began to billow up from their renewed spring water once more, enveloping the two in its thawing warmth.
After the spell was cast, a deep sigh issued from the elf. His fingers of the other hand rested in the hollow of Cirilla’s pulse, stroking lazy circles around it. An arm seized her in its strapping hold and elven lips found themselves opening and closing in an incredibly intimate set of kisses back at the base of his ward’s neck.
“Tell me about them…” Avallac’h tightened his embrace around the lass, feeling the heat which pooled in her stomach almost immediately shoot down to her nether regions. “...Your dreams.”
❝ 𝐈'𝐦 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝. 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐭 ? ❞ Soon-to-be-Empress or not, the woman wiggles in her seat, fingers yanking and fiddling with the black lace gown that everyone urged her to wear. Wearing black clothes in the south in Summertime is asking for a heatstroke, she had told them and then suspected it was their plan all along. While her company isn’t awful–being with him in the bath, being near him, him kissing her–her clothes are. ❝ I should’ve worn a lighter color. Better yet, I might just greet the duchy starkers. Gods know I’m itching to take this horrible corset off as soon as I’m able. ❞ / @arcaenelle
A corset wasn’t exactly the sort of concern Avallac’h himself struggled with on a very constant basis. And not because he was a male so much as he was an elf. As a matter of fact, back in his youth, it would always puzzle him greatly why humans would force their women inside of those constricting undergarments.
It would always strike as a wonder how the Sage could find himself engrossed in a different book every time. Perhaps it had been those bookworm tendencies, aside from a genetic matter, which had earned him the title. This once, A Miraculous Guide to Gwent by Aldert Geert was cradled in his hold and had his full attention until Cirilla’s words demanded it.
“You humans have, hm, peculiar habits.” A page was flipped despite his eyes regarding the lass still. “For example, you shan’t find she-elves among the Aen Elle donned in such constricting attire. Clothes are, after all, hardly meant to restrict mobility... or breath.” He added, watching his ward’s chest rise and fall as if they’d been on top of a mountain and the air was growing thin.
Although the Sage did join his ward at the table, his digits seemed to take far more interest in being intertwined than in the food before them. It was customary, if not altogether ritualistic, of the elf to join Cirilla only to later slide whatever was in front of him over to her. After all, Avallac’h could survive for an impressively long time drinking only water and eating even more sparingly despite his constitution. The time they’ve spent together has taught Cirilla that he favoured fruits above all else, preferably those that made very little mess– such as apples, for example.
Aware that Zireael would first lose her voice than change her mind, Avallac’h spared her the trouble with a prolonged sigh that signed his defeat.
“Yes. But only in leading us to Tir ná Lia, where Eredin and his Red Riders currently reside.” As well as Gwynbleidd, he thought, believing that, by the look in her eyes, Zireael thought the same. “Every successful hunt brings them back to their homeland, after all. Celebrations are in order… and it is in the night of one such celebration that we must strike.”
After Zireael was finished with her food, Avallac’h passed over his untouched share of bread to her, then stood up to unfold a parchment on top of the table. At first, it looked empty, until a spell with the mere touch of his digits filled it with lines that mapped out Tir ná Lia’s from the Easnadh to Tuathe.
“It is in the Royal Palace’s inner courtyard where their merrymaking takes place. Just south of it is where prisoners are kept.” He motioned each and every location precisely, paying no mind to the crumbs that fell from Zireael’s every bite. “I must warn you: if it is true that Eredin has, indeed, captured your friend, it is unlikely of him to be the same person you once knew. Are you certain that you wish to see this through regardless?”
There was fragility in prejudice and, without it, there wouldn’t have been prejudice at all in the first place. Not the kind that would see colour where most didn’t in a flower, or pick up on the melodic thrill of the birds just outside the window that would greet the coming of a new morn, but a vile sort of fragility… A fragility that got a name of its own, and it was called bias.
Elves, too, were an incredibly fragile race in their hatred towards humanity and everything that made one human. So why was it that Avallac’h looked beyond hatred and allowed a lass of such despicable species this close to him? What was so special about Cirilla other than her likeness to Lara Dorren? Both in character and guise. Part of him wanted to believe that Lara Dorren, through Ciri, had returned to him. While the other half wished not for his memories of the former lover to be tainted by those he was building with a human.
Crystalline eyes swept up and down her body until Cirilla’s request brought them back to her face.
Would you mind horribly if I ask you to kiss me again ?
Her words damn near pierced through his resistances, although not enough to fuel him into action. Instead, Avallac’h reached out to cradle her jaw in his palm, once again stroking the jutting apple of her cheek, feeling the ridge of Cirilla’s scar render the skin uneven.
“You haven’t answered my question.” He reminded her. Although distant and cold by nature, those unnaturally pale eyes burned hot in what could only have been understood as confined desire, simmering deep into his bones like an underwater geyser.
What could only have been described as a dreadfully chilling sensation crawled up his spine, the thought of what Karter might have said that Cirilla took literally cruising about his mind like a ship in eddy’s edge.
“It has been a handful of years now, yes.” Speaking of a handful, crystalline eyes cast a fleeting glance just out the window to check on the lass, who seemed to take nostalgic fondness in the company of flowers that Avallac’h knew to have grown in Cintra once upon a time. “Although it only took us about seven days to arrive in Toussaint with the whole… mm, entourage in toll.”
Avallac’h himself would’ve made matters simple and teleported the two to their final destination, but alas, Emhyr insisted that they bring the handmaids and chamberlain along, and at least four seasoned Nilfgaardian warriors for protection. The Elven sage, however, knew they were all hired spies. To the last man… or woman.
“When will her lessons begin? Zireael has been yapping on about it from Vizima to the edges of this land nonstop. I’d even say the prospect of learning from another Witcher,” not a stranger one at that, “is rather appealing to her.”
