DOOM-GOD.

𝙸𝙽 𝙼𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙰 𝚁𝙾𝚃 ; 𝚁𝙾𝙾𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝙽𝙵𝙴𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽. 𝙸𝚃 𝙷𝙰𝚂 𝙽𝙾 𝙼𝙾𝚄𝚃𝙷 & 𝚈𝙴𝚃 𝙸𝚃 𝚂𝙲𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙼𝚂.

[myrkvae1]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU ANGEL!!!! you're an incredible presence on my dash and in my ims and you are such a blessing in general ok? i hope you get some cake and find a way to celebrate even amid all this chaos. ily sm xoxo

THANK-YOU !!  You’re a love and I so appreciate it.  Managed a homemade fudge cake so did just about okay in the mess of things.  Hope you have a good day !! xoxo

[myrkvae1]

HALO HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIGAIL !!!!!!!!!!!! i always feel like you know everything even though you're younger than me and you always have and i'd be so screwed without you on so many levels. you're beautiful inside and out. i'm beyond grateful and blessed to have you in my life quite literally every minute of every day. nobody should have to put up with the shit that you do and i admire too many things about you to list. you're the best. always have been always will be and i don't deserve you ilysm.

Please,  I  wouldn’t be here without you and you’ve known that a thousand times over.  Idk where i’d be,  frankly,  nowhere great.  For years now you’ve literally been my impetus,  my muse,  everything lame as fuck like that.  I regret nothing.  You’re a guiding light for me and should know i will always have your back,  wanna go to war?  We’ll go to war.  My ass can be miserable,  and dour,  and may give you whiplash every now and then.  Thank-you.  For sticking with me.  I don’t deserve it.  I’m with you,  I love you,  nothing would be as bright without you.

[myrkvae1]

happy happy birthday my better half !!!!! i feel like i've been with you all my life -- though it /has/ been a while by most standards -- and you never cease to make me smile. i'm always learning and growing as a person because of you and am blown away by everything you do. it's crazy that you're turning 24 i don't even think you were 20 yet when we first met holy shit. you're my favorite person and my favorite writer and your graphics are wicked and i'm running out of space but you stuck w me.

My better  half,  thank-you.  there’s not much to me,  you’re really the highlight here and that’s the best thing.  you shine,  and that reaches so much farther than you’ll ever believe.  you’ll tell me i’m lyin’ but i ain’t a liar.  it’s been a good while,  the best while,  in fact.  all i really wanna do is make you smile and watch you be happy because that’s all you deserve.  and you’ll have me clinging to your leg and dragging behind you for a long while still,  will follow you anywhere and i hope you know that. 

[myrkvae1]

* HJARTA .

The few shafts of moonlight that can enter lance off of Loki’s hair. Its crimson mask shines like wet ink: the same that stretches from the corner of her mouth past her hairline. He’s painted her like a doll in this sea of slain kinsmen. Darkness leans till their foreheads press, briefly shielding him from his own ire. His own stubbornness. The Lord of Misrule cannot rule, yet he clings so desperately to his birthright. The corpses have yet to stink. Soon viscera and excrement will soak the usurper king’s throne hall. Though painted red, rock glacier walls remain erect. Darkness slips her talons through his hair, detangling the loose curls and smoothing the flyaways displaced by battle. What narrow illume can reach him must bypass her. She swallows every photon, every shadow and spray that would give her pale glamour a lick of definition. Ether barely coats her legs. Its slow-morph will paint a new textureless frock on her in an instant.

Opaque tines curl in his scalp and tear it back, exposing Loki’s throat for a drag of her tongue that never connects. She takes the wound, briefly imagines taking a bite out of him, then repels. Painted in jötnar blood, his palace still occludes the outside world. Glassless windows sparsely sift snowflakes. Not one douses her. She grunts with a whoosh of white noise, flares her claws, then drifts around Loki to drape over the throne. Dark hair bleeds over his shoulders when her chin comes to rest on his crown. Supermassive black holes observe the dead without bias, ever-wide and threatening the vermilion rings surrounding them. She could deign to curl like a cat on Loki’s throne, but instead lifts her legs so they hang over an arm…and amalgamate into a featureless black tail fin that nips beneath her false navel and fans at the end — collecting those very waxen filaments so they adopt a shimmer.

Thick black talons curve over his shoulders and drift down, moulding around his chest. Loki’s heart still skips for all his symbiote-bestowed power. She maps every murmur, runs her tongue from his ear to his scalp, then crawls backward so what once was his seat has a new occupant.

He clings  to what he has left,  and it is little.  The upheaval of reality has painted others the victor,  and he the cockroach in the wake of decimation.  If this new existence is Love’s canvas,  then he will be her medium.  His enemies will paint the earth with his blood,  and stream the horizon with his viscera.  Ginnungagap has shown no preference for either end,  or preference for much at all.  Yet still her disciple lays a kiss to her wrist,  as though there remains faith.  He loses the lower half of his blooded features for a moment while doing so,  and then removes himself from her hold to stand.

Loki doesn’t suffer shock,  nor the lingering ache of combat.  He is fluid,  nigh-expedient in dropping down each step.  His nonchalance innate amongst carnage,  one such as he hardly minds the tang of blood and necrotised flesh,  nor the sound of brittle skin breaking beneath his boot.  Some has already began to ease its way from bone,  and his heel nigh-pulls an entire pectoral off one corpse he turns over to face.  This jötunn still lives,  his body having succumbed to tremors but not yet to death.  Loki knocks his attention over his shoulder,  where Eternity’s draped herself across the throne she’d seek to be stolen from him.    “  Laufey’s men.  ”    He affirms,  ere Godslayer emerges and its point rests at the hollow of the jötunn‘s throat.  Loki is on parade,  turns himself to the opposite side of his would-be-corpse and faces Love’s endless stare.   “  But i’m sure you knew that.  ”   The very tip of the blade nicks,  bites just enough to open the selected vein.  It will be slow,  he deigns,  but it will be definite. 

Sentinels have been replaced by creatures of a more hideous design.  Black Berserkers  -not the ones guarding their children elsewhere-  will clean the mess,  and already begin fighting over their first corpse to Loki’s right.  He takes a breath,  savours the metallic taste of victory on his tongue for only a moment.   “  Next time will be much the same,  though they might discover the children.  Or it will be Jarnviðjur,  Æsir  ---  who knows.  ”

[myrkvae1]

*  HJARTA .

Their rhythm would elicit pain could she feel any. Back and forth, briefly lifting his hips so a sticky film still connects them. Pale fluid runs from her mouth in thick threads — intentional, languid and indulgent. Soaked in the same black bulk that should suspend them, featureless hands hook into his backside and spread, inviting him to seat deeper; guiding his every cant and curl. Full lips tighten around the head; release when he’s eased away. Then her hold tightens as he glides in, probing the back of her throat till his sac nudges her lower lip. She holds him there. Clutches his backside so he cannot follow when her ether-scaled hips withdraw. Inch by inch the tendril stretches, still latched into his walls, yet stretched too thin to bring relief. Snug within her mouth, Loki may feel a rhythmic pull; white noise laving and caressing him as her tongue pressures his underside vein.

Lidless cosmic voids only find him when her chin inclines. Loki’s is tucked to his chest, teeth clenched and hands buried in her hair. His walls clench nothing, desperate to root and be filled again…so she releases his cock from her mouth, keeping her lips rested on the leaking slit at the tip. A kiss collects pallid fluid as she drives his body back down and throws hers up; fattening and stretching him once more. Static buzzes from her lips to his cockhead. Likely he again needs a moment to adjust. Gauging his chest for any jump, she traps his thighs and holds him while her own hips buck. Want has both tightened and made him swollen. She leverages it. Drags him back and forth so he both teases his taint and leaves him full. He moulds like water around her. Loki’s hips pump with ease to the same pendulum swing he’d surrendered to before. Bladed teeth gnashed, she moves him faster; spreading his cheeks and hastening his speed. He could regain control if he willed it so…perhaps she’s challenged him to.

Another cryknocks his chest,  the force with which he’s pulled downward would be bruising,  but he revels in that strain and the sting of pulled flesh.  Their merger is smeared further with every drag forth and back that pins them together once again.  Breaths come in fractals,  unsteady and whet upon his tongue for his greed.  For this.  For her.  Loki presses himself against the crux of her hips,  long fingers still splayed within her hair and primed to snatch at her scalp when next both pleasure and pain crest.  He sighs his next when she spreads him more still,  and breaks his hips from her hold,  rids them of her pattern and instead turns a rotation at the very root of her. 

Again that dynamism wrenches something at the pit of his stomach.  She fills him completely,  to a point of pain that he unabashedly indulges in with every tight turn of his hips.  It gives her some further exploration,  latches her to walls that had not yet felt the sensation.  Loki casts his upper body backward,  propelling his chest away from her brow and burgeoning the space betwixt,  if only so he might lack backward some to vary their angle more.  With no thigh to wrap his fingers around,  palm splays instead upon that black shelf of shadow and scale,  traversing that texture with languid strokes;  one side to the other.  Between them his cock suffers another twitch,  and his hips jerk forth in search pf the warmth of her mouth again.  A higher pitched cry calls for her,  and his free hand beckons her to follow him,  cradling the nape of her neck that when he comes,  she’ll lose none of him.

[myrkvae1]

     @folkesange​

Corpses litterthe stairs,  the archways,  and floor of a great hall.  Some are in pieces,  limbs rent from torsos thick as tree trunks,  flesh split to ribbons.  Others are whole,  but scorched black like petrified wood,  their faces wrapped about their skulls like shrunken leather.  Ice-rock bleeds so thoroughly that some walls are bleached by death.  The King's Hall,  still houses its usurper sovereign.  For now.  He is sat at the foot of his stolen throne,  observing his successes one by one through the haze begotten by All-Black.  That tendrillar poison makes its own way forth,  slips down shallow steps like black melt-water and pools,  congealed alongside blood rivers.  Loki drinks this in,  that tell-tale metallic scent sat upon his tongue.  To one such as he,  chaos embittered,  it is sweet.  Almost as she who he cradles in his lap.

Love's hair crowns her in mimicry of his own extension roving those crimson pools.  His hands hold each side of her face,  in place,  so stygian pools at least offer the allusion that she stares at his face,  that she sees him.  Unmarred as he is,  he is soaked in red.  Acknowledge him.  Red knots his hair and smears her cheeks from his fingers.  Red hangs in grisly ribbons from his teeth.  Red,  when he strokes forth with his fingers,  paints her lips.  Acknowledge him!  This pallid harlequin in his lap,  he cradles her chin with tightly laced fingers.  Hangs his head above her like an axe awaiting gravity's aid to fall.  Doesn't.  Resolution carries his spine,  makes him a pillar.  Loki hooks his thumb against her cheek,  slipping the appendage like water through the corner of her mouth.

"  Is this utopic?  "   Hangs like a spectre itself.  The silence absorbs it.  There are no sentinels here anymore,  none that want him living.  No vigils are kept but his own,  a gargoyle overlooking,  guarding the scorched remnants of what was;  what he remembers.  Impossible,  the task.  He will lay dead at the foot of his own throne soon;  he is a parasite in a world bent on purging him.  His hold stiffens,  and he bends double 'til parted lips graze her brow.   "  For you?  "

[aqua-regia009]

Stephen Early

[myrkvae1]

* HJARTA .

    Quasi-solidifying her own boundless abyss under him has bent and splayed Loki’s long legs. They tangle like a foal’s. Briefly her lidless gaze finds them. Loki can only ravage her profile with teeth and tongue while her reaping claws roam the crux of his hips and drive south, along the contours of his flexed thigh to hook under a knee and tug. Loki’s legs part wider, seating him so deep that she might catch her outline on his belly. He moves still, gills fluttering like hummingbird wings and bubbles tricking out his mouth. Retracted claws curve under his backside and guide his momentum, hastening it as any evidence of suspension drains in an instant. Long raven hair splashes his face and shoulders. The gills remain, though Loki’s lungs would serve him best now. Sleek and supple skin has flushed from fever at their merger, at his cock-head dripping thread after thread of clear fluid. It pools where the featureless ether scales blend with her corporeal veneer.

Then she peels off her shoulders, brushing his need-swollen skin with her nose. He’ll see the tip of her tongue flick out first, padding the engorged head and wrapping her lips around it. Another thick stream drools between her jagged teeth. She releases solely to kiss the slit ere moving as far forward as her false ribcage will allow. The vein running under his cock thrums, he twitches in her mouth, and she releases Loki’s leg to cup and knead his sac. Rapid, even pulses fatten the tendril that fills him, pumping the same sticky release that would’ve moistened her inner thighs had their roles reversed. It keeps him and the dark hairs that graze her nose slick. A few tar-black slates lift to skim them at his crux, then curl around the mound she’d teased to such stiffness that it might feel pain from the slightest touch. Then she draws back, encouraging Loki to move if he wishes for her to take more, to suck as languidly or as hard as he would like to feel.

An outcrythat does not carry,  and for a second Loki moves not;  tests this deeper seat with time clutches of his walls about her.  His abdominals jump,  and his thighs shudder ere he lifts himself high enough to all but become empty.  He clenches about empty space for a time,  teasing himself with just the tip of that tendrillar length,  before he repeats the her earlier motion;  the depth she grants him knocks his face skyward,  sodden hair splayed in salty knots across his shoulders.  He can breathe once again,  and uses the advantage to grant her his next moan,  pitchy and in fractals,  caught at the back of his throat.  He rocks forward,  holding her inside of him and smearing the boundary of black scales and faux skin with viscous,  pallid fluid.

Reveling as he is,  the touch of her lips begets a sudden jerk,  a thread of surprise pulls tight between his hips,  and he bucks to meet the shelf of her tongue should she offer it.  Loki’s hands clutch her head;  he combs through her hair with fitful strokes,  fistfulls tugged sharp betwixt his fingers.   “  Hjarta mitt,  ”    He manages,  dropping his chin to his chest,      “  Hjarta mitt,  ”    Like a mantra,  he beckons her for more,  cups her cheeks briefly that he might tilt her face to his.  Already she’s painted with him,  the sight begetting another twitch of his cock against her tongue ere she sinks,  and he can only exhale gusts.   Pain and over-stimulation delights him;  he bends to the pinch of her hand,  the graze of teeth against his head,  and interlocks his fingers at the nape of her neck.  Forward,  once again,  slow and purposefully into the warmth she offers him,  his fingers would bruise true flesh,  so tight their grip.  The motion he repeats,  the walls of his back passage squeezing her with every glide,  his pulse shelved with every push forth against the back of her tongue.

[myrkvae1]

* HJARTA .

Not a spangle of sunlight lances across Loki’s pale skin as he crests, mantled over her with a curled spine and muscles taut from need. Featureless hands a dark as the sea and impossibly colder glide over his backside and part him wide. She’s barely breached and already his hole clutches her fast. The Dark kills any noise by trapping his tongue with her own. That slow coil fills the inside of his mouth with the blood of molecular clouds…even the gills she’d etched into his sides might taste it as they filter oxygen from the sea. Both hands slide to his hips and press into the crux to help further seat him. She hadn’t prepared him as usual, yet pearl after pearl drips from his erect cock to sweeten the water. Typically Loki prefers to lower himself, to cry out as he wraps around her and tightens his abdominals. Here, she drives her ether-scaled lower ‘body’ into his so they join. Thick and tapered, the tentacle-shaped tip takes root on a soft wall within; tethering them even as clawed hands guide Loki up and down in smooth pulls.

Being submerged should’ve reduced any friction to nothing, yet he should feel every stretch and heavy pulse. Bladed teeth bare as she guides his momentum, swinging him back and forth to defy Loki’s desperate clutch. Often he seeks to adjust, to savor the sensation of being filled. Every merge pressures his sac so it swells and lifts into a perfect mound. Briefly her palm abandons his hip bone to cup it and squeeze as he continues to move. Again she bares teeth, growling at him to crest and cant and fill himself with the sleek organ that expands when nestled between his walls. For Loki’s every rock forward, he’s rewarded with her kneading his sac. Should he keen and bend, he’ll feel her textureless fingers pet and press his taint. He might sense that the ocean’s grown solid under his knee, under her long black tail that fans when he rejoins her…yet her hair still forms a loose cloud.

What hecan offer,  a cry or curse,  is swiftly drowned,  absorbed by water.  He does not choke,  but tenses with every swell felt against his skin.  The sea’s moulded to them,  but is only kind to her.  Here in no light,  he carries no grace,  though she oft seems keen on his tempestuous,  greedy nature.  He bucks his hips,  grinds against featureless scales or the palm of her hand,  rigid a moment,  zealous in maintaining contact.  His cries don’t carry beyond his teeth when he seats himself again,  tensing and untensing to savour the sensation of her rooted within him,  walls stretched to accommodate her.  He’d have her deeper still,  until pain sent him to bliss and he might never release her.

For a time,  expressions match;  teeth bare and a hollow sound lingers on the inside of that cage he creates.  In these depths there is nothing to hear,  but he slackens his jaw nonetheless,  trusts he won’t drown.  The flat plane of his tongue roves from the tip of her chin to her upper lip,  which he clasps betwixt his teeth when he next lifts his hips until empty,  then takes her to the hilt again.  Then,  he retreats,  taking advantage of the faux shelf she has offered to draw backward.  Spine straight,  he holds her at her waist,  fingers splayed up and across her ribs,  where he draws keen scrapes to mimic that which she has gifted him.  His knees splay outward,  dropping him lower still.  Lewd display,  fervid still;  he plays to her wishes.  Loki lifts not once he’s anchored himself to her torso,  but drags himself between her hips,  squeezing about the length of her,  teasing his own taint when she does not and riding the shelf she has given him.

[myrkvae1]

* HJARTA .

  Slotted between his ribs on each side, reaping claws dig and carve gills into them. The pull is swift, searing and painless. A rush of seawater over his body will alleviate the sting as the tide tucks them beneath it. Now buried in black water, Darkness bats the fanned tail fin extending deep into the black and drags him with her. Loki can breathe if he wishes. Brine has already begun filtering out. His eyes may sting should he hold them open for too long. Darkness lays her thumbs on their outermost corners to shield Loki from the black. Any glimmer of smothered sunlight further diminishes as she drags him deeper beneath the surface. Long dark hair swathes him. His own, she combs from his face with her talons. Then their lips cross so Loki could steal oxygen that the proscenium of her mouth’s created just for him. Another slow undulation of her tail fin sinks them further from the sun…and her arm wraps around his waist.

Loki’s legs are too long to play with at times, but here they’re free to bend or hang should he choose. Every cant of her ether-sleek, textureless lower half guides him so Loki shelves astride where the slit he’d make love to would be. She lays both hands on his inner thighs, spreading them and dissolving all fabric so only his waxen flesh bares the brunt of the Dark. Supermassive black holes remain ever-fixed on his face, threatening to swallow Loki whole as she encourages him to spread his legs farther apart and buck. From the slit she almost sat him on emerges a smooth and tapered tendril that barely resembles what Loki will soon rut against it; flushed and fully erect. To help him, she coils a dimensionless hand around them both and strokes in languid pulls. The other hooks under his backside and urges him forward so his sac will swell from contact and his hole spread for more.  

There is no time to adjust to the sudden pull,  the hauling undercurrent that which she steals him with.  Loki’s head slips below the surface,  and onward,  downward.  The sting of his ribs barely registers,  but she has thieved his breath nonetheless.  As well as what command he thought he might have held.  Bending to her is easy.  To her.  Loki is malleable when she urges him to fold around her,  steals the space of her mouth for his own while doing so. He is teeth and tongue,  starvation clung to the back of his throat like a sickness.  Here sound does not resonate,  but chaos sends its vibrations through her belly.  Had she a stomach she would be able to swallow them.

Hiking his knee higher grants her what access she requires,  parts her further about the shelf she has given him and bids him tense when she cups his behind.  Having failed to part from her,  he cannot cry out when that first touch strikes the length of him.  It lacks the friction he’d much care for where they are completely submerged,  but Loki begets pockets,  dearths of water where a low cry from his chest might resonate,  dull and dampened by their environs.  He bucks his hips for her,  response joined by a sharper twitch against her palm,  and what length she has offered.  Loki chases from root to tip,  but has not yet looked between them.  Instead his tongue roves her throat.  He drinks seawater from faux flesh and drops his hand between to join with hers.  He strokes them both,  and grinds against that swollen slit,  until riding their next motion so that he is above,  and the very tip of that tendril parts him barely him for her.

[myrkvae1]

* LĒKARE .

  Only Arkham would prescribe first-generation antipsychotics in 2020. Joker’s mouth involuntarily jerks — he notices. Tears swell his eyes. He refuses to shed them. Since he’d crossed his legs, Joker bobs his right foot up and down, possibly hoping to rid himself of the plimsoll that he would love to sail across the room into one of those obnoxious nurses’ faces. He jitters; flits his eyes towards the ceiling to count jaundiced tiles. Lackey never had a plate. Joker’s playing Checkers with himself. He clears his throat. Cigarettes are contraband. He uses a matchbox to light up and cradle the stick close to his chest. If the nurses see, he’s finished. Not like anyone is actually sat across the table from him to rat Joker out…or so he thinks.

“Wh…” when his tongue fails, Joker averts his eyes to the box of stale Lucky Charms and sits his index finger on and off the box top. “What do you want from me, Lackey?” A drag of forbidden fruit briefly silences him. He suffers another twitch. This time, his neck jerks. He bares teeth, hunches, and digs his nails into the laminate tabletop to the point that they nearly leave their mark behind. “I’ll be honest…” In order to exhale, Joker cups his left hand over his mouth and vents into his shirt. Once he finishes, Joker sways his shoulders till his confidence returns. “I don’t remember doing anything to you in my past life — i-if you’re dead, I mean. I’m not that kind of monster,” shared like a secret, Joker inhales more nicotine, then tosses a glance over his shoulder.

One of the dead-eyed zookeepers announces that group will begin down the hall in fifteen. Joker runs a hand through his hair, then snickers. He’s barely touched the punctured boxed apple juice sat in front of him. “I love group,” he lies, sliding his gaze left. Those crowded around the old television screen don’t notice his stare. Joker can barely distinguish them. All’s shrouded in haze. He shakes his head, dips his head so far back that his cover is almost blown, and sighs, “They’ll believe any fuckin’ word that comes outta my mouth.” A hoarse, muted giggle breaks up his frown lines. “Anything! I could say I grew up on a farm in Louisiana and fed my family to the swamp.” He swings upright, fanning his fingers with glee. “And they’ll believe it! Anything…I want…even though my ass has been plastered all over the television set they’re glued to day in and day out.” All signs of life drip from his face. “You won’t tell them, will you, Lackey? If you’re even there.” To test his hypothesis, Joker flicks his burning cigarette across the table at him.

Catches it, betwixt forefinger and thumb,  the swiping of his arm swift as a viper’s lunge.  The projectile would have missed,  sailed gloriously and pointlessly over his right shoulder,  but Loki purses his lips,  downturns the corners, and gives his company a sour look of admonishment for the attempt.  Then,  his attention turns toward the well-wished missile.  He turns it over,  once,  then twice,  and seems to give it a sniff for good measure.  He knots his features,  somewhere tight at the centre of his skull between the eyes and shakes his head.  The ostensible embargo is put in place,  practice,  when he turns it again,  this time backward over his shoulder completing it’s arc.  When he brings his hand back,  Loki grasps nothing but the air and offers a nonchalant,   “  They’ll yellow your teeth.  ”   like some sense-giving,  sympathetic individual.   “  And,  ”   Brows pique,  fleetingly make for his hairline like the spark of genius has sent them that way,   “  they’ll get you sent back to your box,  however much it suits you...  ”

Tongue darts between his teeth,  like even given his apparent distaste,  the flavour still tinging the air is intriguing enough to warrant the intrusion.  Loki mimics the poor fool opposite,  knocks himself up onto the balls of his feet as though meeting with a dance move.  His is silent,  only the allusion to imitation,  something to burgeon the paranoia.   “  You’re not haunted,  ”   He at least confirms that,  however trustworthy Joker would deem him to be.   “  I’m not dead,  ”    At the moment,  says the wry glint caught at the corner of his eye.  Dry timbre,  Loki drags his tongue across the roof of his mouth,  and deigns to sigh.   “  But who knows what you’re one to create?  Either way,  swamp or circus elephants or the neglected not-son of a city’s most elite gentleman,  your secret’s safe with me.  ”   

It doesn’t take much for him to reach across their table and swipe that which Joker’s decided to neglect in favour of his cigarette.  The carton is nigh-swallowed in his grip,  and he elects to rid it of its pull-top and crumble the flimsy plastic in his free fist.  He downs it in one,  lamenting its over-sweetness,  and tosses the empty carton back in the direction whence it came.  One throw for another;  his hit Joker in the centre of his chest in a feebly petty display that comes without a smile.   “  Now,  we haven’t much time.  Pay attention.  ”   The chess board sits between them,  its pieces perhaps a little too heavy for the institution they are in,  it’s corners a little too right-angled.  Loki swipes a pawn with a knight,  mercilessly sending it jumping across the table,  and finishes his dance with a grin,  and the flattening of his feet on the floor.   “  Check.  ”

[myrkvae1]

* HJARTA .

Something is on the horizon. Black and cold, it bleeds into the sea, weaves through clouds and stains them, and thickens the ice on which Loki stands. The shore’s returned to pulverized igneous salted with toothy blue bergs. Not a soul sullies the sand or the great ash pines beyond it. Glaciers climb the mountains — high enough and Utgard will stand tall. There was no sea within reach beforehand. She’s reshaped Jötunheimr to embrace the water…or succumb to it. Sleek and semi-translucent, a black opal tail fin breaches and fans, releasing his leg so he might count imaginary scales. None are to be distinguished on such perfect darkness, though Loki can at least trace his hand’s ambling path. Though the ocean’s aggression recedes, reaping claws tear Loki’s head back by the roots of his hair to expose his throat. Then her tongue runs from clavicle to jawline. In lieu of a kiss, he’s nipped by serrated teeth at the apex.

Loki could search the featureless black slate submerged nigh-perfectly and not find relief. That slit’s pressed to his back, parted and swollen for contact that moulding around him barely provides. Still, she shrouds him in her own dark hair; climbing till her arms hook beneath his shoulders and latch on his chest…though one snakes under the waist of his trousers again, sitting at the crux of his hips and ambling left. She refrains from cupping him, caressing him, or taking him in her hand — but a heady noise fills his ear, which her mouth has fastened to. It fades when the tide draws back, then rushes like a gasp when the swash pours in.

Tenacious,  thedark,  in smothering him,  almost as the water would were she to draw him under.  Were he to part his lips he might swallow tendrillar penumbra,  hold it within the hollow of his chest.  For now,  distraction;  warmth in slim rivers at the small of his back and running the length of his throat.  His pulse hearkens to her teeth,  accelerates with every scrape and nigh removes itself when she does her open mouth.   Fortunately she does not completely release him,   for a cage this enamouring is to remain,  by his eye.  Starvation is hardly sated,  even when that familiar warmth seeps through his skin to hold itself against his spine.  He feels each pulse,  that very throbbing climbing betwixt his ribs,  until it settles,  somewhere around his heart like net-wire.

That turns his head,  parts his lips to ensnare her own in a needy kiss.  Separation dawns on him,  again and again like a cresting wave,  and turns him to their lips cross,  and her breasts press to his chest.  Here he can cage her himself,  splayed fingers locking at the nape of her neck where sea-salt and phantom sweat reside.  Drawing close closer when his tongue hooks behind her teeth with enough persistence to near-bisect the muscle,  Loki moans for her.  Her own suspire is all that fills him,  that and a keen frustration to reach his goal - which yet is to be fully revealed to him.  She evades him,  tears his prize from his venturing reach between them even as he takes paces toward the shoreline.  The dark sea,  cruelly,  still hides her,  toying with him as she does with her hand upon his thigh,  bypassing that stiff ridge now held tight between them where she has shredded him of clothing.  Heightened pulse nigh-disturbs the black.

[myrkvae1]

*HJARTA.

  The tide takes a wound from that. It froths and spits, gnashing pearly teeth that chew his clothing in strange patterns. When the bubbles die, Loki’s pale skin unearths. Every new wavelet overpowers the last, till their force would be able to blow him backward were Darkness herself not his anchor. What Loki’s lips graze is textureless, dimensionless…cuts his face away altogether from sight. The smooth tail coiled about his right leg is no different. When the wind breathes through her hair, the Abyss broadens her chest, flattening it against his back so he’ll be poisoned with familiarity…even as the sea becomes her ire. Salt spray douses his face, coats his bare chest, arms, and shoulders in briny droplets that only vanish under her tongue. A sweep moistens the dip of his right tricep. The valleys between Loki’s taut abdominals are then penetrated by retracted claws. They brush back and forth ere dipping just beneath the waist of his trousers.

A blue tone runs his spine’s subtle curve…though the sky darkens. What had been a pale bloom soon bruises bees’ purple. White light strobes within its cloud walls, casting a sinister sheen upon the ocean. A low growl resonates, like the northwestern shore’s glaciers have begun to calve…and a tremor racks the sea. Even the sand sharpens under his feet. Loki stands on ice shards colder than her expressionless ‘face.’ They dent without breaking skin — cruel reminders of All and Everything and Nothing.

What’s herwound is his security.  Swathed in her,  a second skin of brine and sweet black trace his outer margins.  He wishes to be scatched,  that she might sink further beneath his skin,  pour through his bloodstream - if she does not reside there already.  Despite the force,  unrelenting and burgeoning as her beauty to one such as he,  Loki stands firm.  Love is a pillar,  parallel to his spine,  rigid now that he might withstand each wave to experience the next.  Here,  she could drown him,  and he would plea for her to.  Revive,  and again.  And again.  Loki swallows the taste,  rare sweet berries on his tongue,  and momentarily buries his chin in the crook of her arm.  Here,  Everything engulfs him,  a wall of welcomed umbra within which he can reside.

“  Ég elska þig...  ”    He reminds,  a sough betwixt the wanton whistles of sea-wind.  He’ll not hear it returned,  and so drops his free hand below the water’s tempestuous surface.  What it rests upon are scales,  though textureless.  Her reach is unending beyond the shore.  He wonders if a tail-fin dances on the horizon.  When she closes her fist upon his skin,  and the indents begin to form,  he too mirrors her.  Let them latch themselves to one another,  and let his sharp intake of breath,  and the slow meandering of his splayed fingers between them encourage her.  Deeper.  Deeper still.

[myrkvae1]

*HJARTA.

Fingers of darkness tame his wind-beaten curls. Sickled and longer than her featureless black hand, they skim from scalp to brine-candied end. Over and over and over till Absence’s brutal chill claims his nape, those freckles mapping unnamed constellations on his back, Loki’s sculpted shoulders and the serpentine dip of his spine…the sea ignores her altogether — or perhaps serves as an extension of her. Loki may be clothed, but to Darkness there is an open field to roam. Froth bubbles graft to, then fizzle out on his trousers. Wavelets lap at his hips, somehow guiding what once was his own shadow close enough for her arms to snake around his back and over her shoulders. Behind Loki, she’s small enough to vanish entirely…though those talons curve over his chest; anticipating a hastened heartbeat or flex when he tenses up.

She’s nestled her false face in a muscle contour, pressed her soon to be swollen lower torso to his backside and curls a sleek, ether-fettered tail around his legs. The fin lays flat, stemming the tide that might otherwise offset him. When the next breeze hisses at his ear, she softens its blow. Moulds it into a blue tone that flows from her lips to the horizon, “Alt går som Gudernes vilje…” the lyric fades when a thick black rivulet escapes the hold of an event horizon; “Og min stemme skal tie her..”

Deflation comes soon,  an ease to the prickling of his flesh.  He walks like a hive of tempestuous wasps until ghosting touch settles him.  Loki’s eyes close for his moment of indulgence  -  or is it relief?  What he breathes is brine and sweet berries,  what he smells is searing metal,  and the homeliness of an embrace.  She grafts to him everywhere,  in the wake of what otherwise was absence,  and the cold,  obstinate ache.  Loki no longer feels the tide,  but a stirring of a different sort when Love knots herself tightly about his legs.  Entrapment is sweeter than his otherwise untamed liberties.  His exhales skate across the sable slates of her folded forearms,  and Loki entwines their fingers as best he can how he is.  The waves will not take her,  though he knows beneath his stubborn authority,  that such is not for his subconscious embargo.

Song kisses the shell of his ear,  flows down the back of his neck and betwixt his shoulder-blades like a sliver of meltwater.  One sharper inhale hauls her closer to him,  welds her to his shoulders.  The cloak of her he fastened,  the fingers on one hand able to latch her wrists to his clavicle.   “  Þú ert sem vantar frá mér,  ”   Recrimination lands tiredly,  and the nervous itch,  but a kiss to her wrist allays its dour sense.  She will feel the turning of his lips,  the shaking of his head when he wills her to sing on.   “  ... Stay.  ”

[myrkvae1]

  @folkesange​

Salt-burned  leather hugs the wavelets about his thighs.  Beneath,  his heels have been swallowed by sodden sand and shale,  and the tongues of the undercurrent.  Loki will not be drawn deeper than he is already - not by the water itself.  Mayhap its keeper might pull him under and rid him of his breath.  He'd allow for it,  keen for it.  A creature has been gnawing away in his chest,  turning like a pit of vipers seeking faux warmth without rest.  When his fingers catch a new wave and grasp the modicum pool against his palm,  he is not soothed,  but brings the tips of his fingers to parted lips,  as though somehow it might enable him to taste her.  Nothing sweet resides here,  barren shores of his making.  Glaciers groan at his back whilst they split the land,  breaking stone as if it were bone.  But Loki listens not for that pained song,  but another.

“  Hefur þú yfirgefið mig?  ”   He cannot kuln,  lest not so that she would hearken,  but perhaps it is his sly,  unsettled jest that which begets the upward lilt of ostensible play.  Inwardly,  the viper’s pit churns like the water eating the shore. 

[dailyavengers]

[myrkvae1]

* LĒKARE .

“Yet they let your diabolical ass wear a wedding ring.” Somehow, someway, crushing a marshmallow pot of gold between his teeth is immaculate comedic timing in Joker’s mind. Unfortunately, his teeth are a few shades whiter than the stale Lucky Charm. No one’s allowed actual forks in this unit. Even Lackey has a spork in front of the sad yellow blob that the staff tries to pass off as scrambled eggs with ‘home fries’…whatever those are. Joker doesn’t make a face at his circumstantial companion’s plate, but mantles his forearms at the edge of the table and crosses his legs. Plimsolls aren’t comfortable. It hurts to flex his toes. At least there’s a window in the common room. Barred, of course, so the sunlight he can’t actually reach ghosts its fingers through his hair. Joker angles his head away from that phantom contact, suffers a pinch between his neck and shoulder, and forces a giggle to crawl out from behind clenched teeth. He lurches; grins in spite of the brine staining his sclera pink. Thick red branches fan towards his irises, painting a macabre lattice in the absence of his signature greasepaint.

Nurses chatter about their weekend — or evening plans, he doesn’t care to listen. The same sitcom plays over and over again. Joker’s about to campaign that they change the channel when the playground police traipses over to patronize Arkham’s famous patient. Her dark hair has been folded into a bun. Smart. Were he a disgruntled soul with a predilection for unprovoked violence, a ponytail would be his first grab. Joker tosses Lackey a sidelong glance, then grins from ear to ear when that nurse stops at their table. She has a clipboard clutched to her chest. Maybe she’ll beat him over the head with it. End it here.

“Good morning, Arthur!” her mousy greeting is just so practiced that he serves that superficial simper right back at her. 

Joker dips his head all the way back so Arkham’s flood lights will drain what’s left of the life in him.

“Mornnnning…!” he mimics her tone, how broadly she holds her shoulders…though his teeth don’t align as nicely as hers. Someone’s got dental insurance and it isn’t him. Even Lackey’s got crooked bottom teeth.

She shouldn’t giggle at him so coquettishly, like she’s reconsidering her eHarmony profile with him around. Joker mirrors her smile. He even peppers her awkward silence with a chortle of his own.

“Wow…!” Is she blushing? Really? Was she raised in a McMansion in Scotch Hills? Probably. He’d make a face if it wasn’t rude. “Good energy today. I like it. How’s your first morning back in Level One?”

He shrugs, honeying his tone to appear no less babyish and blind as she, “It’s fine…” Then his attention trails towards the juice box. “Feels a little like a Gatorade commercial…” He lifts the cardboard carton to shake it from side to side, mumbling out the side of his mouth, “–if y’know what I’m sayin.” She thinks he’s joking…or brushing him off. Likely brushing him off. Joker mouths, “Need a straw.”

Single White Female isn’t even looking at him when she replies, “We’ll see how Dr. Kane feels about that, alright? Keep it up, Arthur.” Nurse touches the back of his shoulder. Joker clutches his spork so tight that his fist blanches.

“We sure will…!” he retorts three octaves too high, knowing exactly what that means. She hadn’t asked Lackey about his morning before trotting away. Joker twists, waits until she’s out of earshot, then turns back around to stage whisper, “Don’t worry, Lackey.” He lays a hand over his chest. “I care about the consistency of your hash browns.”

“ What hash  browns?  ”   His palms are laid flat where his plate once was  ---  or was it?  Fingers splay,  as if to demonstrate;  there is nothing left of the supposed full English in front of him.  They must think it canny for him,  somehow fitting;  he isn’t of their ilk so he must be of one other.  They don’t know how right they are,  or might be,  could be,  were he of any actual physical presence.  Who knows - perhaps he is.  The allegory of his existence here is akin to that of a phantom,  some cool breeze on the back Joker’s neck,  a speck of dust upon his shoulder,  or a shadow at the corner of his eye.  Were he to ever look in the mirror again,  he might find some duplicate reflection,  Loki there like some of ghost in his haunt,  gaunt and pallid and sternly staring this once-man back in the eye.  

Reticent words passed betwixt figurative bars hold little charm,  but perhaps something like a balm,  comfort,  vindication for a man so close to becoming utterly unhinged.  The solace of another alike,  with bloodstained knuckles and skin beneath his fingers,  the death of guilt clung to his canines when he smiles.  Joker is out of friends,  and luck.  But he has a game of checkers,  and a juice box with no straw,  and the unstable foundation of unlikely company. And it comes down to this - was the breakfast ever even there?

“  You know,  ”   Pondersome facade,  one that ostensibly softer about its edges,  but his eyes have lost none of their brittle steel.   “  For a deranged maniac,  you’ve apparently lost none of your charm.  ”   Pity over anything,  thinks he,  the false bravado that which comes with ostensible care for those who cannot care for themselves.  Its a universal falsehood,  Loki’s come to realise;  where are the hurts?  Peel back the skin to reveal the open wound and gaze,  wide-eyed,  soft lips,  toxic commiseration that’s barely there,  if indeed it is at all.  The nurses with their bright faces,  heels that crack upon the floor in the same way bones do under heel - Loki knows them all.  Likely now that Joker does too,  or will upon realisation if he hasn’t faced it yet. Loki’s fingers interlock,  he hunkers over their abandoned game like a crow over his latest steal,  a robber in his new-found hold - there’s something more valuable to vanish than a plate of hash browns.  The lasting remnants of a human mind,  however scattered it is already.

“  You’ll have to teach me your manners,  ”   His sigh is apparently self-pitying,  or teased at the edges by mockery.   “  No one sees me.  ”