#eldritch lover

[marielovesyou]

I love the idea of treating your partner’s wounds. Gently cleaning the blood from their body. Applying stitches, bandages or just band-aid. Soothing their pain and being their comfort.

I love it even more if it’s a human treating a big scary demon who protected her just a moment before :)

[sorbeo]

Ramblings of an eldritch lover [2/?]

The sight of your smiling face above me, the way you look at me… could this be real love? Could the universe have finally given me a chance of breaking the laws of my own nature?

You let me rest reclined on your lap. In fact, you insisted on it, as much as the idea made me anxious. Our hands have touched before… and now you caress my hair. You say I should loosen up, that I am safe in your hands. What a silly idea. Certainly, you could never even come close to hurting me, yet I know for certain that I am doomed to loosen up, close as you are.

That is the very reason why I am anxious. No one ever gets this near. No one ever touches me. I had forgotten how it felt, how it echoes like an invitation, like a glistening bird hovering above me. The very thought of what drives you to do so makes me confused. SureIy no bird would ever invite me, yet here you are. I look up and see nothing but a timid smile. You seem entranced, though I did nothing of the sort to you, as far as I can tell. Your eyes never lie as they observe me, Paloma. They are loving, warm and sweet as ever. If only…

That thought again. It sends shivers up my spine and brings warmth to my mouth. You don’t seem to notice. Nonetheless, I am forced to look away before the thought consumes me. I must forget the perfection of your skin, the whiteness of your teeth and the upper of your hair. With my eyes closed, it is only a matter of seconds before you vanish, right? I try to stop imagining how you must feel upon the tongue. You love me, you certainly would let me…

The intruding thought dissipates. That softness my cheek… I hope my eyes again and find your hand as you turn my face back, as you make our eyes meet again. The very thought of how close we are. I must look away, I mustn’t allow it, lest -

“What are you so afraid of, dear? Do you not appreciate my affection?”

Your voice sound indignant. You don’t realise your own fragility. Perhaps I should conjure another string of lies to encircle you. Perhaps not. I am rendered silent. I wouldn’t dare opening my mouth now. Something stirs up inside of you.

“You always flee from my advances, you never want me near you, and yet… you always want to be near me. What is it that you really want, Icarus, dear? I hope I do not sound harsh by asking this, but, you always seem so elusive. I feel like trying to catch a trout with bare hands.”

“A serpent”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Forgive me. The words escaped my mouth before I could see them. Think nothing of them.”

“See, you are being elusive again. Please answer me, and answer me truthfully. What feeling inhabits this shining soul of yours? If you do not care for me, I would rather know now, before… before being trapped in a web of illusion.”

Once again, I cannot answer you. It is far too late for that. Illusion is all there is, as much as it pains me to admit it. I have always thought it wrong to lie to you. Perhaps I spend so much time in this form, acting and speaking and dancing like a man, that I myself forget it is borrowed. All but the blue of my eyes and the red of my tongue once belonged to others. All feelings were taught to me. All words, all matter of human activity I absorbed willingly to better know people. Nothing in this world is nearly as enticing… yet I have limits. I am ashamed to admit it, but I myself cannot discern love from hunger. I never could, no matter how much I tried before. Perhaps it is only that I love too much. That I would love the world, if it did not escape me.

Your affection is so sweet, so genuine. It seems so close to what I feel. If you truly love me, then… then I would finally know for certain that this is what I feel, also. I can love. I can love like a man.

“Please, would you come with me, then? I must… I must show you something.”

You were caught off-guard by my directness. Mother is right. Words are like teeth. They sink in too deep before one perceives the strike.

“Yes, of course. Nothing would bring me more joy than to know you better.”

You follow me with that same smile on your face. Neither of us knew you were lying.

[monstersandmaw]

This is probably on a whole other level of monster romance but what would you think about a massive psionic aberration whose true form is eldritch and impossible to fathom to the mortal mind and so they lovingly make you hallucinate a humanoid avatar of themselves for you to interact with. Might be a touch of angst because while they could probably make you hallucinate the sensation of touch, they can't feel you touching the avatar in return.

Love it! The angst!! Reminds me a little of the eldritch/interdimensional being I wrote for Patreon. But I love your addition of the hallucination!

[monstersandmaw]

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I've wanted to write this one for a while, and in a poll a while back, a number of you voted for some kind of interdimensional entity which lives in the mines of Starfall Springs, so here it is! As this is your monthly story reward, it will not be going up on Tumblr, so this one is all yours to enjoy! Let me know your thoughts in the comments or by dropping a click on the heart button if you liked it.

Contents: mention of vague nightmares, getting lost as a child in a mine, tentacles, shapeshifting creature, polyphonic voices, eyes, general eldritch weirdness... gender neutral reader, and some sexy times. Wordcount: 4006

Chunky preview:

The dreams still lingered. Despite moving away from Starfall Springs, despite years of therapy that had only half worked, you still had the dreams. They weren’t nightmares as such, but they were hardly fluffy bunnies, rainbows, and unicorns either.

Starting awake from yet another one, sweat sheening your forehead and chest, heartbeat hammering in your ears, you gasped for breath as the darkness retreated in your mind but not in your room. Outside, the noises of the un-sleeping city rumbled away, but inside all was quiet. Not so inside your own mind though. Tunnels, dripping water on algae-slick rock, breath clouding like ghosts in barely-lit tunnels, echoing shadows and scratching claws and rising panic. All manner of things lurked in the depths of the Starfall silver mines, and not all of them were as friendly as the teams of goblins and hobgoblins who worked the silver veins. One of those less friendly creatures had come looking for you.

That school trip to visit the main shaft of the mines, to see how silver was extracted through a mix of goblin technology and ancient magic, had ended with you separated from the group, lost, disorientated, wandering alone, somehow going deeper without realising it. Eyes in the dark; a breath on your shoulder; turning to find paralysing darkness on all sides and no way out: it had fuelled these dreams for years.

But that had not been the end of your experience.

The creature that had hunted you, toyed with you in the blackness of the cold tunnels, had been afraid of something too. Your friend, Ki’ik, had quoted Qui-Gon Jinn at you when you’d tried to tell her about it afterwards, saying something about bigger fish, but it hadn’t been much of a comfort. There, in the endless dark of the mines, lived something more terrifying and somehow more abstract than the unseen predator who had stalked you. All you could really remember was a slick tentacle turning you around, and another appendage, perhaps clawed, wrapping around your wrist with impossible delicacy, and tugging you back along the tunnel. Meek and limp with horror, you had obeyed. An eye had blinked at you in the gloom, the walls lit everywhere by the speckles of algae that barely threw off enough light to create the illusion of a starry sky. The only reason you’d even noticed the light to begin with was when the minuscule points had been blotted out in places by whatever it was that had appeared to guide you out.

“This… way,” a voice like boiling tar had whispered, appearing to come from inside your own skull. It had sounded thick and dark, and as though it tried to articulate a language too crude for its physical form. But still, it had tried.

From all sorts of impossible angles and places, the creature had led you through the tunnels until you heard voices calling. You’d turned, glimpsing a patch of glittering light high up near the barrel vaults of the rough-hewn tunnel that blinked and shimmered before disappearing completely, only to be replaced by a broiling mess of tentacles near the passageway’s floor. Your young mind had gone blank with the impossibility of it, and you’d passed out.

Waking a few days later in the small clinic at the edge of Starfall Springs, you’d tried to explain what you’d seen but you didn’t have the words. It was like your mind was trying to cup water and it was pouring through the gaps as quickly as you tried to hold onto it.

“Yeah, the Dark will do that,” Ki’ik’s older brother had said casually when you’d gone over to their house a month later. He, like most of the goblins who’d moved to the area, was a miner, and he just shrugged.

“The Dark?”

He gave another twitch of his bony shoulder and tucked into the dinner that his father had made for you all.

You’d looked from one face to the next, but it was their father who had chuckled and said, “The ‘Dark’ is what we affectionately name the entity which lives down in the deeper areas of the mine.” He nudged a bowl of vegetables your way and continued speaking. “We don’t know what it is or where it came from, and no one likes to linger long enough to find out, but anyone who’s ever got into trouble down there has been hauled out by it. Reports vary - here, have some more potato, please - but we know it has to be the same creature.”

“But… what is it?” you’d asked and he’d only insisted that no one knew, and that it was best forgotten. You were safe now, and that was that.

So, finding yourself back in Starfall Springs ten years later for Ki’ik’s wedding to some human that she’d fallen completely head over heels for, dredged up mixed memories to say the least. When she’d told you that it was happening at the mine itself, you’d grouched that that was hardly a romantic location, but when you’d driven up to the site through the seemingly endless pines, the forest floor carpeted with spongy moss, bright cyclamen poking their colourful heads through it, you’d had to admit that it was pretty.

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