#fantasy verse.

[blacknighted]

@absentpublic asked: oh ... you thought of me first? / MORBID CURIOSITY: still accepting.

"Well, don't sound so surprised about it. Course I did." Henry bothers with the bathtub. "Who else would I be making offers to?"

The air's pleasant here, isn't it? Off the water, steam with the scent of chamomile bounces like laughter.

At last. The pair of them, trumpeted on gold and brass as great, brave heros — still baffling, admittedly — have gone squirreling back to ol' Elfsong, his bones aching, his belly empty, and he's scarcely been better. After all, they are down a whole world-ending nightmare, the city yet floundering wicked as it fought to catch its breath. He could have left by now, really, and gone journeying to Rattay with his hound and his nag, but he didn't. See, he had to help the locals first just a little bit, hadn't he? And then Nettie... Well, braies on, water scalding him as he ventures in, Hal slackens to the hot.

Right. Henry, his palms passing over a very old scar, couldn't, not for the life of him, leave her alone. "Sure the gold folk are tossing our way can get someplace for us far away. Someplace in the woods more like?" Stay with me, it says. He was truly, really serious.

[suverennaya-moved]

        ❛  lost,  sir ?  ❜   she’s  careful  to  not  move  her  head  too   much  lest  the  sedges  atop  her  head  peek  out  and  give  her  away.   anya  knew  who  he  was  ---  what  they  called  him  and  what  he’s  been  doing,  at  least.   perhaps  approaching  him  instead  of  hiding  wasn’t  the  wisest  decision,  but  she’d  already  been  spotted  (  and  thank  the  gods  her  kind  looked  human  ).   ❛  people  don’t  really  pass  through  these  parts.  ❜

@iilvecchio​  -  lancelot !     au  verse  starter  call.

[blacknighted]

@absentpublic asked: [ 27. ] sender wipes the blood from receiver's face, murmuring, "let's get you cleaned up." (consider) / A YELLOW SUNRISE: still accepting.

Tending to him? The roles are reversed. Were the sight him not so utterly pitiful, he might've thought she'd have brightened for this rare opportunity. But it had to be smaller for that, obviously, like a raw and scuppered elbow or a wickedly tender burn after traipsing through the forest. This was an outlier, certainly, all an ill-begotten viper in that dainty, little list. Bandages for paper cuts is innocent, surely. But bandages for torture, most certainly not.

Henry grimaces. A swear slips him. His lips are cracked and his flesh is battered. Where have you gone for these two nights, Henry? Looking up, that he had managed to come back was all parts a mystery.

"I nearly had him," Henry tells her, jaw tight and body shuddering, spent and clearly worn but eager still to fight. He goes off sometimes, they know that, to go accomplishing whatever a squire must do, but with those cuts down his belly and what poker tore his thigh... He grabs her wrist. His torturer-- That bastard! "I've got to go back and gut him."

[blacknighted]

@absentpublic asked: takes his hand. unfolds his fingers. presses a very soft kiss to the palm of his hand.

It has been days now, he considers. Aye. Some innumerable, toiling, and such difficult evenings. Beneath his feet, the earth seems to squelch unto his sabatons, their maws opening right up as to vacuum right in. He grimaces. My, is every step a damned journey and is every jaunt a great menace! Above him, the heavens split, the rain pelts, and he keeps his watch.

He can't help it. Orin is dead now, but lingering in his head... Gripping his sword, he yet hears his dear, still, as she cried in her rescue. In her tent, Henry peers out unto the dock and its waters, the tempest too blustery and drummy to discern stirring in her sheets. When she touches him, it's with a near bursting of his heart, his eyes happening upon her so endearingly wide. He gawks. The softness of her face as she pries open his hand... He starts to melt. She kisses it, the gauntlet, and a great number pf nonsense swells to his throat. "Nettie? What are you...?" Why are you up now, he wonders, like you're swearing your fealty? He's dazed. Then, another kiss there and nestled at his palm... "God Almighty, love, what's gotten into you?"

[blacknighted]

"Hey," Henry calls, "look at what I'd found." Emerging with flowers, he dons on him the moonlight caught dribbling from the treetops. Now, everything feels a flavor mercurial, from one second rousing unto another still as breath. Bella leans heavily on latter looking everything a creature chiseled tenderly from stone, but the way the stars above her look to wink in shades of nova? Well, while no diviner, these moments feel to him like a wish in a bottle. "Bluebells," he announces upon nearing, dirt about his fingers and moss beneath her palms. He could be fooled, quite honestly, into believing her a woman making loom of nightly skies, but that would run the risk of stubbornly blaspheming. Oh, well. Maybe, well, maybe the pollen's got right to his head. "Not supposed to be in these parts, but here I am minding my work when one of them comes springing right out the clearing. Ma always told me to stop and smell the roses. I'm supposing I am of a sort." He gives it to her. "Reminded me of someone." / @miidnighters liked for a starter.

[blacknighted]

@edensbite asked: you’re being followed ,  pretend you know me . / THE DUSTY TOYBOX: still accepting.

"What?" As if but a shadow, she has already claimed his side. On her, she bleeds something layered — the gourmand, he imagines — and the earthy, spring-time soak of a long filled grave.

Interesting. "And you decided my hero had to be you, did you?"

An idiot, then. But obeying, he, his sword clinking, is an idiot who listens.

In the failing of the late-evening gloam — gentle now, chased by the umbered glow of the lanterns — he can sense it: the low and seething glare of an angry tail. Oh. He hasn't made friends here, he knows that, having been but a thorn to the side of the resident cutthroats, and dressed as a black knight with his shimmering armor? He's a beacon. And looking down at her, this maid like dripped inkwell is glared at too. "You should've just left me to it." he says. Perhaps. His hackles rise. He can't help himself; he makes for his blade. God damned fool playing noble Lancelot— "Sakra. Stay with me." His heart gallops. "You mad?"

[blacknighted]

It had been carnage. It had been brutal. It had been human, animal, and utterly glorious. Of course, Henry wouldn't think that were one to ask him, his eyes wild, heart pulsing, and that great mask upon his helmet knocked half right off. For it, it revealed a most summer-vibrant creature, his autumns paltry, springs few, but that number of his wars etched vast and plenty. He bore a spirit, this human, and a flame-licking passion as he grips his sword. Here, he eyes this gargantuan fighter who would loom like a tree, and...

Sakra.

Gritting his teeth, Hal looks at him: the one lone mercenary where his troupe lay dead. That snotty little bookkeep...! That tome he'd fetched as asked better be worth it. "Don't think I'll see to you as I did them, that it? Well, I will! Give me a reason, and I'll let you have it!" Oh, little wolf...! Please don't make me. / @khaeryx, liked for a fantasy starter.

[blacknighted]

It can't be. It isn't the place he had ever thought he'd see her again. For years, he'd believed her but a creature who'd remain in memory. She had persisted as a beguiling sort of whisper, his mind idling on her beauty and in that laughter she had offered in the reaches of the night. She had been but a ghost in his slumber, a glimpse of his life that had been so sweet, and he'd thought that there she'd linger, loitering the doorway of his tendermost dreams, but there she'd stand in the wholeness of her body...!

He's drunk. Or addled, he supposes, thrus in his death bed.

She hasn't aged a day, this woman. Against her skin, she glows in the wash of the moonlight, a rose long-suspended in a winter-clutched dream. He'd ought to keep her just as the lady stand, far in his mind where she'd live untouched, but -- he can't help but reach for her, following her steps as exits the tavern. Why chase a haunting no matter how cherished? Cemeteries-- He yanks her shoulder. What good will dare come from the turning of graves? "Stop." Gruffer. Rougher. And his face -- the etching of a long decade paints him a hunter. "I'm not letting you get away from me again." A table jeers in jest, ale spilling. "You've haunted me long enough." / @sanctifisol, liked for a starter.