#fianynlas

[knightsandshadows]

An aesthetics board for Fianynlas, Prince of the Dark Forest.

[lordsofthehunt]

Sprouts

           He dreamt of fire. Of weight pressing him down and flames licking over his skin and catching in his hair. And he screamed because it should have been agony. It was agony, it was terror to watch his skin blacken and flake and fall away. He screamed and trees screamed with him, even the ground seeming to toss in agony or perhaps that was only his own crisped muscles yanking taut.

           He wasn't afraid. He should have been, when the smoke made it impossible to keep screaming. When he was falling away into nothing but the ash and he knew it was the most unspeakable agony. But he looked up with eyes that should no longer have been able to see and found another pair or eyes in the fire, another presence in the flames that destroyed him.

           Ashes rise.

           He was not afraid when he looked into eyes made of fire, and he closed his own and there was nothing.

           When he opened them it was dark, streetlamps shining only dimly into the dark alley he'd hidden himself in. He slept fitfully, it was noisy and it was not safe to sleep in the streets. He was never certain he was alone. And he was not.

           There was a man crouched beside him, pale in the dim lights of the street, shining like marble and shrouded in something dark. Long waves of dark hair, and a cloak of something shimmering black. The man's head tilted, eyes shining crimson in pools of darkness as they met his.

           He should have been afraid. There was something dangerous in the curve of the smile that shaped itself on sculpted lips. But he did not even flinch when slender fingers reached out to cup his cheek and trace their way along his jaw. He could not tear his eyes from the man's impossibly beautiful face or the blood crimson of his eyes, not even when those fingers tightened with surprising strength on his jaw and force his lips apart.

           "Come home." The man whispered as something small and hard as wood was set on his tongue, tasting faintly of earth and ashes. He swallowed, and felt it slip over his throat, not quite choking. Something changed.

           Fingers drifted over his cheek again tingling, almost gentle and he could almost hear something in the way those eyes looked into his. But the man said nothing else, only stood, tall in the dim light and drifted back into the shadows until he was gone.

           Seeds grow.

           He jerked upright staring around him with wide eyes, but the park was empty at this hour and there was no fire, and no tall man who smelled of blood and earth. Only the ring of mushrooms he had fallen asleep in. Something had changed. But Gwyll could not have said why he thought so. It was only the same dream he had been having for weeks. @fateandmyth  for mention