Zariya Sunwhisper

[bucketofcrows]

sending my most loyal knight on increasingly dangerous missions because i want to see him crawling back bleeding out within an inch of his life or see him get possessed by the cursed blade as his morals start to crumble as he grows more bloodthirsty and ruthless but it turns out he's too good at his job so he just returns perfectly fine every time. what's even the fucking point

[voidwalkwithme]

"Sunshine"

Their glasses touched with a gentle clink, and they sipped from them. The blush-colored wine was dry, medium-bodied, with a rose aroma and hints of citrus and pepper on her tongue. The woman across from her was gorgeous by any standard, an icy blonde with the most brilliant felfire eyes she’d ever seen — but it was her impeccable sense of style that’d drawn Jaeness into her orbit. It was the opposite of avant garde — timeless, classic, unimpeachable — and yet there was something inexplicably, brazenly rebellious about it, about her.

They met at a party, one thing led to another, and now they were enjoying wine and hors d'oeuvres on the terrace of a rather exclusive restaurant after a rather financially damaging shopping excursion. Ah, how she’d missed Silvermoon City. She moved through it as a phantom of her former self by way of a clever enchantment — a trick of the light that left her nigh indistinguishable from any other Sin’dorei — but Zariya Sunwhisper saw right through it and cared not. That was part of her appeal: her fearlessness of the forbidden and terribly dangerous.

Zariya saw the irony in Jaeness’ choice of eye color, not fel green but the molten gold of the so-called Holy Light, and found it wickedly amusing. She knew that Jaeness wasn’t a wise choice of associate, but there were some whispers she was willing to endure in the name of a good time. The late afternoon sun was warm on their shoulders, and cast the pair in light most flattering as they sipped and snacked and gossiped relentlessly in conspiratorial tones.

Jaeness wondered if perhaps it wasn’t just a night, a weekend, but the beginning of something akin to friendship. Allies were in short supply these days —  trustworthy ones even more so — and while Jaeness wasn’t fool enough to trust a warlock, she couldn’t help but consider the possibility that they had just enough in common to become recklessly entangled.  

“Tell me how you make it last,” Zariya demanded, bewitching eyes pointing at the jewel pendant that dangled beneath Jaeness’ collar bone on its gold chain, and the Ren’dorei smirked.

“Coming for my secrets already, are you?” She teased, setting her glass gently on the table. “It’s a bit like a phylactery,” she admitted readily, “without all the death. There’s plenty of magic here for me to funnel into it.”

It was an indirect admission of siphoning on a scale most wouldn’t dare cop to, and certainly wouldn’t approve of — but it was clear to her that Zariya wasn’t “most”. 

“And if you don’t wear it?” She pressed, taking another sip from her glass, eyes narrowing with predatory curiosity.

“You really want to know how it works, don’t you?” She straightened in her chair, not sure why she was even a little surprised. Zariya was also an enchantress, and her ambition and competitive spirit were readily apparent. Jaeness let her smile reach her eyes. “Why don’t you try to work it out for yourself, and I’ll let you know when you’re getting close, hm?”

Zariya scoffed at that, but seemed to regard Jaeness with no less warmth, a response Jaeness had anticipated. Nothing like a little challenge between “friends”.

@daily-writing-challenge

@ungentle-love

[return-to-limbo]

I could consume you, you know. I could devour you. Sink my teeth into the softest parts, split you open, scoop out everything unnecessary until you’re just a hollow, shivering thing in my hands. I could chew the tendons from your fingers, make you watch as I swallow. And what would you do? Fight? Scream? You don’t have the strength. You’d just take it. Because you were always meant to be mine—inside me, part of me, nothing without me.

[bluelady127]

[ungentle-love]

"Serene"

In the dim light of a small hour, Zariya sat in the upholstered chair by the window with her legs tucked under her. With quickness and precision that could be born only of years of experience, she worked needle and thread through the hem of Rynathil’s cloak, her eyes flitting up from time to time to verify that he was still sound asleep in bed mere feet away. Her stitches formed the shapes of protective runes, crimson thread for crimson fabric. They did not need to be seen.

She could not sleep. She could no more stop him from marching to war than he could stop her from doing anything at all. This was not the first and likely would not be the last - he was as good at coming back as he was at leaving - but some small, nebulous part of her grew fearful, and her body tired under the weight of that animal. 

“My parents were tailors,” she whispered, impossibly soft. “Not tailors for royalty, or nobility, just tailors,” she gave bitter clarification. “My family name isn’t ‘Sunwhisper’, it’s…” she added matter of factly, whispering the Thalassian occupational name for “tailor”. She watched his sleeping face suspiciously, ensuring his unconsciousness. The moonlight that filtered in through the window behind her was gentle with him; the outline of his body was drawn so subtly, the shadows cast upon his face annoyingly flattering. The knit of his brow and the tension in his jaw that were so often there in his sleep were not - he slept deeply, without dream.

Setting her finished project in her lap, she reclined slightly in her seat, her eyes never leaving him. “I know you see how hard I’ve worked, how fiercely I’ve fought for everything that’s mine,” she acquiesced. “I know you’ve known for a while now that I didn’t come from much - but that doesn’t make it any easier to tell you. Saying it…” she took a breath. “Well, I don’t like saying it.”

If he’d been awake, he would have laughed, and she would have hated him for it in the way that only love could. Moving in silence, barefoot across the floor, she returned his cloak to its hanger before hiding her sewing kit. It was a pointless gesture - she’d mended his things while he slept many times before - but she insisted. Her work done, she slipped back into bed, the front of her body meeting the back of his (upon this, she also insisted). She tucked her chin into the curve where his neck met his shoulder, the tip of her nose just barely nuzzling his skin, and she wrapped her arms around his torso. 

“You can never know what you mean to me,” she whispered, trusting - perhaps foolishly - that she hadn’t woken him.

@daily-writing-challenge

@gentle-undoing

[halfwayriight]

Crota, son of Oryx. He took everything from me.

[flowerytale]

Ottessa Moshfegh, from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

[gentle-undoing]

iv. direction

nsfw content. there's smut under the cut. i promise to repent later.

The air in the solarium was quietly oppressive, and the silence within it was of three parts. The first was the deep, damp quiet of things growing in the dark, the patient sound of root and leaf and loam. The second was the high, thin silence of the moon, a silver and lonely sound that fell through the weeping glass panes and lay in pools on the slick stone floor. The third was the silence of a man who had long learned the value of holding his tongue.

Into this quiet, Zariya poured her frustration. It was not a grand and terrible rage, but something slyer, more venomous. A wasp sting of a thing. She was weaving a spell—or trying to. Her hands, long and graceful, moved through the air, which was thick enough to drink, tasting of night-blooming jasmine and the sour-wine tang of magic that had curdled. The sigils she drew hung for a moment, shimmering like oil on water, before dissolving into nothing.

Rynathil stood in the shadows by a beam choked with ivy, motionless. The humidity plastered his clothing to his skin, but he felt no discomfort. He watched the scrying pool at her feet, faces swimming up from their depths—distorted, warped. A chancellor’s features melted and ran like cheap tallow, and the whispers were swallowed by static.

With a hiss of pure frustration, Zariya swiped her hand through the haze, shattering the illusion. The spell died with a discordant whine. “It’s useless,” she spat, and the word was a sharp, ugly stone. “It’s like trying to see through muddy water.”

She turned on him, her blue eyes bright in the gloom. Her silken robe, the color of a deep bruise, clung to her body, outlining the sweat-slick curve of her spine, the suggestive swell of her breasts. “You’re staring.”

“I’m observing,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re taking up space. You’re breathing my air. What use are you if you cannot make things work?”

“That is not my function, Magistrix," he said, his voice a low, cool stone.

“Don’t give me that fucking title,” she snapped, stalking towards him. The hem of her robe dragged through a puddle on the slick floor, the dark stain spreading up the silk like a disease. “Not when you say it like that. Like a name on a tombstone.”

She stopped directly in front of him, forced to tilt her head back to meet the infuriating calm in his eyes. The sheer verticality of him was an insult. He was a lighthouse of quiet judgment, and she felt like the wave crashing uselessly at its base.

“I’m hot,” she hissed, her voice a low, tight hum of fury. “I’m sticky. And my magic is being a stubborn cunt.” She reached out, pressing a palm flat against his chest. He did not move, did not react. His heart did not beat any faster beneath the linen. Her eyes, glittering with a rage that was beginning to burn into something else, held his. “I am tired of looking up at you,” she stated, the words clipped and final. She gave his chest a sharp, pointless shove. “Kneel.”

The command hung in the air. For a moment, the only sound was the drip of water from the fern.

Then, he listened. The world shifted.

Now, she was the tower, his head now only level with her hips. There was a power to it—the sheer, visceral rightness of his obedience, total and immediate. She stepped closer, the front of her robe whispering against his shoulder. She looked down at the crown of his head, at the way the smeared moonlight caught in the dark strands of his hair. The anger had not left her, but it had changed its shape. It had become a hook, pulling something sharp and needful up from the pit of her stomach.

“My spellwork fails because I cannot achieve a singular focus,” she said, her voice softer now, the sound of it sinking through the stone to where he knelt. “My will is distracted. My body is… tense.”

Her hands came to rest on his head, her fingers tangling in the thick strands of his hair. It wasn't a caress. It was a grip. She leaned her weight into it, her knuckles pressing against his scalp as she guided his head forward. He offered no resistance, allowing her to press his face against the silk of her robes, just above her navel. The fabric was cool and smooth against his lips and the bridge of his nose, but beneath it, he could feel the radiating, living heat of her skin.

“I think,” she whispered, her voice a husky, desperate thing right above him, “you can help me with that.” She studied him for a long moment, savoring the image of a man brought low by nothing more than her will. Then, with deliberate grace, she lifted one slender leg and settled her foot against his shoulder. His hands came up instinctively to steady her, fingers splaying across her hips. His touch was firm, sure. His signal came as a slight, almost imperceptible downward pressure from her toes. An order given and received.

He leaned forward, closing the small distance between them, nudging her thighs apart with his head, his hair brushing against her inner skin like coarse silk. Then, his mouth found her. She was honey and salt and a deep, musky heat all her own. Her gasp, when it came, wasn’t a sound of pleasure—not yet. It was a hiss of triumph. His tongue was not gentle. It was firm, insistent—a tool applied by a craftsman who intended to work the material he had been given. Her fingers, still tangled in his hair, tightened into fists, yanking hard enough to make his scalp sting.

“That’s it,” she breathed out, a ragged exhalation, and there—just there—was the barest softening in her tone that might have been fondness in another woman’s voice. The leg draped across his shoulder trembled, muscle betraying what pride would never allow her to voice.

This was the true command. The rest had been prelude.

His tongue was a merciless, clever thing—sometimes tracing lazy, teasing circles, sometimes flicking like a whip against her clit until she writhed, and sometimes pressing down with a broad, flat pressure that made her entire pelvis ache. He knew the rhythm of her pleasure—the specific angle that made her toes curl, the exact pressure that drew a low, guttural moan from deep in her chest. His fingers found her, slick and ready, and he pushed inside. It narrowed to this: the silky heat of her, the taste, the frantic pulse beating against his lips, the slow, deliberate rotation of her hips as she ground herself against solid, unyielding pressure. He was merely the whetstone—she was the blade, sharpening her frayed nerves against him.

It was with a shuddering sigh she came—her head thrown back so far her neck corded. Then it was done. She gathered herself with the clean click of something fitted back into place. With the absent surety of a queen accepting petition, her hand found his shoulder. Her fingers settled, and for a heartbeat she let herself feel the way the heat of him came up through his shirt, how the pulse at his throat knocked once-twice against the side of her hand like a bird that knew her window. The shape of his name rose to the back of her teeth, small and dangerously easy. She did not speak it. She only held there, and the touch gentled of its own accord, the way hands do when the mind is elsewhere and honest.

Her expression twisted into one of self-annoyance, the small, private irritation of someone interrupted by her own biology. As if touching a hot coal, she snatched her hand back. Without another look, she turned on her heel and stalked back toward the hazy energy of her scrying pool. She lifted a hand behind her: dismissal pared down to a flick of the fingers. "Leave me."

But he did not move.

She could feel his presence like a weight at her back, kneeling there in the humid darkness. The silence stretched between them.

‎"I said leave," Zariya repeated, her voice carrying the edge of authority that had cowed magisters twice her age. Still, she kept her back to him, her hands already beginning to weave new sigils. To turn around would be to acknowledge the question in his silence, and she could not afford the answer.

His steps receded; the latch caught. The pool turned obedient, a mirror she could finally trust.

The banquet was set—silver covers, steam rising like prayer. She lifted the lids and found portion after portion exactly as she’d ordered it: leverage, names, doors that opened at a touch. She tasted, and found it wanting. She had sharpened her hunger against a faithful thing until it would cut anything—even the hand that steadied her.

But, she called it victory, because she always did.

@daily-writing-challenge @ungentle-love

[ungentle-love]

"Wither"

Zariya knew what it meant to be severed from the Sunwell. It had been part of her training, after all. Even then, even briefly, that severance left her unspeakably empty, her freshly hollowed insides surging with abrupt and ravenous hunger. It was inconceivable, unforgettable pain - pain that had become her reality.

She was fierce, and stubborn, and had held out longer than some, even as her power waned and her flesh began to wither along with it. She soothed the ache by siphoning from everything she could: mana wyrms, crystals, bloodthistle. She smoked relentlessly, anything to take the edge off of arcane hunger, even with the knowledge that there was no taking the edge off of arcane hunger.

It all happened slowly - bit by bit, one day at a time - until her reflection was a stranger to her. Her body, once lean muscle and feminine curvature, was whittled to sharp lines and protruding bone. Her formerly milky complexion became sallow, her skin frail. The hollows beneath her eyes grew deeper and darker. Silver strands crept into her golden hair, and it became thin and brittle like the rest of her. 

If she did not give in soon, it would get so much worse. The idea that any of this damage to her body could be permanent terrified her. This would not be her end.

She would not waste away, no matter what it cost her.

@daily-writing-challenge

[mournfulroses]

Christa Wolf, from her novel titled "Cassandra," originally published in 1983

[gentle-undoing]

i. calculate

There are evenings in Eversong that feel longer than others—days when the light holds on stubbornly, refusing to slip from the leaves, and the heat lingers beneath the surface of things. These are his favored hours: when the eternal autumn leans into a memory of summer but does not quite surrender. The air is thick with the scent of honeysuckle, the sweetness of earth after a late watering, the faint sharpness of sap and green things.

He kneels in the garden, coaxing weeds from the roots of a half-wild rose. The work is slow and grounding. He hums under his breath—an old tune, barely remembered from childhood, worn smooth by repetition. Dirt stains the lines of his palms and fills the half-moons of his nails.

It is only as gloom begins to pool in hollows across the flagstones that he hears footsteps—soft, deliberate, the measured tread of someone who knows the place well enough not to hurry. He does not startle, but he does pause, his hand resting among the thorns.

He straightens slowly, dusting his hands, and turns toward the sound. The sun is at his back, throwing his shadow long and thin across the path.

She stands at the edge of the garth, framed by the fading light. She is not a ghost, though for a moment she might as well be—a figure conjured by memory, or longing, or the tricks of tired eyes.

At first, she says nothing. Silence gathers, slow and heavy, like rain in the hollow of an old stone.

It is not uncomfortable, only vast.

There are no tender reasons left between them. He knows this visit is not for forgiveness or reminiscence, but for some necessity she will not name. He waits, emptied by old ache, as the last light of the sun dips below the horizon, and prepares himself to be useful.

Zariya’s mouth lifts at one corner, not quite a smile. “You never used to lock your doors.” And the years drop away, cruel and easy.

“Maybe I should have,” he murmurs, but there’s no heat in it, only the ache of too many almosts. It feels as bittersweet as overripe fruit.

She stops just short of touching distance, and something in him leans forward without moving. “You look well,” she says, quietly, as if it costs her dearly.

He shrugs, the motion weary. “Well enough. You?”

Her gaze flicks away. “I survive.” She says it like a challenge, like a confession, thin and bitter as vinegar.

He studies her in the half-light, searching her face for what time has changed and what it has left untouched. The way dusk gilds her hair, the impossible green of her eyes, the stubborn set of her mouth—he memorizes it all, knowing how quickly she can disappear. There is a part of him that believes this moment is only borrowed—that she will vanish if he blinks.

He turns away, eyes on the garden, on shadows stretching long and blue along the stones. “Why did you come back?” he asks, the question scraped from somewhere raw.

Zariya’s eyes gleam, cat-bright, in the dark. “Does it matter? You always let me in.”

He almost smiles, the shape of it faint and self-mocking. “Maybe I’m tired of being a door.”

She laughs, and it is a sound like old joy turned inside out. He wonders, not for the first time, if she feels the ache as keenly as he does, or if it’s only him left hollow and wanting.

“Don’t lie, Rynathil. You never learned how.”

The words settle between them, final and soft, as the last of the day creeps away and the garden grows dark and strange. He feels the pull, patient and ceaseless, like a river wearing down bedrock—not with violence, but with endless return.

He wonders if love is something that smooths or erases, and whether, in the end, he will be river or stone.

@daily-writing-challenge @ungentle-love

[darling--scorpio]

[perfectquote]

“I think that after the first time you give your heart away, you never get it back. The rest of your life is just you pretending that you still have a heart.”

— Tarryn Fisher, The Opportunist