Author's Notes: This story takes place in the World of Changelings, KayRey's fabulous Alternate
Universe. It is the Fourth Age, and the Elves have come back to Middle Earth, bearing with them the
magick that is their very essence. Elijah is a shapeshifter, a changeling with a difference, and Sean
is a powerful Mage. This is part of their backstory.
The poem that frames the story is Insomnia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now, and now more clear.
Tonight love claims his full control
And with desire and with regret,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.
~~~~~
Samhain Eve - when the wall between the worlds thins to transparency; and mystery spills
over, onto our mundane lives. On this night, anything is possible, and if you wish it hard
enough, a dream can be made real.
~~~~~
He stands at a dirt-smeared window, deep in the heart of the city, and his body thrums to the
secret music of the night. The air in the sleazy hotel room is thick with the sour reek of
revisited alcohol, and the rank smell of dead hope. The last is ingrained into the walls, a
psychic stink, and it seeps into his spirit and digs its barbs into his soul. He hunches his
shoulders and shakes his head to clear it. He is no longer drug-addled falling-down drunk;
his remarkable body has taken care of that. Even the residual soreness of ungentle sex is
fast becoming a painful memory.
He feels a stirring in the air behind him, and he turns to look toward the bed. The moonlight
falls athwart the stained sheets, and caught in its cold gleam, an arm, searching the space
beside it, demanding, possessive. He watches the swastika flex, crawling on the bunching
muscles, and his gorge rises again, thick with self-disgust. He retches helplessly, but there
is nothing left to heave. And finally, the arm stills.
There is a deep ache still, where his shoulder curves into his neck, and he raises his hand to
it with a frown. He feels the half-moon marks of teeth under his fingertips, and his gut
clenches. But there is no blood - his hand is clean, his Shifter's curse unshared, and he
shuts his eyes thankfully and falls...
...inward.
From their niches in his mind two pairs of feral eyes stare back. After a moment, his Raven
rouses its feathers and looks away, but his unwanted lodger meets his eyes squarely. There
is a measuring quality to the golden gaze, a hint of cold disdain. They stare at each other
challengingly - then the Cat drops its eyes to its huge paw and begins to clean it with a rough
pink tongue.
Fuck you, its host mutters resentfully. Fastidious bastard.
And he turns away.
The harsh moonlight etches his pure profile in planes of silver and ebony, and glints upon
the wetness on a pale cheek. The grimy window frame is rough with peeling paint, and he
braces his hands against it, resting his forehead on the streaked glass.
His eyes are shadowed, and they gaze out at the midnight quiet of the city, but they do not
see. The distant crack of belated fireworks echoes through the silence, but he cannot hear
them. The autumn cold radiates off the windowpane, and the bright ache is as nothing to his
naked frame.
His eyes see a sleepy farmhouse, under a moon-bright sky. The voice that echoes in his
ears is warm and deep and he finds comfort in its soft timbre, and a restless peace. Strong
arms hold him close, wrapping him in solace, protecting him from the piercing cold. Amid
the rolling fields and the green hillsides of his imaginings, he had been loved.
It is always so. In another country, another city, in the pearlescent space of the genie's
lamp, the arms that hold him are the same.
When reality is too much for him, he takes refuge in half-remembered dreams.
A cloud drifts across the moon, and the gossamer visions fade. His breath hitches on a
half-sob and he draws his hands down the wooden frame and starts to push away. The sharp
point of a warped nail catches on a soft pad of his palm, rips though the fragile skin, and
dark blood wells out. He stares at his dripping hand with a strange detachment, watching
the blood seep and clot, watching his ragged skin knitting before his eyes, until all that is
left is a thin white line. He watches himself heal, and the sudden revelation is simple and
profound. His spirit can be whole again, just like his flesh. He can remake his life, plant
flowers in the ashes of despair, and find a goal to strive for, a reason to exist. When the
loving arms fold around him once more, he will deserve their warmth; and when he finds the
elves at last, he will stand before them without shame, and meet their regard with pride.
The moonlight licks his body with a silver tongue, lovingly tracing the sharp jut of a hip and
the soft curve of a muscled thigh. It gleams molten in eyes filled with unshed tears. At last
he lifts his bloody hand to his lips, and the salty copper taste of it anoints and seals the
promise. His Raven bates expectantly, and the Cat is on its feet, its tail switching restlessly.
Patience, he tells them. We begin again.
The shadows shy away from him as he walks down the silent street, and glimmers of silver
twinkle beneath his heels. Behind him, a puddle congeals on a stark windowsill, and the
cold light shimmers across its surface like oil on dark water. Then the light is drawn in until
no spark remains.
Blood has power. And that which flows in the veins of Elijah Two-Shadows is more powerful
than most.
~~~~~
The mage stumbles though a forest glade, his nude body streaked with the leavings of
sacrifice. The leaves whisper mournfully in his wake, stirred by the passing of the ghosts
that dog his heels. They press around him hungrily, and their weight drags at the
underpinnings of his soul.
Each year he has done this, since he came into his power. He asks forgiveness of the
shades that he has troubled in the year past, and permission of those that he will summon in
the days to come.
On this night, the blood he has shed has been his own, and he will pay for the letting with
days of weakness.
~~~~~
He reaches for the surcease of sleep, but it eludes him. He can see the pale orb of the risen
moon through the windowpane, and its wintry light bleaches everything of color. The
moonlight spills over the bed, silver shading to ebony in the folds of the rumpled sheets.
The bed is the only bright thing in the room. Elsewhere, there are only shades of black.
The expanse of empty space beside him seems to stretch out into infinity. He keeps
scrupulously to his side of the bed; there is an unseen boundary down its center that he can't
cross. Somehow, he feels that crossing that line would mean acceptance of his loss. One
day he will spread himself out, take over the whole bed, but not quite yet. One day he will be
free.
The thought sparks the pain that lurks just under his skin, and he squeezes his eyes shut to
hold back the tears. He will never be free. He is what he is, and he cannot deny his nature;
not for her, nor for the little ones. The thick loneliness presses down on him, and not even
his Mentor's kindly voice can keep it at bay. This too shall pass, Sir Ian's knowing words
come back to him. And he wants to believe them - but it is so damned hard to be alone.
His head is heavy with the thoughts that weigh it down, and he has been lying still so long,
he can no longer sense his body. There is a whiff of ozone in the air, like that before a
thunderstorm, and he wonders drearily if rain will come. His magick is closely attuned to
Nature, and like the thirsty fields and sun-seared earth, he longs for the blessing of its
renewing touch.
He peers toward the window, wondering at the cloudless sky, and a stirring in the darkness
under the windowsill catches his eye.
A patch of night detaches itself from the shadows and flows across the moon-lit floor. It
coalesces at the foot of the bed, and crouches there, pulsing faintly. He strains to lift his
head, but it feels like a block of lead atop his spine, and he can't move. Whatever the
intruder is, it has slipped through all the wardings of his home, and his power has not
sensed it. His magick feels no threat.
As he watches, the shadow takes shape, a pair of topaz eyes at its core, the only color in the
room. It flows over the coverlet at his feet, and draws warmth in its wake, and he can feel
the weight of it with each deliberate step, though the ebon feet hardly dent the fabric. It
pauses at the midpoint of his body, and stretches with catly grace, kneading him with
needle-sharp claws. He can feel the prick of them through the sheets, and the sting of
drawn blood.
The cat is so close now - if he wished to do so, he could count its whiskers. He wonders
distractedly whether he would end up with the usual dozen or find an otherworldly thirteen.
Memories of old Irish tales flit through his mind - Have a care for your soul, Sean. The cat
will take it - breathe it in, steal your soul from you. Black cats are black luck, Sean.
He and the cat are nose-to-nose now, and his eyes flutter shut reflexively. The air pushes
strangely against his skin, and the weight on his chest shifts, growing heavier until he can
barely breathe. He gulps air in, sweet with the cloying scent of cloves and then... oh god,
the lips...
The lips are soft and warm, and they learn the shape of his mouth, slowly and thoroughly,
firming to suck, melting to allow the passage of a seeking tongue. The tongue is slick and
wet, and it tastes him lazily, wandering in the confines of his mouth, licking kitten-like at his
lips. Then it withdraws, and he mewls in discontent, a sound rewarded by soft laughter, and
the whisper of sheets drawn down his body.
He forces heavy eyelids open and looks into slit-pupil eyes of a brilliant blue - and a face as
familiar to him as his own.
Dream lover...
The figure that straddles him is nude and limned in moonlight. He can see the dark outline
of proud manhood jut from the shadowed groin and feel a line of heat score his thigh as it
grazes him. A tingling fire runs through his body and pools restlessly in his belly, and his
hands twist in the sheets as warm hands pull his boxers down, reach between his legs and
cup him close. Whites of eyes and a feral grin gleam briefly in the darkness and he tenses
in anticipation as they fade downward from his sight.
And exquisite torment claws up from the very roots of his spirit as the hot, wet mouth
engulfs him. A velvet tongue teases his heavy flesh and fire tap-dances on his spine. It is
too much to feel, too much for his deprived body to take, and he comes powerfully, his
mouth open in a silent scream.
For a brief moment, there is no him. He is scoured clean, emptied, a vessel to be filled
again. A 'little death', they call it, and he has never understood - he who knows death so
intimately. But now he does; with one who shares your soul, it is the death of self. He
gathers the scattered tatters of his consciousness and opens his eyes, vaguely afraid of
what he might see.
The incubus raises its head and licks its lips - and smiles, a sweet, familiar smile. Sean's
heart restarts with a lurching beat, and he smiles dazedly back. Then the figure steps off the
bed and walks gracefully into the shadows, dwindling as it goes. It looks back once, and the
eyes of the cat flash briefly blue - then it is gone, and the ghost of a giggle lingers in the still
air, and the sound of rushing wings.
No...
An emerald glow rises off his skin as the magick senses the Mage's need. A tendril of power
probes the darkness under the windowsill, and bores into the shadows.
I'll put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes... Puck's words come to him, apropos of
nothing. He can do it; he has found a trace to follow, and he will find the blood that gave his
tormentor birth - and he will bring him back.
No.
The sweat beads on his forehead as he struggles to reel the power in. It responds
sluggishly, fighting him, but at last, the glow sinks back into his skin, and fades.
Not like this, he moans, and a tear leaks out and runnels down to wet the pillow. He shuts
his eyes and the images play against his eyelids, haunting and enticing. He opens them, and
the shadows move, taking on the shape of his desire, writhing, twisting in the still air.
I need you, he whispers painfully. Come to me...
Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
Forever nearer yet.
END
Universe. It is the Fourth Age, and the Elves have come back to Middle Earth, bearing with them the
magick that is their very essence. Elijah is a shapeshifter, a changeling with a difference, and Sean
is a powerful Mage. This is part of their backstory.
The poem that frames the story is Insomnia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now, and now more clear.
Tonight love claims his full control
And with desire and with regret,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.
~~~~~
Samhain Eve - when the wall between the worlds thins to transparency; and mystery spills
over, onto our mundane lives. On this night, anything is possible, and if you wish it hard
enough, a dream can be made real.
~~~~~
He stands at a dirt-smeared window, deep in the heart of the city, and his body thrums to the
secret music of the night. The air in the sleazy hotel room is thick with the sour reek of
revisited alcohol, and the rank smell of dead hope. The last is ingrained into the walls, a
psychic stink, and it seeps into his spirit and digs its barbs into his soul. He hunches his
shoulders and shakes his head to clear it. He is no longer drug-addled falling-down drunk;
his remarkable body has taken care of that. Even the residual soreness of ungentle sex is
fast becoming a painful memory.
He feels a stirring in the air behind him, and he turns to look toward the bed. The moonlight
falls athwart the stained sheets, and caught in its cold gleam, an arm, searching the space
beside it, demanding, possessive. He watches the swastika flex, crawling on the bunching
muscles, and his gorge rises again, thick with self-disgust. He retches helplessly, but there
is nothing left to heave. And finally, the arm stills.
There is a deep ache still, where his shoulder curves into his neck, and he raises his hand to
it with a frown. He feels the half-moon marks of teeth under his fingertips, and his gut
clenches. But there is no blood - his hand is clean, his Shifter's curse unshared, and he
shuts his eyes thankfully and falls...
...inward.
From their niches in his mind two pairs of feral eyes stare back. After a moment, his Raven
rouses its feathers and looks away, but his unwanted lodger meets his eyes squarely. There
is a measuring quality to the golden gaze, a hint of cold disdain. They stare at each other
challengingly - then the Cat drops its eyes to its huge paw and begins to clean it with a rough
pink tongue.
Fuck you, its host mutters resentfully. Fastidious bastard.
And he turns away.
The harsh moonlight etches his pure profile in planes of silver and ebony, and glints upon
the wetness on a pale cheek. The grimy window frame is rough with peeling paint, and he
braces his hands against it, resting his forehead on the streaked glass.
His eyes are shadowed, and they gaze out at the midnight quiet of the city, but they do not
see. The distant crack of belated fireworks echoes through the silence, but he cannot hear
them. The autumn cold radiates off the windowpane, and the bright ache is as nothing to his
naked frame.
His eyes see a sleepy farmhouse, under a moon-bright sky. The voice that echoes in his
ears is warm and deep and he finds comfort in its soft timbre, and a restless peace. Strong
arms hold him close, wrapping him in solace, protecting him from the piercing cold. Amid
the rolling fields and the green hillsides of his imaginings, he had been loved.
It is always so. In another country, another city, in the pearlescent space of the genie's
lamp, the arms that hold him are the same.
When reality is too much for him, he takes refuge in half-remembered dreams.
A cloud drifts across the moon, and the gossamer visions fade. His breath hitches on a
half-sob and he draws his hands down the wooden frame and starts to push away. The sharp
point of a warped nail catches on a soft pad of his palm, rips though the fragile skin, and
dark blood wells out. He stares at his dripping hand with a strange detachment, watching
the blood seep and clot, watching his ragged skin knitting before his eyes, until all that is
left is a thin white line. He watches himself heal, and the sudden revelation is simple and
profound. His spirit can be whole again, just like his flesh. He can remake his life, plant
flowers in the ashes of despair, and find a goal to strive for, a reason to exist. When the
loving arms fold around him once more, he will deserve their warmth; and when he finds the
elves at last, he will stand before them without shame, and meet their regard with pride.
The moonlight licks his body with a silver tongue, lovingly tracing the sharp jut of a hip and
the soft curve of a muscled thigh. It gleams molten in eyes filled with unshed tears. At last
he lifts his bloody hand to his lips, and the salty copper taste of it anoints and seals the
promise. His Raven bates expectantly, and the Cat is on its feet, its tail switching restlessly.
Patience, he tells them. We begin again.
The shadows shy away from him as he walks down the silent street, and glimmers of silver
twinkle beneath his heels. Behind him, a puddle congeals on a stark windowsill, and the
cold light shimmers across its surface like oil on dark water. Then the light is drawn in until
no spark remains.
Blood has power. And that which flows in the veins of Elijah Two-Shadows is more powerful
than most.
~~~~~
The mage stumbles though a forest glade, his nude body streaked with the leavings of
sacrifice. The leaves whisper mournfully in his wake, stirred by the passing of the ghosts
that dog his heels. They press around him hungrily, and their weight drags at the
underpinnings of his soul.
Each year he has done this, since he came into his power. He asks forgiveness of the
shades that he has troubled in the year past, and permission of those that he will summon in
the days to come.
On this night, the blood he has shed has been his own, and he will pay for the letting with
days of weakness.
~~~~~
He reaches for the surcease of sleep, but it eludes him. He can see the pale orb of the risen
moon through the windowpane, and its wintry light bleaches everything of color. The
moonlight spills over the bed, silver shading to ebony in the folds of the rumpled sheets.
The bed is the only bright thing in the room. Elsewhere, there are only shades of black.
The expanse of empty space beside him seems to stretch out into infinity. He keeps
scrupulously to his side of the bed; there is an unseen boundary down its center that he can't
cross. Somehow, he feels that crossing that line would mean acceptance of his loss. One
day he will spread himself out, take over the whole bed, but not quite yet. One day he will be
free.
The thought sparks the pain that lurks just under his skin, and he squeezes his eyes shut to
hold back the tears. He will never be free. He is what he is, and he cannot deny his nature;
not for her, nor for the little ones. The thick loneliness presses down on him, and not even
his Mentor's kindly voice can keep it at bay. This too shall pass, Sir Ian's knowing words
come back to him. And he wants to believe them - but it is so damned hard to be alone.
His head is heavy with the thoughts that weigh it down, and he has been lying still so long,
he can no longer sense his body. There is a whiff of ozone in the air, like that before a
thunderstorm, and he wonders drearily if rain will come. His magick is closely attuned to
Nature, and like the thirsty fields and sun-seared earth, he longs for the blessing of its
renewing touch.
He peers toward the window, wondering at the cloudless sky, and a stirring in the darkness
under the windowsill catches his eye.
A patch of night detaches itself from the shadows and flows across the moon-lit floor. It
coalesces at the foot of the bed, and crouches there, pulsing faintly. He strains to lift his
head, but it feels like a block of lead atop his spine, and he can't move. Whatever the
intruder is, it has slipped through all the wardings of his home, and his power has not
sensed it. His magick feels no threat.
As he watches, the shadow takes shape, a pair of topaz eyes at its core, the only color in the
room. It flows over the coverlet at his feet, and draws warmth in its wake, and he can feel
the weight of it with each deliberate step, though the ebon feet hardly dent the fabric. It
pauses at the midpoint of his body, and stretches with catly grace, kneading him with
needle-sharp claws. He can feel the prick of them through the sheets, and the sting of
drawn blood.
The cat is so close now - if he wished to do so, he could count its whiskers. He wonders
distractedly whether he would end up with the usual dozen or find an otherworldly thirteen.
Memories of old Irish tales flit through his mind - Have a care for your soul, Sean. The cat
will take it - breathe it in, steal your soul from you. Black cats are black luck, Sean.
He and the cat are nose-to-nose now, and his eyes flutter shut reflexively. The air pushes
strangely against his skin, and the weight on his chest shifts, growing heavier until he can
barely breathe. He gulps air in, sweet with the cloying scent of cloves and then... oh god,
the lips...
The lips are soft and warm, and they learn the shape of his mouth, slowly and thoroughly,
firming to suck, melting to allow the passage of a seeking tongue. The tongue is slick and
wet, and it tastes him lazily, wandering in the confines of his mouth, licking kitten-like at his
lips. Then it withdraws, and he mewls in discontent, a sound rewarded by soft laughter, and
the whisper of sheets drawn down his body.
He forces heavy eyelids open and looks into slit-pupil eyes of a brilliant blue - and a face as
familiar to him as his own.
Dream lover...
The figure that straddles him is nude and limned in moonlight. He can see the dark outline
of proud manhood jut from the shadowed groin and feel a line of heat score his thigh as it
grazes him. A tingling fire runs through his body and pools restlessly in his belly, and his
hands twist in the sheets as warm hands pull his boxers down, reach between his legs and
cup him close. Whites of eyes and a feral grin gleam briefly in the darkness and he tenses
in anticipation as they fade downward from his sight.
And exquisite torment claws up from the very roots of his spirit as the hot, wet mouth
engulfs him. A velvet tongue teases his heavy flesh and fire tap-dances on his spine. It is
too much to feel, too much for his deprived body to take, and he comes powerfully, his
mouth open in a silent scream.
For a brief moment, there is no him. He is scoured clean, emptied, a vessel to be filled
again. A 'little death', they call it, and he has never understood - he who knows death so
intimately. But now he does; with one who shares your soul, it is the death of self. He
gathers the scattered tatters of his consciousness and opens his eyes, vaguely afraid of
what he might see.
The incubus raises its head and licks its lips - and smiles, a sweet, familiar smile. Sean's
heart restarts with a lurching beat, and he smiles dazedly back. Then the figure steps off the
bed and walks gracefully into the shadows, dwindling as it goes. It looks back once, and the
eyes of the cat flash briefly blue - then it is gone, and the ghost of a giggle lingers in the still
air, and the sound of rushing wings.
No...
An emerald glow rises off his skin as the magick senses the Mage's need. A tendril of power
probes the darkness under the windowsill, and bores into the shadows.
I'll put a girdle around the earth in forty minutes... Puck's words come to him, apropos of
nothing. He can do it; he has found a trace to follow, and he will find the blood that gave his
tormentor birth - and he will bring him back.
No.
The sweat beads on his forehead as he struggles to reel the power in. It responds
sluggishly, fighting him, but at last, the glow sinks back into his skin, and fades.
Not like this, he moans, and a tear leaks out and runnels down to wet the pillow. He shuts
his eyes and the images play against his eyelids, haunting and enticing. He opens them, and
the shadows move, taking on the shape of his desire, writhing, twisting in the still air.
I need you, he whispers painfully. Come to me...
Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love's new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
Forever nearer yet.
END
| Samhain Eve |