IsabellaRose

I miss them both terribly. I know that feeling, not wanting to write. I want to, but I can't really force myself to sit down and do it... it feels like a chore. But I've had a few times where fiction finally came out recently. I really hope I'm turning a corner.

I'm in the want category, as well. I really loved the process of creating the game and setting with everyone, and I was looking forward to seeing where it went.

It seems most of us are busy elsewhere, or have had situations arise that have kept us from the site for extended periods of time. I might actually be getting close to possibly returning to active roleplay. I tried once before, got a couple half-assed posts together for some private roleplay, and then lost it again. I guess I'm just posting this to gauge how everyone else is doing, hoping we're all okay, and checking to see if this is something we might be able to and want to revive.

dragon rider

granted, but it's the only thing left in your brain and leaves you sitting, drooling, filled with the knowledge of where all that currency is and unable to do anything else I wish to be able to fart the national anthem of any country I visit with perfect pitch

Lara woke to soft grey morning light and the feel of fingers idly sliding through her hair. She stretched and found her body changed in a way that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the night before. She felt loose, limber, awake in every limb, and when she opened her eyes to find four pairs of black ones watching her with fond, proprietary amusement, she didn't flinch or reach to cover herself. She only smiled. "Good morning," Ysolde said with a smile. "Our half-blood, properly bloomed. How do you feel?" "Like myself," Lara said, and was surprised to find it the simple truth. "Finally." Ysolde's smile sharpened, pleased, then turned to business. She sat up, luminous in the dawn, and the other three drew round in a loose circle. The air shifted, just slightly. The warmth stayed, but beneath it Lara felt the old weight of fae dealing settle into place. "The bargain." Ysolde tilted her head. "We promised you food, shelter, and safe passage past goblin and troll. The food you've had. The shelter you've slept in. The safe-guiding is the last of it, and that is what you'll owe for." "You said the price was waking my blood," Lara said, frowning. "I thought..." "That was the price of the waking, and you paid it gladly, the whole night through." A few of them giggled. "But the guiding, half-blood, walking you safe through three days of wood that would gladly swallow a girl like you whole? That's a separate matter. Fae deal in pieces. Always read the whole bargain before you thank us for the first part of it." Lara's stomach tightened, but Ysolde raised a calming hand. "Peace. We're feeling generous. You please us, and we don't often say so." She leaned in. "Here is what we ask. A small thing. A fae thing." Her black eyes glittered. "When you reach the village and live your new life, and you will live it, half-blood, hungrily, even... you'll carry our mark, and now and again, when the moon is full and the wood calls, you'll come back to us. It won't be forced, nor will you be bound against your will, you'll simply want to return, and return you will. That's the price of safe passage: a piece of you that stays ours, and returns to us when we call." She let that hang in the air between them for a silent moment, and then smiled. "Agree, and we send you off well-kept. Better than you came." Lara couldn't see much of a downside. Her fae blood had been awakened, she had experienced a sexual awakening that likely eclipsed any other sexual experience any other person had ever had, and they wanted her to return for the same once a month? It sounded like she was winning in every sense of the word. "Stand," Ysolde said, and Lara did, the cloak slipping from her shoulders to pool at her feet. The four fairies circled her, and their hands rose, and the honeyed light gathered between their fingers the way it had at that first touch on the path. They worked together, weaving, and out of the morning air and the gold of their magic they spun something onto her. It settled over her skin like warm water before it took shape. It was a dress, but no farm-girl's linen this time. It was deep forest green, the color of the canopy at dusk, shot through with silvery threads that caught the light like dew. It clung where it should and bared where it dared. The neckline plunged low between her breasts and the dress laced loosely up the sides with cord that looked like braided ivy, leaving teasing strips of bare flesh along her ribs and hips. The skirt fell long but split high up both thighs, made for a body that wanted to be seen. It was the dress of a creature halfway between woman and wild thing... exactly what she now was. "It mends itself," one fairy said, smoothing the fabric over Lara's hip. "Tear it, stain it, lose it in the grass during a tumble... it'll find its way back, clean and whole, by morning." "And it won't let you be cold," said another. "Nor too warm. The wood's weather can't touch you in it." Then Ysolde stepped close and pressed something small and cool into Lara's palm. It was a pendant, a single drop of amber on a fine green-gold chain, and suspended within the amber, impossibly, a tiny living spark of light that pulsed slow as a heartbeat. "A piece of fae-fire," Ysolde said. "Our gift, and our mark. It glows warm when one of our kind is near, brighter the closer they come. It'll warn you of the wild things in these woods... and it'll guide you back to us, when the call comes and you find you want to answer it." Her thumb brushed Lara's cheek. "It will also tell you, half-blood, what others can't hide. Press it to your heart and ask after someone's true nature, and the fire will answer... warm for kin, cold for foe, bright for those who desire you. You'll find that last one glows near constant, now." She fastened it round Lara's throat, the amber settling into the hollow there, the very spot where the first touch had woken her. "So." Ysolde stepped back, and all four regarded their work with open satisfaction. "A girl walked into our wood and a half-fae walks out... dressed for what she is, marked as ours, and warm wherever she goes." Her grin returned, full and sharp and fond. "Do we have your yes, Lara?" It was the first time any of them had used her real name. "Oh, yes! Absolutely yes." Lara's hand flew to the amber at her throat, holding it like something precious. "Thank you, Ysolde. Thank you all." The moment the yes left her lips, the amber pulsed warm against her skin, a single bright throb, like a second heartbeat answering her own, and Lara felt something settle into place deep inside her. It was neither a chain nor a cage, just a thread, fine and golden and unbreakable, running from somewhere beneath her ribs back into the heart of the wood, a way home she hadn't had yesterday. "Witnessed," Ysolde said softly, and the other three echoed it in their chiming voices. "Struck and sealed. You're ours now, half-blood... gently, gladly, and only ever when you wish it." Her smile turned wicked. "Though I think you'll find you wish it more often than you expect." The four of them began to shrink, their woman-sized forms folding back down toward sprite-small, the dawn light catching their wings as they rose into the air around her. Ysolde lingered last and largest, drifting close to press one final kiss to Lara's lips, slow and warm, a promise more than a farewell. "East," she murmured against Lara's mouth. "Follow the path east, and the wood will let you pass. The goblins will smell our mark on you and keep their distance. The troll sleeps by day and if you stick to the path, you'll be past the foothills before he wakes. Three days, and you'll see the village smoke." She drew back, dwindling, her voice going small and silvery again. "But the moon turns full in a fortnight, Lara. Don't be surprised by what you feel when it does." Then she was sprite-small once more, a darting mote of green-gold light, and the four of them spun once around Lara's head in a glittering farewell spiral before streaking off into the deep green dark of the wood. The hollow was suddenly quiet. Lara stood alone in the dawn, but she was not the same girl who'd stumbled in the day before. She looked down at herself: the impossible green dress hugging her body, the high splits baring her thighs, the amber glowing soft and warm at her throat. She felt the wood around her differently now. It was less of a threat and more of a thing she belonged to. She shouldered her old pack, patched linen and a skinning knife, relics of a life that felt a hundred years gone, and stepped out of the hollow onto the path. She would head east, toward the village, toward whatever this new, awakened life had waiting for her. The amber at her throat pulsed once, warm and reassuring, as the first shaft of true morning sun broke through the canopy ahead.

When Ysolde crossed the last layer, Lara's whole world went white at the edges. It began as slowly as everything before it with a single fingertip, tracing the heat of her with the same maddening patience, learning the shape of her need before answering it. Lara's breath hitched and held. She'd touched herself before, alone in the dark, hurried and ashamed, always racing to finish before the guilt could catch her. This was nothing like that. This was unhurried. This was someone taking the time to know her, drawing slow lines through the slick heat of her, mapping every place that made her gasp and filing each one carefully away. Oh! Oh, that's... right there... how does she know... "Shh," Ysolde breathed against her throat, feeling her shake. "I have you. There's no rush. Let it build." And it built. The other three had not stopped, their mouths still at her breasts, hands still roaming her thighs and her belly and the small of her back, a constant overlapping tide of sensation that gave Lara nowhere to hide and nothing to do but feel. Ysolde's fingertip circled, slow as the turn of the seasons, pressure blooming where Lara needed it most, and the ache that had been building all this time began, at last, to gather toward something. It's coming. Whatever it is. I can feel it coming and I'm not... I'm not scared... was she though? No... not of this... I want it, I want it, I... Ysolde quickened, just slightly, but it was enough. The slow, measured patience of before began to fray, not lost, but purposeful now, each movement aimed, the long unhurried teasing giving way to something with intent behind it. Lara's hips moved on their own, chasing, and this time Ysolde let her, met her, pressed closer and firmer and surer with every passing breath. "There," Ysolde whispered, dark and pleased, watching Lara's face come apart. "Don't hold it. You've held everything your whole life. Not this. Let go." The tension drew tighter, tighter, an unbearable sweetness coiling low and deep, every nerve in her body pulled taut toward a single bright point and Lara, surrounded and held and adored, alive in a way she had never once been allowed to be, finally, finally stopped holding on. The coil snapped. Pleasure broke over her like a wave breaking over stone, white and roaring and total, wiping every thought from her mind, every word, every year of careful silence. She cried out, a raw unguarded sound she'd never have let herself make before, and the fairies caught it, caught her, holding her up as her whole body shook and clenched and sang with the force of it. This. This is what I am. This is what I always was, she thought, and as the first wave crested and began, slowly, to ebb... Ysolde did not stop. "Again," she whispered against Lara's ear, her hand never slowing. "We're only just beginning, half-blood. You have so much more to learn." "Yes, but..." Lara gasped, even as her legs shook beneath her. "Wait... a breath, just... just let me..." Her chest heaved, the aftershocks still rolling through her, almost too much, the place Ysolde touched gone exquisitely raw. "I can't... it's too..." And then, as Ysolde's fingers gentled but did not stop, as the wave that should have ended kept cresting, Lara heard herself say the opposite of everything she meant: "Gods... don't stop. Don't stop..." Ysolde laughed low and pleased against her throat. "There's the truth of you. Your mouth says one thing and your body sings another. We'll teach you to stop lying to yourself." They gave her no rest after that. Hands and mouths traded places in a slow rotation, each fairy taking her turn, each one different. Where Ysolde had been patient and deliberate, the next was quick and clever, fingers and tongue working in tandem until Lara broke a second time, sobbing the name she didn't know to call her. The third was slow again, agonizingly so, drawing the climax out so long that Lara begged, actually begged for the release the fairy refused her until she thought she'd come apart entirely. The fourth simply held her and watched her face the whole time, those black eyes drinking in every flicker of pleasure as she pushed Lara over the edge once more. How many is that? She wondered. I've lost count. I've lost... everything, I've lost myself and I don't want it back... She came again, and again, until the orgasms blurred into one long unbroken current, until she was nothing but sensation and gratitude and the wet sounds of her own pleasure echoing through the trees. Each peak should have been the last. but none of them were. Her fae blood, woken and singing, only seemed to want more, the recovery that left her gasping and ready again in moments, the hunger that built back the instant it was sated. And then, when she had been wrung out and filled back up more times than she could count, Ysolde tilted Lara's chin up and looked at her with those bottomless eyes. "You've taken your fill," she murmured. "Now you learn to give. A lover who only receives is no lover at all. Half the gift is in the giving, half-blood... and we mean to teach you all of it." She guided Lara's trembling hand, drew it slowly down the warm luminous curve of her own body, and showed her where to touch, how soft, how slow, reading the fairy's sighs the way Ysolde had read her own. "There," Ysolde breathed, her composure flickering for the first time as Lara's fingers learned her. "There. Quicker now. Feel how I move into your hand? That's me telling you. Listen with your fingers." Lara did. And as the fairy's breath began to hitch under her touch, as she made one of these ancient wanton creatures shiver and arch, something new bloomed in Lara's chest. Pride... power. She wasn't only the one being unwrapped and discovered, she could do the unwrapping too, she could be the reason someone came apart. "Good girl," Ysolde gasped, and this time the praise was breathless, earned, dragged out of her by Lara's own hand. One by one they taught her, and one by one Lara learned them, mouths and hands and the slow generous art of giving until the four of them and the half-blood between them were a tangle of warmth on the forest floor, the dappled light fading toward evening above, the road and the village and the whole frightened life she'd left behind feeling very far away. As the last light bled out of the canopy, Ysolde rose and drew Lara up with her. Lara's legs were unsteady as a new-born colt's, her whole body humming and loose and warm in a way she'd never known a body could be. "Come," Ysolde said softly, lacing their fingers. "You've earned the hollow now. Earned it well." They gathered her scattered things: the cloak, the chemise... but Ysolde only draped the cloak loose around Lara's bare shoulders rather than letting her dress, and Lara found she didn't mind walking the wood half-naked between four luminous creatures, the cool evening air a constant caress against skin that had finally learned what it was for. The fairies glowed faintly in the gathering dark, four soft lights guiding her off the path and down into a sheltered fold of the land where the great roots of an ancient tree arched over a hollow lined with moss soft as goose-down and dry as a hearth. It was warm inside. Warmer than it had any right to be, fae-warm, the air itself thick with that honeyed scent that made Lara's pulse quicken all over again. Berries glistened in a little cleft of root, sweeter than anything she'd ever tasted, and they fed them to her one at a time between slow kisses, the juice on their lips, her appetite for food and for them tangling together until she couldn't tell hunger from hunger... and then the lessons resumed. All through the night, Lara learned. She lost the last of her shyness somewhere in those dark warm hours, learned to ask for what she wanted without the words sticking in her throat, learned to take as boldly as she gave, learned the particular sounds each of her four teachers made and how to chase them. She was tireless in a way that astonished even her; the fae blood in her veins burned bright and hungry, and every time she thought herself spent she found herself wanting again within minutes, reaching, eager, alive. They reveled in her. They told her so, murmured against her skin how rare it was to find one of their watered-down kin so willing to bloom, how most fought the door even after they'd opened it, how Lara had simply walked through with her arms open. She glowed under the praise the way she glowed under their hands. It was only when the first grey hint of dawn crept down into the hollow that the wanting in her finally, gently ebbed, not from exhaustion of the spirit, but the simple need of a mortal body for rest. Lara's eyes grew heavy. Her movements slowed. And Ysolde, reading her the way she'd taught Lara to read others, drew her down into the moss and gathered her close. "Sleep now, half-blood," she breathed against Lara's hair. "You've learned more in one night than most learn in a lifetime. Rest. We'll keep you." The other three settled around her, a nest of warmth, wings folding soft over her like blankets. And as Lara drifted toward sleep, safe, spent, profoundly content, and more herself than she had ever been, she felt their hands continue to move over her, gentle now, idle, possessive, not waking her, just keeping her, as they'd promised. They traced slow lazy lines along her hip, her shoulder, the curve of her waist, as though they could not quite bear to stop touching the thing they'd unlocked. She fell asleep to the feel of it, smiling, the frightened farm girl who'd stepped into the woods entirely gone, and something new and warm and wanton sleeping in her place.

The first lace gave way, then the second, and the dark-haired fairy looked up over Lara's shoulder and gave the smallest nod. That was all it took. The other three moved and suddenly Lara was surrounded, a warmth on every side, luminous skin and the soft flutter of wings, hands settling on her all at once. She gasped at the sheer overwhelm of it, the impossibility of tracking so many sensations at once, and gave up trying. She simply let it wash over her. A pair of hands found the loosened chemise at her shoulders and drew it down, baring her by slow degrees while another pair smoothed up the length of her spine, fingertips counting each notch of it. A third set traced the dip of her waist, her hips, the soft curve of her belly, learning her like a map they meant to memorize. This touch, Lara thought dizzily as a thumb circled the small of her back. Oh... and that one... Each touch landed like the first touch she'd ever felt. She had no frame of reference for any of it, no memory to compare it to, and so every brush of fingers was pure discovery, a place on her body she'd never known could feel like that, lighting up under a stranger's hand.... the hollow behind her knee, the inside of her wrist where a fairy pressed her lips and Lara's whole arm broke out in shivers, the nape of her neck where someone swept her hair aside and breathed warm against her skin. I didn't know. I didn't know I could feel anything there. I didn't know there was so much of me. The chemise slipped to her waist, then past her hips, then to the forest floor with the cloak, and Lara stood bare in the dappled green light, bare and surrounded and adored, four pairs of hands moving over her in slow overlapping waves. She should have been cold, but she wasn't. The warmth poured off them and into her, and she felt herself swaying, held up by the press of bodies on every side. The dark-haired leader caught her face in both hands and kissed her again, deep, slow, and claiming, while behind her another mouth pressed to the curve of her shoulder, and a third grazed the line of her spine, and somewhere a pair of hands skimmed up her ribs with agonizing patience. This is what I locked away... all of it. How did I live without... how did I ever... She broke the kiss with a gasp, head falling back against the shoulder of the fairy behind her, and the leader smiled and trailed her lips down to Lara's throat. "Ah..." the fairy whispered against Lara's racing pulse. "Every inch of you waking up. Tell us, half-blood, what does it feel like, finally?" Lara's voice came out wrecked and wondering, barely a whisper. "Like... I'm being born." The fairies sighed their pleasure all around her, and their hands began to wander lower and Lara learned the meaning of slow. The dark-haired leader was the first to find her breasts, but 'find' was too plain a word for what she did. Her palms ghosted up Lara's ribs and simply cupped her, no more than that, holding the weight of her without moving, letting Lara feel the warmth of those hands soak in. Lara's breath caught and held, her whole body straining toward something the fairy refused to give yet. Move, she thought desperately. Please, please move... But the fairy didn't. She held, and held, until Lara was trembling with the anticipation alone, and only then, when Lara had nearly broken, did her thumbs begin to drift, tracing slow arcs across skin that had never been touched this way. Outward, inward, circling closer to the peaks that ached for attention and then retreating, again and again, until Lara made a sound of pure wanting and arched into her hands. "Yes," the fairy breathed against her. "Feel how much you want it. That's the whole lesson, half-blood. The wanting." Behind her, hands smoothed around her sides to join the first, and now there were fingers grazing her from every angle, light as moth-wings, maddening, tracing the curve of her without ever giving her the firm touch she craved. One fingertip, at last, brushed across a stiffened peak, and Lara cried out, the sensation lancing straight down through her belly to the heat building between her thighs. Oh gods... just that... just one finger and I... Then mouths joined the hands. The dark-haired fairy bent her head and replaced one fingertip with the warm, wet heat of her lips, slow and reverent, drawing a soft kiss across the very peak of her and Lara's knees gave out entirely. The fairies behind her caught her, bore her weight, held her up like an offering as the leader's mouth worked her with that same unhurried patience, every movement drawn out to its fullest length. A second mouth found her other breast. A third pressed kisses down the center of her chest, the flat of her stomach, mapping the soft plane of her belly. Hands roamed her thighs, her hips, the curve of her backside, fingertips grazing and circling and slowly, slowly drawing inward. Lara had no thoughts left that resembled words. There was only sensation, layered and overlapping, building wave on wave, and a vast astonished gratitude rising up beneath it. I almost died not knowing this. I almost lived my whole life and died never once feeling... The thought dissolved as a hand drifted to the inside of her thigh and stopped there, fingertips a feather's breadth from the heat of her, waiting. The dark-haired fairy lifted her head, lips wet, eyes black and bottomless and kind. "The last layer of all," she said. "We don't cross it until you ask, out loud, by name." Lara, shaking, surrounded, more alive than she had ever been, opened her eyes. Her lips parted, and she realized through the haze of heat and trembling want that she didn't know her name. She had given herself over to these creatures, let them strip away a lifetime of locked-away longing, and she didn't even know what to call the one whose mouth had just unmade her. "I don't..." she gasped. "I don't know your name. Please, tell me. I want to ask you by name. I want to know who's... who's teaching me." Something flickered across the dark-haired fairy's face, a hint of surprise, and then a slow, genuine pleasure, warmer than any of her grins before. Names had weight in the fae world. To ask for one was no small thing. To give one, smaller still. "Clever half-blood," she said, brushing a strand of damp hair from Lara's flushed cheek. "Most never think to ask, they just take what we offer and never wonder who's giving it." Her thumb traced Lara's lower lip. "Ysolde. That's the name I'll wear for you. Hold it gently. Don't go spending it where it isn't wanted." "Ysolde," Lara breathed and the name felt like honey on her tongue, like it belonged there. The fairy Ysolde shivered to hear it in her mouth, and the hand resting high on Lara's inner thigh pressed a fraction closer. "Now," Ysolde said, voice gone low and dark and patient, "ask." Lara swallowed. Her whole body sang with the ache of waiting, every nerve drawn taut, surrounded by warmth and wanting and the strange new freedom of a self she'd never been allowed to meet. She found she wasn't afraid of the words. For the first time in her life, she wanted something openly, fully, with no shame chasing the wanting away. So she said it plainly, looking into those bottomless black eyes. "Ysolde," she whispered, trembling, alight, alive. "Touch me. Please. Don't stop this time. I want to feel all of it. I want you to be the one who shows me." Ysolde smiled, slow and pleased, and devastatingly tender. "As you wish," she said softly, and she crossed the last layer.