CHP53

Seneya woke, her injuries only half healed as her fires twitched weakly within. She whimpered under her breath and closed her eyes, sleep trying to take her into its hold. Her mind pitiably called out for help as she tried to send a moth, but it flickered about the door and ceiling, stuck by some unseen force. She shouted out for Kael as she sent another, then another, until her mana gave out and she lay in the dreamscape of lust once more, wrapped in a young man’s arms. This time, so much faster than others, the image of raven hair and piercing blue eyes came to her.

“Amma ikileer,” he whispered, pristine Anael. My most beautiful lover.

“Are you real?” Seneya asked, struggling from the embrace as she pulled to herself, clutching over her bare body as red hair spilled about and over her. She drew her knees to her chest, crossed her ankles and tucked her hands under her chin, a fetal and childish gesture of fear. The boy’s eyes went soft and face stricken.

“Yes.” His eyes searched her own.

“Acryan?”

“In a way,” he said as he sat up and drew a blanket to cover himself. They were bare, but their dreams had never gone past gentle caress and kisses, and never like this. Seneya found him hard to look at and averted her eyes.

“Seneya, yes?” He tilted his head down to get a better look at her face. Anxiously, she flitted her eyes to him.

“Yeah. Briel?” she replied, and he nodded, pulling a little further away from her. His eyes searched, and he looked from the blanket to herself.

“Do you want the blanket?” he asked, pulling it away.

She bleated and drew tighter to herself. “No!”

“Okay… This is just our mind’s first meeting lucid; I think. I’ve been calling for you.”

“I called for you, I think, this time,” she muttered, averting her eyes once more as she bundled tighter.

“And here I am, if not without decorum.” He kept his eyes trained on hers, no matter how much she glanced away. His expression pure longing and want. “Your accent…”

“I think I need help.” With a shiver of anxious fear, she curled and uncurled her hands. She pulled her tail and wings out to cover herself, a shield of her feathers. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, and the fear that she had within her boiled harder than the fear of him.

“Anything.” He told her, and he meant it.

“I don’t know where to start.” She whined.

“May I touch your wings? It always helped her,” he offered. “I’ll listen to all you want to say.” His hand extended, and she flinched, then relaxed.

“I… I was human then I wasn’t… Then I got taken there and Kael helped me, and I got better but then everything got really confusing and I’m two people fighting in the same head and then my brother not my brother…. I don’t.” She clutched at her hair.

“Vrahiel, Sael?” Briel asked, and she nodded, watching as his hand lowered to touch over her wing, just a gentle press of his palm over bending feathers. Even in a dream, warm swimming sensations emanated from his touch. Her mind, racing and anxious, calmed. Kael had touched her wings once with the duck fat, and since had avoided them, as had Sael. A certain taboo existed with them, and she whined with sensation. Tatsuli couldn’t compare to this.

He shushed her and appeared to resist every urge to pull her to him. She shook her head. Dizzy, she fought the urge to run for a moment. Tears started in her eyes, and she crossed the distance to push against him and the blanket. Her arms found his chest, and she squeezed tight, shuddering. He lifted his hands and dared not touch her as she trembled.

“May I touch you again?” He raised his hand tentatively, waiting for her permission, and she shivered, nodding. He slowly put his hands back down, resting on the backs of her wings, avoiding staring at the soft form of her. “I cannot come to you yet, Amma ikileer,” he whispered to her. “You’re an unfinished work of art. I see so many things you lack that I could easily break.”

“But I don’t know where I am. I want to go back to Kael, not here. Sael… I hurt him and…” she stammered, then glanced over her arms and saw that in this dream they were clean and healed, not how she was in reality.

“Shhh, tell me what happened,” he whispered to her, and she told him, clutching to him so tight and vulnerable. He kept his anger down, barely. “Okay. It may take a little bit, but I’ll do my best. I think I know where you’ve been taken. Don’t submit to him. You said you were in Leston, right? We can’t meet yet, but I need to see Kael, anyway. Is that alright with you?”

She hesitated, her grasp growing tighter.

“Okay, I need to leave now, alright?” He watched her carefully.

She trembled, burying her face against him. “Don’t leave me again,” she whispered, and Briel had to bite back his own tears.

“Just this once. Just this once, Amma ikileer,” He promised and faded away from her mind, leaving her in a bed that suddenly turned bitterly cold, and in this dream, the cold hurt.