Fears And Fantasies (Tinnok)

[Razkar]

It's never pleasant feeling like you're the only crazy person in the world: it's like there's some vast and very unfunny joke being played and they forgot to tell you. And never will.

Carl was starting to hope it was just a joke. Convince himself that it would all be resolved by a waiter peeling off his mustache with a flourish and announcing, "Ha-HA, 'twas the herbs I sprinkled in your tea this morning for a jape!"

No such luck. One of the wenches is serving us.

But Olivia holding his hand sympathizing, and him seeing no lie or condescending pity in her eyes... no, that was so much better. He could have choked out a sob if he didn't see... no, wrong word...

He felt the storm coming. That prickling in the atmosphere, despite Syna blazing across the sky and birds flying carelessly across it. The tingle on your tongue that told you something big and wet and furious was coming and-

You'll go back where you belong.

Then she said name he couldn't have known. Notice the phrasing, because-

"... yes."

Carl whispered, not believing what she'd just said and trying to peer deeper into her, maybe see a trace of gold in her melted chocolate eyes. But nothing was there but her honest, innocent concern.

"I don't know where from, though. I just..."

Lightning with pictures stung him across the eyes.

A pale Myrian, for sure, looking perpetually wet and bedraggled with her shimmering, disgusting scaly skin. Eyes drained of compassion but bent on surviving, as if her very act of living was revenge against all those that scorned her.

Staring at him. Taunting him in a stone-ringed place of clacking weapons and brawling savages-

Butchery, slaughter, massacre and atrocity of a caravan with what looked like Sylirans in the mix, scale-woman cutting down men and commanding some great hound-

A cave. Deep in the darkness where time festered into madness. Pain, so much of it, betrayal... her yellow eyes in the dark... guiding him to the-

"... Razkar."

He decided to try the same thing; prove it wasn't a fluke, even as the rest of him begged his curiosity to just let it lie and die. All he spoke was that word, watching for her reaction.

And, as the man said, the thunder rolled...

"Hold onto me," he rasped, voice low and beyond urgent. The voice of a man who no longer cared what the world thought and didn't know why this mattered, why it seemed so important. But he placed his hand over hers gently, eyes pinning her. "Please. Don't... don't question this. Something is coming, and you have to hold on."

Both of them had about a tick to freeze as that same vicious language growled between his lips like he was chewing gravel, right before-

Green exploded through stone and brick and then "Carl's" world became a void.

[Tinnok]

Olivia couldn't describe what she was feeling in that moment. On the one hand his touch, his gaze, the setting of their meeting. It was all so familiar, and comfortable. This was her home. She knew every cobble in the road like the back of her hand.

Yet simultaneously a deep and nagging fear welled up from her center, pooling at the back of her throat at whatever unknown encroached upon both of them. She knew this other place, these names, and they were home, yet they were so foreing so alien.

So why did that name make her heart beat faster, make her feel...safe?

Carl gripped her hand, and Olivia met his gaze, not knowing precisely what was happening, but sharing the same feeling of utter panic, this loss of control. She felt a rumble, and wondered if the others in the bar felt it, heard it, but she was too focused on Carl's eyes, which suddenly blackened like spilled ink as a gravely voice fell out of his mouth.

And then...it was all gone.

----

She lay on hands and knees in the soft soil, her fingers dug into its sweet dampness. She had never felt such fear, such lack of belonging as she had trapped in stone. How could those rats live trapped in tall buildings, without a sign of greenery all around? She buried her face int he ground and felt it sing to her, eyelids shut tight, hoping the dream was over.

But if it was a dream...then he would not be there either, he would vanish like dust in the wind, and she would be alone again. She hated to think of it that way, but it was often how she woke, Nissila watching her coolly froma nearby branch, tongue flicking in and out sporadically.

It was the reason why Tinnok's head took so long to rise. If she stayed here, focused ont he ground, wake or asleep she was there, back home. But she couldn't keep her curiosity from pulling at her, and when her head turned up, she found him, dark eyes staring into hers, bewildered...breathless...relieved?

A bird squawked somewhere in the canopy, and on all fours Tinnok crossed the short expanse between her and him, arms wrapping around his torso, head shoved awkwardly against his half raised chest. He wasn't some moderately well groomed ponce, he was dirty, musky, and there.

"Eagle." It was drawn out, as drawn out as two syllables could be, just above a whisper, one of utter relief.

[Razkar]

He woke to monkeys. This would have make Carl jump and cower, even though he knew from his precious tomes that most of the smaller primates ate insects and nuts. But it was not those guileless green eyes that took in the lush greenery when they opened.

Twin black orbs set into white stone. Blinking uncertainly, afraid to even breath lest he be back in that choking place. A thought slithered across his mind, alien as a tiger in the desert.

Was it so bad? With her?

Razkar of the Shorn Skuls breathed deep... and there it was. Jakare Blossom. Sweet and pungent but the fruit needed some torture in the cooking pot before it was edible. His mother used to prepare it, big steaming batches with a wooden spoon she used like her gladius to ward off her husband and children before the feast.

"Not before, damn you all! You'll ruin the flavor!"

The memory struck him hard and real, like the dirt hs grasped hard and smelled, bought it up to his face and felt the rick blackness between his fingers.

It was a shade. A fantasy. Something that cannot be, and if it could... not in this time. In your walking of the world.

You are home.

Then those brown eyes came back, only he could see the yellow slivers they masked instead. The disgust and hatred his kind felt instinctively for Tinnok could have been guessed from his face... and been utterly wrong. The way it crumpled, the widening of his eyes, it wasn't disdain or revulsion.

It was fear. He told her to hold on! Where was she?! Goddess, he couldn't lose her again, it wasn't-

Something moved through the foliage in front of him. He focused his blurry eyes and saw it move with sleek, smooth movements like a jaguar... but it was hairless. The skin shone, though, like-

Scales. Under the skin in patches, yellow eyes staring at him in stark disbelief, whispering that word just before-

-she collapsed against him, and Razkar seemed to deflate around her, arms wrapped around her shoulders. The thin bindings on her chest were as insubstantial as the cloth he wore over his crotch, but he felt no glimmer of arousal in that moment.

The male's breath came out in gusts for a moment, face buried in the hollow of her neck, black hair so silky and smooth capering down and tickling his nose.

"Wolf... I thought I'd lost you again..."

He pulled away from he reluctantly and cupped her face, as if unsure... no... not if...

"This," he started, voice quavering slightly, brow furrowed like it always was when he'd seen him in class a few times, puzzling over quizzes and those sums that had letters in them, "This is... real? Or just another... another... whatever that place was?"

Something hissed above him, and he looked up...

Razkar's eyes rolled and the grimace of uncertainty fell for a moment in favor of exasperated burden. "Did you really have to bring that...?"