"There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand."
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
-x-
Calla turned slowly as she smelt the new intruder into the clearing of her hunting ground, nothing normal would have brought itself within her domain so seeing it being Derek clouded in a red haze she had to struggle with hearing the nickname on his lips. Prims were more like animals than anything when they first came down from their blood highs this was something that he wouldn't be able to understand that if she at this moment attacked him it wouldn't be her. It was an alpha male in her marked space. He'd done the smart thing at least and brought himself down onto his haunches instead of standing tall and dominant. Tongue cleaning her tiny fangs of blood she didn't bother to clean herself past that.
Moving to her hands and knees Calla inhaled slightly at his scent and she had to remember what it meant. Treaty, Nora's safekeeping if she hurt Derek. Blinking slowly she saw his blue eyes first and how crisp they were like the sky that burned her skin in slow does and created the need to feed sooner and sooner. She was barely a few decades old, still so young that needing blood was a daily requirement. She had fed before she left and hadn't fed in nearly a week.
As her jaw finally unclenched she caught his scent as something other than a meal; crisp and clean like nature the way his kind had intended. Mind not able to create words, Calla just swallowed over the lump in her throat and she heard a strangled sound come out of her mouth.
"You shouldn't be here, I am dangerous when I am like this." Unfed, starving, craving something more powerful than a doe half dead.
Her head snapped back to him and those blue eyes full of understanding never changed when he looked at her. Like he saw nothing wrong with her as a monster sat before him. Covered in blood still covered in bits of flesh on her mouth.
"Derek you can't be here."
The life behind her eyes was indescribable, the way she was thriving so high off of the animal's sacrifice. The Dürvos were no stranger to the life of a carnivore, they too hunted and ate creatures of the Earth, they just did so with less hunger and more… honor. He crept forward on his toes and looked at Calla as she stared at him with a still starving gaze, touching the doe that had since passed into its afterlife. Its soul would be wandering pastures for eternity, unencumbered with the burden of survival.
"Do not be foolish, the circle of life is required for existence. The humans may be gone, but they were just the same." He touched the doe's neck and spoke in an old and ancient language, whispering prayers to the doe as the Earth cracked beneath it. Vines twined beneath its hooves and wrapped around the fragile body, encasing it until there was nothing left but a mound of forget-me-nots and calla lilies, smirking over at her with ease.
"My sister, she creates life from her rib, the way that the humans swore their God and their Eve could. It is rare amongst our kind, but not impossible to come by. The steer she sent to you and your soon-to-be husband was sent by her own bone." He touched the grass that had grown over its body and then looked over at her.
Her face was less sunken, more full, and yet still she looked like she was in a state of sheer hunger.
"Are you full, Liliya?"
Calla watched as if from nothing the doe became part of the world it had been in before but more than before. It would feed other creatures, it would produce more of the plants that he had given it plants that she knew nothing of least of all their names. Swallowing and sitting back down on her ass she touched the blue and white smaller flowers lightly with the tips of her fingers and then cupped the larger white flower as if she was touching something that was made by the Heavens that he talked about.
Which she realized his kind were the opposition in always of her kind. Where they destroyed they created life. The idea planted into her mind of if Nora could create enough life to feed her kind so that nothing innocent would have to suffer so that her kind weren't villains like she had come to realize that they were. How many things could be spared, how many virtues not robbed because some man stronger than a woman high on blood overpowered her in some dark corner. Or out in the open when everyone applauded it over and over again.
They were never full; the sun drained them, living forever drained them, everything drained them to sustain their immortal lives and it made them meaner and evil. Eyes dragging back towards Derek's she sighed softly trying to figure out how to say what she had on the tip of her tongue but she toned it down some.
Made it sound less harsh than anything that would have normally come out of her mouth. Putting her blood speckled hands through her long blonde curls Calla just laid back on her side watching the flowers and played with their leaves. It occupied her hands and her soul more than he would ever know.
"No, we are never full. I can never gain enough in my throat to be happy it only dulls down the burn in my throat. I can't eat enough of the earth to ever dull the ache in my stomach and I can never guzzle enough blood to fully feel like I am satiated. There won't ever be a way to fill us. We would have figured it out by now and abused it much like everything we abuse."
The harsh chuckle left her lips and she just took in the emotion of bitter regret. If she was anyone else she could have been with him in a different way like one of the women from the village who smiled at him without wondering what it was like to sample his blood. Or throw him down on his back and take advantage of how much they liked each other in the way that she had been with Jaxon once upon a time before everything had stopped being enjoyable and became the punishment that he had meant it to be.
What would his blood be like? Would it even be able to settle in her system?
Seeing her pet the flowers he just let his eyes carry over her skin. It looked like granite, a slight sparkle to it in the sun, like she was a hardened crystal in a cave. A diamond in the rough. His thumb ran across his lip, his human form always something of a marvel to him, so warm and welcoming. Despite her kind being deadly they were so appealing. They looked so painstakingly beautiful that they could lure humans to their uncertain death for centuries. The hierarchy of position on the food chain would always be towards the top, with his own kind close behind. Questionably, his kind was stronger and far more capable, but they didn't use it - or abuse it.
As she spoke about starving and the ongoing cycle his mind wandered to his own blood. Perhaps, since they were the embodiment of life, they could fulfill the Prim's? Maybe they would cause immediate destruction, but he had never heard in the history of their kinds of anyone trying. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of the inability to exist in one season with one another.
Being as they usually only surfaced during spring and summers, preparing to burrow for Autumn, their only time they could cross paths were the short months before stale freezing temperatures, and at that point his kind was beginning to root, planting forests and woods all around the world in the groupings of their families. Staying all together, finding warmth in the frozen ground so that the Prims could roam the Earth until they were backed into their icelands once more.
Now it was just a forbidden clump of land, with no humanity in sight and a struggle of warmth and ice straight down the middle. He wondered how the clans over the rest of the world were handling things, he wondered if all the Prims were celebrating, or worrying about their return. Unlike his kind, they were ruled by one absolute leader: Jaxon. Whereas, his own had tribes and elders within each.
However, despite it all, he wondered if it would hurt to try and offer, so instead of lingering he just nodded and swallowed harshly before he stared into her beaming blue eyes.
"Would you attempt to feed on me?" His voice was dropped to a tender tone, octaves low and inviting. "Perhaps it will fill you, maybe it will destroy you. But something tells me… it would be worth trying?"
Calla watched him as he became lost in thought, the thumb under his lip and his face settled in a stance that made her wonder if he had become a tree. Stretching out her legs she felt the course of what her hunt had done, her dress dirty and tangled under her limbs. Crawling up her calves and part of her thighs it was tugged and torn in a few spots around her ribs and she was thankful she wasn't one of the half-dead that her feeding had come in time before she started to look like a living dead thing. Desolate and obsolete in the way that she had once looked.
Pushing up on her hand to sit in front of him wondering if she should show him how fast she was or how strong she was after feeding but she just shook her head.
Perhaps it would fill her, perhaps it would destroy her. If it was Jaxon saying it she would have thought he set her up to destroy her. But she knew that it wasn't the same over Derek's soul, that he had nothing cruel coming from him when he offered to feed her. Trying he just wanted to try and feed her, grasping perhaps that if she was in his kingdom much longer that she would no longer be a thing. Not something he would recognize. For the first time in ages, she would have to drape herself in fabrics and layers to protect her skin from his precious sun.
"When I feed the need for everything comes to play. I want to indulge in all pleasures. It's why everything is so opulent where I live there is no simple meal, not even sleep is simple, it's all a dance of art and utter extravagance." Looking up at him from her lashes she found her gaze watching Derek's, he looked at her like she mattered. The way that he spoke to her was tender and careful like he would spook her like she was the doe. For a second her thick lashes kissed her cheeks and when she looked at him she knew her desire for him was evident. Tongue slipping over her lips, chest heaving from the air changing becoming supercharged from how her scent had become more. More everything.
"When I feed I need a release? I need to be dominant or be dominated." Her words burned with embarrassment from having to tell him this.
"You will have to restrain me so that I do not damage our friendship with something embarrassing I do in order to get those pleasures, I would hate to come onto you and have you reject me only to face me the next time I come down from high that you just witnessed." Was that her voice that sounded that breathy? Even now she was finding it hard to look at him directly.
Her warnings were for naught, as his thoughts had previously lingered, he was fairly certain his species could've been the Apex predator, even to her own species. He could be as tall as a tree on a mountain and crush her beneath his bark but he wouldn't. He couldn't. He imagined her attacking him and the force he would use to push her back was slightly frightening, he didn't want it, so he simply shook his head at her.
"I am not going to restrain you, I can overpower you with the world if I must, but I won't unless I fear for my life. I need you to understand that." His gaze locked on hers and he simply adjusted himself so that his knees hit the dirt beneath their feet and he adjusted so that he was centered so that when she bit she couldn't overpower him if her body's reaction attempted to.
Jaw setting into a ticking motion he just tilted his head to the side and laid his palms open on his thighs and face up, showing there were no tricks - just the offering of his neck.
Calla chuckled at his masculine pride and she knew it wasn't all for show but it was the way that he said it that made her think that it was funny. Looking at him as he settled himself into the dirt readying himself up like a prized cow for her. Scrambling up slightly she was on her knees so that she started feeding on him; one hand slid into his hair on the back of his neck and the other placed her index and middle finger under his jaw so that she could push him up and out of her way slightly. The idea of biting him on the side of his neck was debatable, it would be fulfilling to what she wanted to feel but the idea of feeling him breathe. Swallow. Feel herself feeding on him? Too resistible.
Leaning forward so that she was pressed against him, her slow heartbeat opposite his rapid one, Calla just kissed the hollow of his throat before her tongue just lightly stroked once, testing the beats of his pulse. Swearing that it wasn't anything else. The desire that she felt blooming like scalding embers under her skin.
Fingers tightening in his hair she pulled back slightly and her fangs just gently pressed into him before the soft sound of tasting him made her sink in fully. The blood rushed on her tongue and she felt how strong that he was; instantly she felt a strange fluttering against her heart like it was being stroked to life, the sun felt that strange heat that she attributed to being around him and Calla knew that she was bursting to life in front of him.
The sun was truly touching her skin, nourishing it with its rays and from the corner of her eyes, she saw her skin changing subtly from alabaster to a light peach color. Still flecked with the crystal droplets of ice that Prim's produced.
Gulpfuls of blood filled her throat with the pull of life she pulled from him, eyes closing tightly as she tried to resist everything that she was Calla tried to stop from shifting her weight into him as the last gulp of blood filled her and it was like nothing that had ever graced her system. The sensation of being full. When she pulled away her head was buzzing with a thousand thoughts all at once and her head dropped to his shoulder as a streak of blood still traced down his skin, with a struggling effort she stroked her tongue over the wound to seal it closed once more. As her body swayed from its weakness she felt Derek's arms around her cradling her and she winced at how it felt on her skin.
It was like a slap that was never delivered.
It was the next fleeting moments that passed like the speed of lightning, like a strike of it over the sky and thunder clapping over them in a rumble, but the skies were clear and the clouds were rolling in luscious blue. His eyes turned to that sky and he stared, even when he felt the prick of her teeth past the teasing movement of her tongue over his warm skin.
He let out a hiss of a breath and then he shuddered before he felt his blood beginning to go against the natural flow of gravity, unlike the apple that used to fall from the trees, unlike the rain that fell from the underbelly of the skies. It moved upwards and then out, a sensation he had no words to describe. As his eyes flickered down from the sky and down towards the woman now attached to him in perfect bliss.
Within her veins, he could see the Earth sprouting. Not literally, perhaps more figuratively but life was pulsing within her and then out of him. He turned his hand over in his line of sight and stared as the sun glistened, showing the dark pulse beneath the veins and then casting over and into her lips and down her throat.
Making another gasping noise when she separated it as if he could feel her belly fill instead of aching. His eyes cast over hers and their connection heightened. It was like the Earth was suddenly breathing with her chest. The core of the Earth moving on an axle that followed her soul. His entirety was revolving around her, staring at her as she parted her lips and then fell into his shoulder weakly. Was she hurt? Was she suffering? He felt no traces of worry or pain so he just went to cradle her.
Touching her back and feeling her body curl into itself as if to wince.
His heart sank to his feet and he felt saddened for her, staring at her now rosy-cheeked face and sun-kissed skin in his rough and capable hands. Perhaps she was flinching from reflex, from when she had fed from Jaxon and he had harmed her after. Like he had across the line when they had the exchange. His sister hopefully not suffering the same consequences in her heroism.
"Liliya…" He said softly and then he rocked her gently when she sank and found comfort in him, feeling the slight stick of dried blood on his skin when he craned his neck. Dried up and untouched as his skin had healed with both the effects of her saliva and his own natural healing genes.
"Never, as long as you sit across this line will someone raise a hand to harm you. Not a sapling, not an elder, nowhere in between…" He pressed his lips to the top of her honey blonde hair that had once been icy and frail, now vibrant with the life around them.
"I promise, on my ancestors, you are safe here. Especially with me." His words were almost like a sing-song hum and he just rested himself there, cradling her and wrapped around her like a bunch of ivy wrapping the stones of a cottage. Gentle, but relentless in their thriving nature.