"The Prime Beings sacrificed their brother Yornus in the last years of the Prime Eons, years when all lived in accordance with the wills of the Primes. Yornus became the ground we all walk on and for years the Prime Beings fought for control of the many realms that were left. After the many uncountable years and wars between beings incomprehensible, the Prime Beings spent all their power becoming the bodies among the stars, cementing their domains for eternity." -Excerpt of Kieva's Mythological History
-----------------------------------------------Semsì-------------------------------------------------------
The sun filtered through the curtains into a room that was slightly more barren than I would like to admit. Only a bedrest against the far wall, as far away as it could be from the stream of light, that shined through the single vertical panel that was cracked open. The bed wasn't the largest or fanciest, a simple wooden frame and straw stuffing in the mattress, but it was as good as one could get in the city of Rency.
Outside the window, Rency already moved with the noises and smells of a large city. There were plenty of horses and oxen already pulling carts into the market square, ready to start an early day. The city was home to roughly one hundred thousand people, from all across the continent of Ver-Anda. Located along the banks of the great river Dujxa, the city has served as a great trade and meeting spot for millenia.
The sun slowly moved across the dark room to finally shine a thread of light across my face. For a few moments, I stayed motionless trying to get as much rest as I could. But the light soon was uncomfortable enough that my eyes opened and I let out a deep yawn.
Mornings were never my favorite. It was still early, the sun having just peeked over the horizon minutes earlier. Sitting up, I raised my hands above my head and stretched, cracking my neck in the process.
"You sleep okay?" a rather deep but feminine voice said in the bed behind me.
"You know I've never liked mornings. Waking up isn't very enthusing." I yawned.
"Yes, I know. I did not ask you that, Semsì," she grinned a devious look at me.
"Yes, I slept well, Jiva." I fell back into the comfortable arms that I had become so used too. Across them were tattoos from a life past that Jiva was doing her best to forget. Intricate designs specific to the tribe she hailed from were carved like tendrils from her wrists to her shoulders.
She didn't talk to me much about those tattoo's, though she rarely made an effort to hide them, in public or in private.
"How was yours?" I asked, though I could probably guess the answer.
She just huffed, a sign that I had learned over the years as a tentative yes. She had slept.
"When will you go see Duvaldi about your dreams?" I asked, looking into the brown eyes she had. They darted away from my gaze however and she mumbled.
"When he takes back what he said about my grandfather." Her reply was curt. Years ago, the two healing men had known each other. It was quite literally ancient history. They had some sort of falling out, and only the gods know the true reason. Now, of the two, only Duvaldi was alive .
"He has never been unkind to you, my love." I said, still looking towards her despite her disposition. "You and I both know you're grandfather was-"
"Sem, I swear to Jëvi, if you side with that treacherous possum, I will make you sleep with Mērxi's pigs again." She cut me off, her tone rather insidious. She wasn't known to lie.
"Jay, the pigs found me in the night, I was right outside the house!" I retorted, pulling back in a playful snarl.
"Oh yes, the pigs that you were snuggled with?" She laughed at my expense and I mumbled my disapproval. "You know, years ago," Jiva began, "I never imagined I would be able to know someone the way I know you. My life has never been easy. I told you so much but have quite a bit to share." For a moment, I couldn't tell whether she wanted to laugh or cry. "But with everything, you've always accepted me, for what I am and what I'm becoming."
"Why would I not accept you?" I tapped her nose with my pointer finger, something that she was by now used to.
"My past is not typical." She lowered the cover to expose her torso, where the tendrils of Ink turned to runes of Ancient Elven scrawl. I could read the words, they were some sort of spell or incantation, but she would never tell me what it was for. I wasn't too keen to bring it up, even though we've known one another for longer than half of a century.
Her past and future was printed across her body, like a scroll a mage kept. The incantation on her torso was not the only one, she had smaller ones across her back, and even her legs.
I traced my hand across one that went from one shoulder to the other, and seemed to stand at the top of a long ladder of wards and incantations.
She never seemed to mind me touching them, and I had asked. The tattoos felt like slightly raised bumps of skin, and ranged from black to bright red. As I traced along the tendril on her shoulder, it morphed into a line of Elven script, the first line was an offering to the Sun God, a being she called Valûƙsol.
The line of runes ran across to her other shoulder and down onto her back where it spilled into a vertical script that even I had trouble reading. Whatever the elves were writing, even she doesn't think she should have made it out.
The sun kissed the wonderfully browned skin of Jiva just right in the morning, giving her a brighter tone than usual. Her skin was a dark color usually, with a few tones of red around her cheeks.
"Neither is mine, I cannot judge." Was all I said, tracing tendrils of ink up her arm.
She caught me off guard with a kiss. It was warm and her breath smelled of sleep, but I didn't mind it. Her lips were full and soft, but firm. The first kiss was long. And she held me close with a handful of my hair.
My hand slid down her body, grazing an erect nipple that was poking through the fabric of the shirt.
Through the kiss, Jiva moaned and bit my lip. I brought her closer with my free hand and our legs intertwined under the covers. Our kisses became more numerous and more passionate and with each passing second the feeling of her skin on mine blurred time further.
The shirt she was wearing was easy to slide off, revealing even more tattoos across her stomach, these in an intricate circle pattern. I gave her one last kiss before moving down and kissing her neck. She grasped at my sides and gasped while I nibbled and suckled on her earlobe.
"You devil," she exhaled as my mouth found its way onto her nipples.
She pulled me up by my shirt, suddenly, and lifted it above my head almost just as quick, before kissing me again. Her skin was warm against mine as her hand made its way down to my pants.
She felt the bulge, rather cautiously at first, before taking my waistband and untying it with a single pull of the string. She took me into her hand, running her thumb around the tip lightly while she slipped a tongue into my mouth.
Her kisses were always warm, and enough to drive me crazy. Then she began kissing my neck, and I shut my eyes and moaned. She continued to play with me, stroking between light flicks around the tip. I squirmed beneath her touch, her hands soft and her lips warm as they kissed down my chest.
She teased me about the hair there sometimes. But kissed through it anyway. Kissing my stomach,above my belly button, she finally took my member into her mouth and I let out a pent up groan. I grabbed her hair in my hands and she used one hand to massage the shaft while she took the tip and flicked the tip with her tongue.
I didn't want to be too loud, my neighbors behind me were generally quiet, so I tried to return the favor. I was not a good neighbor tonight.
"By Sïvasï," I moaned, letting her finish what she was doing before pulling her up and shoving a wet tongue into her mouth.
I used one hand and wrapped it around her neck, and as I kissed her, I felt the ring she had pierced into her tongue.
There is nothing like what you bring to me. I thought. Each kiss with her was a step closer to the divine.
It was my turn then to pleasure her. I kissed her neck again, feeling her goosebumps as they raced down her skin. A kiss on her collarbone made her gasp lightly and grab my waist with one hand. Her nipples, still erect, tasted like the sweat of the day prior, slightly salty but to me just perfect. I kissed her belly, letting the whiskers of my beard tickle her mound just enough for a tease.
A slightly sweet scent hit my nostrils and I took a deep breath. My tongue tasted what I could only describe as the elysium of the gods, for your sake.
The sun gleamed in my eye as I looked up at her. I wish explaining the magic that bound us from sunset to sunrise was easier to explain. The sunlight danced on her skin and the runes glowed brilliantly, sparkling like stars in the night sky almost.. The runes were in the ancient language and in a dialect that even I could not understand. What I could get was fleeting, and told me that she was "Destined to be Served", whatever that could mean. What I could understand was in the middle of other parts that were obviously more important because she refused to tell me their meaning.
I crawled onto my elbows and kissed her one last time.
"I'll see you tonight." she said as she faded from the room.
"Sujta, of course," I responded in a low tone, rolling onto my back and staring at the ceiling.
Why did I have to see the stars dance so brightly? I wondered.
The sunlight filtered through enough that I finally had to get up for the day, that being a stream of sunlight so uncomfortable that I had to finally move and start the day so as to escape its heat. The house, other than my barren bedroom, had a bathroom with running water and a living room just slightly more decorated than the bedroom. The small modest place was away from my family where I grew up in a small village in the south but I was proud of what I had done for myself.
My family was a people of money, as they thought it. Centuries ago, my grandparents had participated in the procurement and trade of a mineral that would become vital to the construction of the infrastructure of our modern world. The humans would call it Firtstrom in their primitive tongue, though they would quickly find out that the metal could be transmuted into many different forms. The metal had been something the elves of my clan from a place called Duwata had used for generations as jewelry and other ceremonial uses for a long time, and we knew of its latent power, such that it was a natural conductor of the life energy we call Megiha. That was rather important to my family's success, that the metal was a natural conductor of magic. It looks wonderful as a necklace, don't get me wrong, but where we lived, it was better to cast a spell to destroy your enemy than to give them a gift of a shiny blue metal. Many of the tribes that gave gifts do not exist anymore. The tribes that made ui'ta'vati into a spearhead are in control of the world.
We cannot also pretend that the tribes that were gift-givers were only peaceful and tempered. They had their weapons and their history told of days where they had to fight but much of the land was plentiful and only during the leanest years did tribes fight amongst one another. That was the kind of society that my Sujta came from, a place more concerned with the words that the planet spoke than what their neighbors had to say.
"We care about everyone else too, but the soil is where we come from, so we must take care of it before we die." her voice echoed in my head.
I grew up just outside of Rency in the suburb the elves called Highgarden, but the humans called it "High Walls". Even when I was younger, nearly 115 years ago, as I am an elf, the humans of New Brook called the majority elven suburb a place with walls almost as high as the city of Rency itself. A walled complex within the walled city. I didn't notice for a long time, until you approached New Brook, and the walls were towering above the street suddenly. Further into the city center, the city hall could be seen from the walls of Highgarden, a place I had been many times growing up.
The wall off the north side of the neighborhood was near the wall that surrounded the entire city, and guards could access the suburb and the city from there. I would climb to the top and sit just out of the view of the guards who crossed the platform on patrol for years before I became old enough to join the proper society. From there I would watch the city. The sun would always set over the Great Temple, a place that most worshiped the god of the sun, Vakti, but some would use that space to worship other gods of the pantheon that the Great Temple allowed. That wall was where I met Jiva for the first time, when we were much younger.