she draws her hands away from the bag and into her lap, lacing them together. pale gold searches his face. 

"because you haven't asked me to stop."

KING WAYLAND

☉

CONQUEST

there is death at your door. you lay to rest the woman you will never become - touch-starved, self-exiled, lost - and you shed her name, freya, and claim your birthright. your father's dragon, the herald of the morningstars, is a guardian once left to protect the secrets of a dwindling, thought-long-gone legacy.

he watches over you now as you wade into the water, as nervous fingertips curl up and over the horns that have finally burst through skin. he can taste the fire that sits in your belly, sense the restless spirit that has haunted you all these years. he can feel it in his own as he greets you in the pool.

a half-moon necklace rests under your collarbone and moonlight shivers overhead. lyune hisses. dragons slither into the water. you are up to your hips now, arms at your sides. patchwork scales gleam on your arms and indigo eyes open wider, chin tilting as you face your rapture. 

they bathe you in the waters of your ancestral home and you become artemis, a name forged by the snarling and thrumming and keening of kindred spirits, drawing you away from the thrashing of the physical world and into yourself, toward that spirit, now unveiled, shuddering with anticipation, yearning to be known.

you are outstretched, phantasmal and resplendent, more than yourself, lost in an endless sea of ancient hide and bone, and then the fire touches you and you are you. you are made a wonder and you are made whole.

and as all rituals do, you meet this one's end.

you rise from the water and step barefoot onto the earth. the dragons recede and your mother and father wrap you in a towel and tell you they're proud and with tears in your eyes, you repay them the only way you know how.

'artemis,' they say, and

'morningstar,' you reply. 

they will never know the weight of your spirit; they will never bear your horns; they will never be your blood, but they will walk with you as equals. your legacy will be their own.

so as you hold them close, your mother and father, who sought you out of duty and raised you out of love, they become more than just protectors of a legacy almost lost. they become more than just keepers. more than servants.

like you, they become draconid.

OCT 5 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
392 WORDS

☉

knowing is hard. things had been so much easier when she looked at everything through the lens of absolutes. when rocket was bad and she was good. but that was before emma and before fernando and before the ultra beast war and the rest of it all, the world crumbling down around her, around them, at all turns. 

the world is run by egomaniacs snapping over each other for the last pound of flesh and all the rest of them will starve. 

there is a hunger in her even now, an aching for easiness, to have and to hold someone's hand and let that be it. gods, to let that be it. 

the thinking. 

her thoughts are her own. my thoughts are my own, she tells herself when she scans the beach, searching not for any sign of rocket forces, but for one rocket in particular. he distracts her with his wave. she gives a cursory glance over her shoulder, but shakes her head, an inkling of a wry smile putting some color back on her face.

"mm, i'd think if you were being watched, you'd have gotten shot already." what with her reaction to his avatar powers and all. she shrugs and waves it away. 

"i'd like to follow up with you on that, but...may i ask you something? and ask that you keep this next topic of discussion between us?"

Isaac Merlo

☉

idle chatter, the ruffling of papers, the pencil pushing and red tape that comes along with it ends awkwardly and they linger, waiting for the topic to turn. freya eyes the councilwoman curiously, half out of her own seat. 

she sits and is glad she did so before the information is spoken. the sudden stillness of her features bespeaks her rage, white hot and irascible.

fernando's question matters little to her. she could care little for what matias does or doesn't know regarding his own treason. 

"in what capacity?" she says, words spoken through thin lips, a tense jaw. 

PENELOPE LIVY FERNANDO SILPH

☉

LOVE

they tell you who you are. they tell you about your mother, about how she was so very strong. and about your father, who wanted to give you the world, who knew he would fail time and time and time again. they tell you he is alive and well and one day, he hopes, you will find it in your heart to forgive him for all the mistakes he didn't want to make. 

the cruelty he hoped to free you of. 

and you listen with bated breath, an almost-dragon at your side, black scales glittering in the firelight. his tail glows softly atop the stone floor, mimicking the shifting movements of the hearth. you stare into the embers and you clutch a crescent-moon pendant in your hand.

they say you are family. they say they understand if you don't ever see them the way they see you - mother and father to daughter - and you don't care for the history anymore. you don't care for their reasons for finding you. you throw your arms around them and you pull them close and you think, finally, because this is yours. this family is yours. 

you are meant for greatness. your name has been passed down for generations. you are a keeper of wisdom, a piece of a greater whole; they lament on what's been lost by your mother's passing and they celebrate your devotion.

as the world comes apart at the seams, you will hold it together.

you train with the blade, your adoptive father's specialty, and you learn aerial combat alongside your adoptive mother. tutors, scholars, mentors come to you and you sharpen your wit, your tongue.

you never see your childhood friend again. instead, you meet a boy. in the backyard of your family's cottage, you tell him of the endless hunt and how you are destined for greatness.

and then he laughs at you.

and then you kiss him. 

OCT 5 - DREAM DROP DISTANCE
320 WORDS

☉

she looks down. 

they'd found moments of respite and happiness during those decades. they'd shared laughs, hours of intimacy, wrapped around each other tightly enough to excavate what hurt and pain they could. but there was a lingering grief that pervaded every minute of every hour. 

every sideways glance. every stolen kiss. every battle won. that feeling of being trapped never left her. that feeling of isolation never left him. 

"i don't know," she says and then blinks up at him, realizing it's the truth. she zips up the bag and perches on the edge of the bed, shoulders drawn. 

"i've loved you for over twenty years, king. twenty years of love you don't remember and that's...hard. for me. for you.

"but i'd do it again in a heartbeat."

KING WAYLAND

☉

she runs her arm under her nose and continues her meticulous packing, stopping only when he speaks again. her shoulders sag. her exhaustion, strained under the weight of remembering, forced to the surface under his revelation, is obvious now. 

"is it so wrong of me, wanting to spare you that grief?" she says quietly in response. 

KING WAYLAND

☉

"no worries at all," she says with a flippant wave of her hand. she pays little mind to the man she'd had to get by in order to refill her bowl and loses his voice to the sound of a scream-cackling kid off to their left. but when she realizes he is talking to her, she gives her full bowl a shake and doesn't return back to her spot. 

she smiles down at the houndour and raises a hand idly to let the dratini rub her snout against her fingers. 

"and is that...kalos?" she guesses. there's one other, intimately familiar to her, who shares a similar lilt to this man's voice.

"ah, wait, then you must be mr. demassieux." she hefts the bowl to her hip and holds out a hand. "freya morningstar - a pleasure to meet you."

Julien Demassieux

☉

"the suit is meant to support the needs of its user," she rebuttals, glancing aside. if she's going to go into the fire, she wants to come out unscathed. she's tired of having the odds stacked against her. she's tired of losing. she's tired of not being enough. 

"there's no one else i trust with this, alex, but if it's...too much - " her gaze flickers back up, soft now, "i can find someone else."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

the look in her eyes, if she recalls, had spoken to how much she'd wanted to rip his jugular from his throat. she gives him a taste of that same look now, smothered over with smug affection.

her own hum of pleasure at the taste of the food is lost to the amiable chatter between the two men. she rolls her eyes at king's question and scoffs at alex's answer. 

"i'd kick his ass any day. it's a wonder he still builds my weapons for me, knowing i could ruin him," she teases. 

she points with her fork. "but he'll be the first to tell you i'm clumsy at close-hand." a shrug, another forkful of pasta in her mouth. "i've just come to accept i'll always be better with a bow."

KING WAYLAND ALEXANDER STONE

☉