Rising Sun Valley [m] We'll wish for weightless knees

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Sexual themes!

Whenever you have time <3

Under the fragile golden glow of dawn she'd murmured to Everett a promise to return later on, and slipped quietly past the treeline of the Emberwood. Reverie had heard @Dusty Rose singing in the night.

Now she flitted along the soft meadow which separated the woods from the wetlands, and sang out her own invitation to him. Come dance with me. She felt her pulse in her throat, felt her breath catching there, and she stilled; waiting. All around her, the world slowly brightened to brilliance.

When he heard the summons, the coywolf paused in his task, blank-faced and contemplative. In the distance, his full-blooded cousins cackled and cried, many voices rising up in retaliation against the call of the wolf. He answered neither of them, in the end, and moved silently toward the summons.

He appeared to her with the long grasses up to his shoulders, and one long, white-striped feather held in his serrated jaws. His black nose twitched, nostrils flaring, and he pranced in a wide circle around her, parading his delicate prize.

Come and get it, his body language said — but there was a hunting glimmer in his dark eyes that seemed to be saying something else.

Her own call was quite different from a coyote's song. She wasn't sure Dusty Rose would come until he did, until he was there. Reverie only watched him for several long moments, completely still save the slow motion of her tail. He held a feather; the glint in his eyes sped her already-racing heart.

She knew better than to reach for it. All her life she'd been given things, but Dusty Rose was not a giver. Reverie dipped into a playful bow instead, then rose to dance away. She cast him a teasing glance over her shoulder as if to say that she had something better than a feather; as if to challenge him to take it from her.

For a moment, the coywolf mirrored her in a bow, his tail wheeling in the air. It slowed when she turned away from him, and his eyes narrowed as he rose only halfway to stalk closer.

Half-hidden by the grasses, Dusty Rose froze, waggled, and sprang. His long legs launched him in a high, narrow arc. He landed with another high kick of his hind paws, close enough to reach out and grab his prey. With the feather still clutched in his jaws, however, he could only growl an almost-playful threat and jab his snipy muzzle into her spine. His incisors scraped against her skin, pinching, before the dance separated them once more.

Dusty Rose performed a whip-like pirouette that ended in a one-footed hop. The arc of his body was highlighted in gold by the sunlight, suspended for an improbable moment in mid-air.

Limned in dawnlight, the dancers moved; when he leapt she twirled away, when he spun she pranced around him. Reverie felt the bright sting of glancing teeth along her spine and shivered. A faint whine spilled from her.

She had never been pursued this way before. Her eyes caught on the glint of gold across grey fur and the breath stilled in her throat. For a moment she could only stare. He was beautiful, this dancer with hunter's eyes, and her want mixed just as beautifully with the hint of fear.

Hunted; the little golden sparrow woman flitted away on the wind once again. This time the breeze caught her wings and set them alight. The clouds shifted overhead, shadowing the still-rising sun as Reverie spun into the dance to call down the rains. Faced with fire, it was all she knew how to do.

The coywolf had never seen fire before; he had only heard it described. Right then, the dancing queen readily fit that description, overwriting less vivid attempts of his imagination to conjure flame. And, while Reverie danced to call down the rains, Dusty Rose had mainly learned to dance in it, with high jumps and snapping teeth, reveling in something vital and life-giving after months-long drought.

This narrative was woven into Reverie's with jagged grace. The coywolf kept up with a stream of wordless, guttural narration, black nostrils flaring when his lungs began to ache.

Eventually, the feather fluttered to the ground, and Dusty Rose pursued her in earnest — delighted, incensed, and terribly flattered.

A pointed snap clipped the pale fur of her flank, but she slipped like a raindrop between his teeth. Another deep growl escaped him, and he surged forward again with his tail lashing, flinging droplets of water in every direction as it spun.

It was the season of rain in the Teekon Wilds; it shouldn't have surprised her as much as it always did when the clouds parted to give their blessing. Her heart leapt all the same when she felt the cold droplets against her face.

A startled little laugh slipped from her, clashing and mingling with Dusty Rose's vocalizations. She turned wondering eyes to him as the feather fell to the ground; as the distance between them abruptly dwindled. Reverie spun away, wreathed in her own laughter and scattering cold rainwater from glinting gilded fur. Together they created their own little storm amidst the serene morning drizzle.

This time she hesitated in her flight, lingering with one paw in the air and sunlit eyes filled with mischief. She wanted to run, yes, but she wanted to be caught! She wanted their game to go on and she wanted it to end. At the last moment Reverie tried to slip away again — but it would be too late, and she knew it would be too late.

He threw his weight into her, bowling them both over even as his teeth reached for her scruff. His jaws opened wide and pinched shut around skin and fur; he jerked his head a few times to punctuate his victory, his growl shifting to a cackling vocalization that was not present in wolf language. It meant, please forgive me and what are you gonna do about it? both at once.

His grip shifted. He preened the saliva-slick fur he'd held in his teeth, aggression fading from him just as quickly as it had come. This would last only as long as she was subdued, however, and Dusty Rose was wound tight to head off any attempts at escape. Bowed into her, he did his best to pin her with the weight of his chest while his tail wheeled in the gathering storm.

Even the rain would not protect her from the fire she'd lit when she'd called out to Dusty Rose. She felt it consume her now, felt her own throat filled with growling whines and wordless pleas as his weight pressed atop her and his grip tightened in her scruff. The tension faded from her abruptly; she settled beneath him for a few fleeting seconds.

Her hips shifted, lifting — but she would not have been Reverie if she didn't test him just a little. She twisted in a final half-hearted press of boundaries (are you sure I can't be on top?), inviting his correction and finally softening beneath it when it came.

There was thunder in the distance. The sky broke open above them, but for once, the sensory overload didn't bother the coywolf. His hind brain had all but taken over, and his body was buzzing from exertion and anticipation both.

They wrestled in brief fits. Dusty Rose corrected each escape attempt with a show of force or violence that ended as soon as compliance was regained. The last was his teeth on her muzzle, and it dissolved just as quickly as the rest into amorous, almost conciliatory kisses. She would have found that, if she'd kept up any kind of struggle, he would be easy to buck off. As it was, he clung tightly to his prized, blunted nails flexing for purchase each time he thought she might make another bid for freedom.

It was a game until he won it. Only then did he accept that there had been promise in her teasing, and he had a brief moment of clarity to think — Huh. Maybe Tybault had been right to worry after all.

But that thought was fleeting. Most of them were, for a time.

[insert sensual jazz music]

He knew nothing but the scent and feel of her, and the sound of her voice, until, long minutes later — still catching his breath —he gradually became aware of the fact that he was soaked to the bone.

Breathless and shivering, Reverie did not let Dusty Rose drift too far from her even in the aftermath of their coupling. She kept her muzzle buried in his fur, her flank pressed to his until her trembling legs slowly folded beneath her and she sought to draw him into the glistening grass beside her.

There's a little - A yawn cut through her words. A little hollow in the Emberwood. Somewhere we can go get dried off. She ran her muzzle through his fur, clearly not in any hurry to move just yet. A delicious ache sang throughout her body, a reminder of what they'd done that would stay with her for days to come. She didn't mind. The best things always ached at least a little.

Chilly though it was, the coywolf did not want to move. He was busy asking himself if he felt any different, not so much because it was important to figure out, but because it distracted him from more pressing thoughts. Like what's next? or what does this mean? He had no idea if this was going to turn into a regular thing or if it was just this once, and what distressed him most was that he didn't know which option was worse.

So he thought about the thunderbolt. The one that'd struck Slow West when he met his girl. The one that'd transformed him from gentle, loving brother into — well — something a little more like a coyote ought to be. Something a little more like Dusty Rose.

"Show me," he said at length, shaking himself out of his contemplation to half-rise on fawn-like legs. They folded beneath him when they tried to take his weight; Dusty Rose looked momentarily shocked by this development. He tried to play it off by shifting closer to Reverie again — and by the time he had done this, he'd convinced himself that he never meant to get up, anyway. " ... later," he amended, combing his teeth through the fur at Reverie's throat once more.

"We ought to enjoy all this rain you called down," he told her, though the storm was already abating, having reached its crescendo along with them.

Whatever you want, Reverie told him fondly, lost in the moment and how wonderful his touch felt. She did not think of the future, nor what might change between them — but if he'd asked her, she would have said that it would be very little. That she was not a coyote or even fully a wolf, that she wouldn't marry again, that she had nothing to offer him but this.

But he didn't ask.

So she kissed him instead. She peppered kisses across his face and his soft ears, pulling him further into their tangle of wet limbs. The rain began to taper off and the sky brightened, but Reverie hardly noticed.