Snowforest Taiga mangosteen

while the alpha female of dragonspine trembled her last beneath the guardian's body of her mate, the dreamer cried aloud.

he did not think he had ever seen the golden threads of a wolf die. of course in his hunting he had quieted the filaments himself, but it was nothing like this.

the entire mountain seemed to darken with death, and tears poured down the dreamer's face as he felt the horrible ache in his own chest.

somewhere upon the taiga, the dreaming man watched the gilded skeins pulse once more and then fade to an eternity of blackness, and he wept aloud to see it happen.

oops! Medusa is IN HEAT!

 

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If the Taiga was any different in temperature from the arid climates Medusa had become accustomed to, she could not tell you. She could not tell you much of anything these past few days—she had snapped @Gucci away as it all became too much to bear, and fled. 

If the Gods were real, she would find him again—but for all of her lessons, and for all she had learned, Medusa did not believe in much but for herself and the little man that was her father. When she had told him what she had seen, he was quick to come to a solution—that to appease everyone, but to get away to think, they must go to another aspect of the kingdom. Live more, learn more—blah, blah, blah. 

More on that when this arc is completed, because Medusa was following another thread—one none had the foresight to forewarn her about, one that would have consequences. But she was feckless and reckless, a terrible combination, and so none of that mattered to her now. Nothing mattered to her so much as this niggling feeling. One she did not know how to resolve. 

Fuck. Maybe this was the Gods! Nothing had had such power over her before, nothing. It was a call she felt helpless to answer. 

And it led her to some weeping man. It was the latter point that seemed to matter most to her, and her tail wagged to unwittingly waft the scent she carried around. You! she called, careless to his emotional state. You must help me! 

She marched over to him, one decision made and she was unshakeable.

"i'm not fit to help anyone," the dreamer murmured in despondence to the commanding air of the alabaster woman. 

Wolf clacked a meatless jawline filled with hard yellow teeth.

women come for you. the dream denies! boy! you are still made of flesh!

first you demand from me. then you tempt me. flesh will die. flesh is dying.

woman with another dreaming held in the crux of her thigh; he blinked sadly at her and breathed past the eager yearn of his mortal body. "are you lost? what do you need?"

the giltmade skeins thrummed with her need.

What did she need? You do not know? she asked, marching toward him with curiosity that was, then and there, genuine. When the Gods sent Their people on a mission, she had assumed Their landmarks would know it if not the journeyman! Well, then the two of them would learn it then. Annoying, but not impossible. 

I think my Gods sent me to you, but They did not explain Themselves. You are the one that must help me, since you are the one They led me to, she was eager, she was believing—for all of her life she had lived in dim darkness. But now there was some sort of light within her, growing and growing. She had always felt so cold, and now that she felt warmth she could not resist it. Medusa had never been allowed so close—the sun caused her pain and discomfort. The seconds she basked in trace spots the sun had fled from felt similar to this, sunsoaked stones upon her belly. As close to the planet as she ever thought she’d get.

Well. Until now, when it felt like she’d consumed but a portion of it. 

A little desperately, she pressed: please, she paused, this can’t be for nothing, a step toward him, do you feel it too?

"i feel — that i am not the one you want." surely she wanted a man of red blood and with eyes unclouded by a dream that had already set him apart from the others.

wolf dreamer remembered the rejection of the mountain man, the dying of threads too far beyond and far too close.

almost in shame he met the woman's eyes with the voidstare which reflected only the light of her golden threads.

"you're a woman seeking a man. i'm — not that. not any more."

No, she corrected, it could have been anyone. Any man, any woman—it was you, another slow step forward, gaze simmering, and her tail lashed behind her. He warmed her, even in the face of what others might perceive as rejection. She could see nothing in his eyes, and he might see nothing in hers but for a newfound flame in a place it had never before occupied. 

She smiled at him. She liked his aloofness, his detachment. Preferred it. I need you for now, she said, for as long as the Gods keep me here. They ask I pause here with you, Medusa sucked in a breath. But nothing is forever. Maybe not even this. But please, she pined, stepping forward, help me see this through for Them. I… I need this feeling, another step forward. And I need you, for whatever reason. You are who They called upon me to find. She could see the threads. Two twining and twisting, but unfurling too.

Just this once, she whisper-willed, voice quivering. She did not want to fail herself, more than Them!

the dreamer's breath came harder now, more for the swift funnel of grief than the swoon of his weaker flesh. they drank one another in, the woman who pled for him alone and set herself up as an altar.

prescient thought took the dreamer down another path, one where she carried away pieces of gold from his own soul, to be reborn beyond his sight.

he reached for the selfish tendrils of who he had been, the man ravenous in appetite; but as he brushed them, he felt too how foreign the sensation had become.

"love kills the dream." and a dream it would be. they would rise in fragments.

dancing fox, elven in a brilliant thought.

"sex kills it too."

he was surprised by his own frankness, surprised moreover by how his body's want began to ebb in the despair of realization that this set of experiences were permanently behind him now.

was he not still a man? 

no longer, Wolf clicked. silence followed. a man would not sacrifice these things to follow my voice.

the dreamer knew he could do nothing but surrender, to lose these last vestiges of self so he could be still in the heart of the very world.

"i believe i called to you. and you've come. but your question isn't one i can answer. it's the dream. it's only ever been the dream, calling through me."

and the dream knew no gods.

Medusa shook her head. What was he talking about? Sex, and dreams—the latter she knew about, the former a word thrown and caught and carried away by the wind before her mind could work to interpret it. 

This isn’t love, she said back, this isn’t sex. This is… nameless! She didn’t know it. But he couldn’t be right, it didn’t feel right. Medusa shook her head and said, The dream, the Gods—different, the same. It is for that, it isn’t. And how do you know? she too was frank. Frustrated. He did not know her, why would he help her? How can anyone know? What if you made another dreamer from this? 

She spoke of herself. Not that she would join him, but that maybe this was why he had called—maybe, maybe, maybe. But there was one way to know! 

Once more she asked, help me. For your dream. anchored here, her own breathing came quicker now.

"you don't even know what my dream is." his words were soft, yielding, but he rose to step away from her now. the gentle pulse of her threads sought to entangle with his own.

how odd to choose you of all. perhaps there is something here. she speaks of dreamers.

she speaks of her own dream.

the look he gave her now was anguished, tendrils of want threaded with a deep dread. to give of himself was to lose the dream which guided each breath. his surrender could only be to the star web, not to her, not to himself.

the dreamer turned away from the woman and moved into the taiga on aching, hesitant legs.

Must I? dazed, she had not considered it. None of that mattered to her. Nothing did so much as this. And as he turned to leave, she screamed out a long wail of her own surrender. 

No, No! and maybe he was already gone. Another scream, this one a call—a demand! But not of the one who had left; perhaps of the world.

initially, he'd only come up here to hunt for meat. he'd caught the trail of a herd of mule deer, vulnerable in the calfing season, and had been tracking it far beyond rivenwood's borders when he noticed it.
divine temptation.
he rounds upon the she-devil who beckons him and is about to seek her through the wood just as what must have been an unacceptable suitor pads away. he hears the footsteps and the sound of protest.
he chuffs out a note that announces his presence, awaiting response lest he too be undesired.

Divine intervention! 

When out went one, in came another—and her eyes were locked upon him. This must be why—he must be why. Medusa moved toward the tree line in which he occupied, breathing still heavy from that exchange. 

You, a smile, you will help me, she decided, now striding to bridge the gap between them. But then, midway, she paused—from here, she did not know the way.

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she reels him in like a widow and ensnares him within the boa's grip. he does not fight it.
he needed no further introduction nor guidance — he slithers toward her through the thicket, meeting her smile with a lecherous one of his own. his arms instinctively find her waist and his muzzle the back of her neck, beckoning for her to allow him closer. to allow him to take her.
he will teach her all that must be known. she is young, virginal, the purest offering from god; divine intervention indeed, for never would he turn away the lost lamb which wanders into his pasture.
he will make her feel divinity.

Medusa did not know what to expect. Certainly not him crawling atop her! Her lips peel back, until she finds that this warms her further—then the lines of her muzzle smooth, and she deduces that this one knew what to do where the other did not.

So she had been wrong—it hadn’t been dreamboat dreamer. It was tall dark and handsome. And that was fine, this was fine. He gave to her the very thing she had been desiring, and Medusa, who hated to be touched by just anyone, reveled in it then. 

It was elation like she had never known. Close to euphoria, he brought her up to some sort of stairway—up and up and up! Oh, Gods, she saw the light, it was right there… but it all stopped, frustratingly just short of it, except maybe not, what did she know? 

Her breathing was labored, and she sagged against the man who had made her believe in her Gods.

>:D

had he hands, amadeo would have likely lit a cuban cigar and ashed it over her patterned bedsheets. he is calm in the wake of everything, satisfied with himself — and with her, this strange, lovely little thing who had crawled so eagerly to her knees before him.
should he at least offer her his name? no, perhaps not; his job here was done, as was hers. she will bear children marked with ash, and that was as good a reminder as any.
but he will not leave yet, unless it is clearly desired. she leans against him and he tasks himself with preening the lobe of her ear strangely intimately, eyes half-lidded as the waves of ecstasy begin to slow.

Did she like this? Maybe. So she didn’t remove herself too quickly. For a while longer Medusa stayed with this dark man, which fortuitously left room for more rounds. When he had gone to hunt, Medusa awoke and thought herself abandoned—and so she left, not looking back.

Well. Maybe she looked back once. But with no one there to see it, who would know?