#anyway please take these tws seriously it is! dark times! and enver and irae have a pretty fucked relationship

[silksworn]

❛ night terrors . and ❛ gouge . where a source of comfort comes from his claws at her throat, reminding her the worst thing to deal right now is him no matter the specters of her past

❛   night terrors .   hold  my  muse  after  they  wake  up  from  a  nightmare . + ❛   gouge .   wield  a  sharp  object  at  my  muse . / LOUD & DEAFENING SILENCE starters ! ❛ —— ☾ ₊ ⊹ @fatewoven

𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐋𝐘 in a liquid tongue that is too complicated for Iraestra to fully follow. Her hair falls in a stream of starlight, whispering across Iraestra's upturned face and making her scrunch her nose in mild protest. Her expression is serene in a way that the little girl has never seen before, but she finds herself mirroring it all the same. Everyone remarks on how much she looks like her mother, after all. Maybe one day she will be as beautiful as her, too.

Belbol, are you ready for bed? she asks. Iraestra smiles and takes her mother's smooth hands. They are too cool to be pleasant to hold, but she does so all the same.

Belbol. Belbol. Belbol, a chant under her breath. She likes the sound of it better than her own name. Treasure.

It is rare that her mother visits her quarters. Even stranger still, that she personally sees to her. Child-rearing falls to the wean-mother and the slaves of the compound; Iraestra knows that it is because her mother is occupied with her duties as a high priestess.

She is old enough that she understands that now, as she has just passed her sixteenth name-day. Quite grown already! And while she hadn't seen her mother on the actual date, the surprise of her presence now more than makes up for it. She had even dismissed the servants, saying they would not be needed for the night. She would speak to her daughter alone, learn of how she has grown as of late. Iraestra had heard her dismiss the wean-mother with that assurance.

Her mother brushes her hair and helps her change into her bed-shift. She leads Iraestra in prayer to the Spider Queen, being kind enough not to admonish her when she stumbles over some of the phrases or forgets them entirely. Grandmother would not have been so kind with such a mistake. Oblodrans must seek perfection in all things.

Still, she must do well enough, for her mother kisses her cheeks and settles the blankets over her. She does not even leave, setting herself at the bedside and assuring her that she will be there in the morning! Iraestra wishes to ask so desperately what she has done to earn this reward, or what she is to do garner it in the future, but she is scared that by giving it a name she will scare her mother away from her again. No, she will not question it, and only be happy for what she is given.

She falls asleep mouthing belbol. Mother is singing again.

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The dream ends as it always does. Centuries have not managed to dull the memory of suffocation. The pillow, so soft against her face. A crushing weight atop her, her mother's voice begging her to quiet, shush now belbol, all will be well. Once so lovely, now a shrill crow's cry. Her own wildly flailing limbs, the desperation — to live, to fight, to breathebreathebreathe — that only wasted more of her quickly waning energy.

Iraestra startles from her Trance, and the terror does not end. She gasps, she chokes, she moans and feels her throat work against a force that does not budge. The ceiling spins in and out of focus, her vision graying for long, harrowing moments. There is a weight across her hips, there are five pinpricks of hurt in her shoulder, holding her down. Too many sensations to focus upon at once, each one more overwhelming than the last.

This is how death will find her then, in her sleep. A final mockery on the family name.

The pressure eases only slightly, and without warning. Iraestra gasps air in greedily, chest working to fill her lungs. The dark shape looming over her is not her mother, but for a moment it is. Her mother has risen from the grave to finish the job, she will end their blood, she will —

Enver studies her as if she is another one of their experiments brought to the autopsy table. He regards her cooly, clinically. Under his eyes she is little more than insect stuck fast to a board. Lame in one of the wings perhaps, something once splendid but now sentenced for death. An amusement, these uselessly fluttering wings of hers. A curiosity to be pickled and kept amongst his other morbid trophies. Would he take her brain, her heart, her tongue?

Sweat cools in a puddle around her, but her neck is warm with what must be her own blood. Her thrashing must have loosened her hair from its braid, as clings to her temples in mats. The tongue is a thick, unwieldy lump of flesh in her mouth. He still has not removed his gauntleted hands from her. Metal warms against her flesh, the joints of the glove pinching.

Gods, how her throat aches. She must have been screaming, as she had been unable to as a girl-child. Loudly enough to have woken her lover, it would seem.

She seeks to find some semblance of his thoughts in his eyes. Only the abyss greets her. A yawning, gaping emptiness that nothing can hope to fill.

All fight leaves her tensed limbs, her trembling arms and thighs and belly. Soft, a pinned dog showing its underbelly. She is hardly aware of the tears that spill over, clumps her lashes thickly together. Iraestra is barely aware of anything beyond the drumbeat of her heart in her chest, in her ears, in her throat.

They do not speak. There are no words for what passes between them. He holds her until the tears end, and then studies too the wicked gleam of her blood across his gauntlets.

She does not thank him. He does not ask.