wraithesca

[wraithesca]

[wraithesca]

violence (vi·o·lence) behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something   see also: savagery, cruelty, sadism   they raised me they made me good at it   they didn’t expect me to like it   they’re afraid of me now and i can’t turn it off   maybe it’s better this way

sometimes i believe that if i’m not angry, i won’t be anything at all (via mymouthisfullofstars)

[wraithesca]

I C A R I A N.

After centuries of possession by a vampire, the ring had come into the hands of the hunter that’d killed her. Though Litha had been a particularly high-profile foe for one hunter, Ezra had managed without winding up dead by exercising sheer bullheadedness. It was his first major accomplishment as a hunter, and it had garnered him some acknowledgement from the others in the guild; the elders that had looked down on Coopers since they had joined the legion of supernatural wardens sat up and paid attention. By putting an end to Litha, he had closed the chapter on a string of heartless reapers bent on destruction.

Research had always been his least favourite aspect of hunting, but the dull work had saved his life a time or three, and now he depended on it to save Esca’s. The ring’s power had been documented in chronicles dating back to the Roman era, when the songbird Litha had been given by the Emperor Nero to a reigning gladiator. The gladiator was known as the Divine Arm at the time, a sword of the gods, but his real power had been a darker gift. Vampirism. The power of the silver ring had given him the ability to fight in the Colosseum with the sun on his shoulders. He cut men down with fanfare for nearly a decade before Litha took his magicked ring from him and left his cage with the gift of immortality. 

When she fell, her bones a fine, white dust in her silks, Ezra pocketed the ring for himself. It never occurred to him it might find use again by another.

Their affair (he refrained from calling it a relationship for fear of dredging up the questions that lingered unaddressed in both of their peripheries) had a way of pushing them each beyond their limits. It was against Ezra’s nature to be involved with vampire if it didn’t involve a helping of vervain, or the sharp end of a splintered stake — and it was against Esca’s to walk with the sun on his skin on a hunter’s arm. It seemed they were cursed to drag one another through life-threatening situations, but it had yet to stop either of them. The connection they were nurturing went beyond the dark humour with which they had armoured themselves (a good way to deflect from important questions their predicament posed). Though it was a tentative bond, it ran deep and threatened to dismantle them at their core and outward.

“Think of it as an umbrella,” he said with a bit of a smirk; he found the metaphor clever at least. “And I’m just talking a walk around the park, Esca. We’re not sunbathing. If you start to feel drained, we’ll come back in.” Ezra wasn’t afraid that the ring wouldn’t work; his research was fool-proof. He’d also made his own modifications, and consulted fellow witches to do the same. The magick was in tact and infallible, but he did worry of the psychological effect it might bear on Esca, and the physical drain. His advanced age made his situation more precarious, and potentially made him more vulnerable to certain elements — where in other ways, it made him stronger. 

The hunter was nearly ready to throw in the towel when the lean vampire gave into his tugging and stood, though he wrapped himself around Ezra’s arm as if it were an anchor. Still, it didn’t hurt which was telling. His strength could have turned Ezra’s bones into powder, but he managed a remarkable self-control that even the most ancient of vampire could not recreate. Living in such close quarters with a vampire was forbidden, particularly for a hunter, for this reason. It blurred all of the lines, and created a life-threatening situation where none previously existed. For both of them. They lingered in a limbo together, now, in shadows just beyond the recognition of their peers, but if light was shed on them, everything they had would coming crashing down.

It was a possibility that Ezra was working on accepting. Not just a possibility, but a reality. This could only go on for so long before the cracked foundation gave way.

“You’re not going to burn. If that was even the slightest possibility, do you think I would risk it?” A stern look accompanied his words. 

Ezra laid his hand atop Esca’s and lead him toward the front door which yawned open in answer to their approach. The severe angle of the sun caused a perfect line of shadow just beyond the front porch — a representation of their worlds colliding, a perfect balance of light and dark. When he reached the threshold, he took his sunglasses from their perch atop of his head and offered them to his lover. “Doubt they’ll make much of a difference,” he added with a shrug, turning his back on daylight to inspect the ring and its winking obsidian stone once more time. He laced his fingers through the vampire’s, and kissed him again, perhaps showing a sluice of his own worry. 

“If you start to feel faint, or your skin starts to burn, tell me right away. All right? This ring could save your life if it works — no one expects to find a vampire hiding in the broad daylight. But if it doesn’t ..” He trailed off and took a step backwards toward the glaring sun.

“An umbrella?” He knew he did not sound convinced-- nor appeared as such in the moment. Yet there was an amusing lilt to his voice; even though the vampire wasn’t certain if it happened to be genuine. Consider it an umbrella, he thought, attempting to protect you from potential ash. Even so, he figured a single ray would be the equivalent to sunbathing for someone of his kind.

He knew Ezra understood, as a hunter, the severity of what he asked of him. He knew that Ezra would never expect him to override his own decisions in placement of his, but he knew the repercussions of choosing denial. He knew he’d damage their progress in that selection. He knew they may never return to the place they were now, and that sparked more fear than the prospect of the sun could ever begin to ensue.

Esca felt the distaste for the day, potent as blood upon his tongue. He knew a millennium of shade where light had ceased to dwell, and now he planned to willingly cast its cursedly safe promise aside. “I will feel drained,” he reminded quietly, “I am just not certain how quickly. Or how uncomfortable this will be..”

His frown was impregnable, and it only deepened as Ezra began their journey toward daylight’s hellish gateway. He danced around a heated beam streaming through a hall window, and kept his body pressed firm to the darkness the walls exhumed. But as the front door crept closer, the sun beckoned, and he found himself with a refusal to answer.

Until he saw Ezra, and the pure instinct of his nature was lost upon him, demanded extinction.

Before their encounters had turned loving, he would have challenged Ezra’s query, and the stern look in which accompanied it. “No,” he admitted, his hand traveling the length of his bicep, “now I wouldn’t.”

He doubted the glasses would do much past aiding in lessening the severity of which the light would invade his eyes, like a bullet embedding a bulletproof vest. The impact was bound to be a piercing, cringing blow, but at least he’d know a somewhat swift recovery. He slipped them up the bridge of his nose, and lost the impeccable color of the world in which vampirism granted him.

His hand took up its puzzle-piece slot within Ezra’s hand, fingers intertwining in their respective places. The press of his mouth was enough distraction to tug his rejuvenated heart toward the porch. His lips brushed against the hunter’s cheek as space was drawn between them. For a moment, as his enemy lover drifted beneath the glare of the sun, Esca’s face fell.

He saw him off most dawns, a sorrowful parting when the ring hadn’t existed. Never had the flaming sphere invited him to walk upon the earth as it warmed beneath its blaze.

“I’ll tell you.” One step. The black leather of his boot shined when breaching the shade’s line. “I didn’t know you...” Two steps. The light now sliced through his knees. “I didn't know what the ring meant to you past this." Three steps. The hand which held Ezra's was encased in light, bare to the gold that colored porcelain. He paused, gaze flicking back to the dark rooms behind him. "I didn't expect my life to hold meaning to you as it does." It means little to me. As did the shelter he flashed away from, an inhuman speed that hurled him into a human structure. He gripped Ezra, his face finding the hunter's neck before the sun could mar it.

He would not bask in what was cruel, what promised to incinerate him if not for the gift snug upon his finger. Tolerable was the word he associated with the feeling. As he lifted his head from Ezra's shoulder, bearable became another. But at what price? How much blood would it take to mend his strength, and whose would it be in the end?

[wraithesca]

E M P Y R E A N.

The wing sung whispers of the night were calling to her.

It was the settle in her bones as it yearned for her to riseand fall again, with the turning tide of the moon. It was a routine they sharedwell; Eva took to the call of the waxing moon as it came calling, spent adecade relearning the shape of the earth and all the places that it had dentedand flowered in  her past time since. ( They were the undead, twice removed from all that walked thedays and called itself alive– -butthey were still yet the children of the night; as the day passed, so the nightmust rise. ) She was yet to know where she would traverse to now, thoughshe had never needed to flower such responses for her sake, or Esca’s.

( If they were to truly desire finding each other before theirtime apart was to call it due, it would take not an ode to the moon and not acall to the night. She knew unendingly she could trace him back to the ends ofthe earth with ease, without hesitation, without doubt. )

So yes, perhaps she had bargained Esca here under the guiseof traditions and stolen him away from his hunter for a night’s due. But he wasto fear not, surely; but a few hours, and he would return to his own as Evawould take to the sun ( and its hidden shadows, from wherethey were to enjoy it in these incarnate vessels ). Eva would have been farmore bothered by it, though, had she not taken to sharing Esca, with time. Thehunter had a cleverly insidious way of bathing upon Esca adoration that glowed underthe reverb of his skin with all the insistence of starlight ablaze, somethingalike to quick, short fire in the way his mouth was quicker to pull into agrin.

She would not be thankinghim for it anytime soon, though, she could be a quiet admirer of a belovedbrother and the settle of his heart.

“Clever, pretty lies– -that.” Eva replied, her voicecarrying upon the singing lilt of a chiding harmony all too familiar betweenthe two. Her hand made its trek upon the curve of his elbow to guide him alongto where she had prepared the feast of bribes in offering. “Come now Es, I am feelingtoo fond in farewells for neck sna– -“

The descent of her words was plucked to a stop as it gracedthe air upon which she breathed it. Her hand had found its way to his in itstrek, fingers falling upon the cold cut of steel as it sat upon the thirdfinger with all its claim. Could it, or could it not be ? In her centuries ofexistence, Eva had been offered plenty herself upon honey-ladled lips of loversshe had woven into the shadows in her goodbye. She had left them with theirjewels and their promises, nothing more than a memory they doubted to faultyminds and a whispers in the night that sang hymns of the damned ( andall the ways in which they knew how to be unholy ). Though this band wasmelded in steel, far from memory– -far too real.

The aforementioned hand circled his wrist as she tugged hisown perpetrator of a limb up between them until the ring was caught by themoody dip of the candle light that bathed upon them easy. Gaze assessing it fornot a fleeting moment before they turned to that of her kin ahead of her, Evalet his hand slip from her hold.

“Betrothed?” She questioned, her voice an ivory pin dropthat denied none of the silent incredulity that she felt. There was nopoint in hiding the fall of her words with Esca, though her tone remained levelas the gaze she directed to him.

As her direction faltered, Esca was struck with Eva’s alternate action. It hadn’t occurred to him to hide the ring within the depths of his pocket before entering her abode. That she would hold exaggerated allegations of her own, well, that he could expect. She was splendidly accusatory, and her choice of word caused agitation to bloom. Betrothed. As if a hunter would do such a thing. As if a vampire would accept.

Yet he knew, in the lone expanse of his mind, that he himself would accept such an offer. After all, Ezra held no villainous intent in his presence. And for a time it was easy to forget their differences; enough so that life existed in harmonious relevance with their species. For them, at least.

Esca slipped his hand from her scrutinizing deliberation. Was this truly her immediate conclusion? “Eva.” Would it truly matter if I was? “Will you always assume before simply posing a damned question?” He knew the ring would be a pinpoint for her gaze, locked in on a missile. Nothing was bound to be remotely normal that evening, not now after the jeweled discovery. Turning, the vampire’s frown drowned the item from his finger, and into a dark pocket. 

The golden fire was once again his adversary. With the gift’s protection, its ferocious glow was bearable but not quite pleasant. The rays could once again sear and scorch and torture (as hunters tended to use it for). “Need I remind you what I’ve done for you before you judge me? Was it not me who suffered in your place?” Whom knew pain far beyond a human’s comprehension? “I nearly died for you-- you owe me this forbidden allowance.”

The vampire expressed his exasperation in a disheartened sigh; perhaps enough emotion to support him throughout the next millennium. “It was charmed by a witch,” he explained, “so that I might walk in daylight with him.” The hunter you hold no love for as I do. “It isn’t completely shielding, but it works enough.” It makes him happy. He himself did not have to like it.

He had done nothing for himself it quite some time. His nature had been challenged and denied. The living had not been hunted (by him), and not been exposed to compulsion (as much). He had been better for the man he now dwelled with, and could not explain the emotions which billowed while in his company.

“If this is what we are to speak of for the entire night, I will not stay.”

[wraithesca]

See I was dead when I woke up this morning And I’ll be dead before the day is done

[wraithesca]

[wraithesca]

[wraithesca]

We can figure this out.

[wraithesca]

I C A R I A N.

Dark lashes fluttered closed when his lips were taken captive. Though Esca’s mouth was cold, his kiss still managed to incite a warmth that drew up Ezra’s spine like a spreading wildfire. The part of himself that had demanded this intimacy was wrong had long ago died in the vibrant fires, and all that remained was ash and ruin where pillars had once stood. What he had with Esca challenged everything he’d ever known, toppled beliefs he’d held as lofty torches his whole life. When he looked into moss and ochre eyes, he didn’t see a monster. He saw the man he’d fallen in love with against all odds and better judgement. 

It would cost him his relationship with his father, but that was a bridge he was keen on avoiding at the moment. 

The hunter wasn’t a fool, even if he’d thrown himself down a perilously narrow chasm. When vampire eyes lingered on the tendons of his neck, and the pulsing carotid roped neatly within them, he visibly stiffened. They were one another’s predator and prey, and perhaps that was the real reason for their infatuation, but Ezra trusted him regardless. There was something to be said for his instinct, which had been lauded as sharp and infallible in the past. It had guided him toward a darkness that brought him immeasurable comfort. It had guided him to Esca. So, when he laid his head down at night, his arms woven around the cold bones of his lover, and lost himself to the suspension of slumber — he was declaring his trust wordlessly. If it would be his undoing, he welcomed such a fate. He deserved nothing less.

“I’m asking you, a vampire, to put on a ring that will shield you from the sun,” he countered. “I’m not asking you to be anything other than what you are.” The frown on Esca’s face was disheartening, and the admission was even moreso. The gift hadn’t worked out as he’d planned. It had been his intention to give Esca something that he might have missed, but it hadn’t occurred to Ezra that he might not miss the sunlight at all. That he might not remember it. He felt stupid, and human, for having such short-sided expectations. 

He leaned into the hand that stole through his unkempt hair, then kissed the meat of Esca’s palm when it brushed his lips. As he stood, he captured that hand, and gave a gentle tug. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you,” he said softly, eyes searching those opposite. “I will always protect you.” And I will always challenge you to test the boundaries of your nature. “If you trust me, trust me. Come on.”

He’s alive, the rush of Ezra’s blood whispered, you’re dead. 

His knuckles brushed against the prominent blue of a summoning vein. The stiffening of his frame was impossible to overlook; the vampire had seen it in each of his prey of the past. There was a restraint he had been forced to procure in order to keep Ezra’s favor, and it gnawed at his nature with reckless abandon. The chill of refrigerated blood bags did nothing to quell the eagerness in which he wished to sink his fangs into the warm flesh of his forbidden lover. He was weaker for the show of humanity; his strength edged away when fresh blood was stolen away.

Yet his fangs remained sheathed, and Esca removed his hand from the promising warmth Ezra’s blood swore to provide. The scent of iron was constant, overpowering, and kept him in pursuit of sanity. He recalled when Ezra sliced his palm with a kitchen knife, and how he, prone to murder, nursed and wrapped the wound without a single swipe of his tongue. It had been an early stage in their hidden pleasure-- had Ezra thought that the end of him then?

He grimaced, and a hint of dark amusement hung at the edge of his tone. “You’re asking me, a vampire, to spend a day in the sun.” The fiery globe was meant to be a curse, and his kind were not meant to defy it. Witches, however, had at least defined a trick of their own. The ring still astonished him. Did Ezra truly not wish to keep him in the dark? Then again, his palm burned far more than the sun could manage, as Ezra’s lips caressed frozen skin. “What I am..” Demon. Creature. Abomination. “You are asking me to be much different than I am. And, believe me, it is not without its severe difficulties.”

Esca allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. His arms wrapped around the man’s bicep, and his chin settled atop his shoulder. He was acutely aware of simple it could be to crush the limb, and turn structured bone into fine ivory dust. There was a part of him that dared to do it, but he knew how to smite it with the mere thought of Ezra’s existence. Emotions vanished when you turned, but he’d found an inkling of something distant that Ezra had unburied. They threatened to drown every second, leave the shallows, become out of reach. When he wasn’t with Ezra, they did just that.

His grip tightened, but no more than if he had a human’s strength. “I haven’t stood beneath the sun in more than a thousand years.” And the idea of doing so now did not pike his interests, yet Ezra’s wish for it did. “Lead me. At least you will be the last thing I see if I burn.”

[wraithesca]

Dracula? Dracula is folklore. No, I am the real nightmare here.

Vampire Esca, at some point, terrorizing humans.

[wraithesca]

a crimson coronation || flashback: 19th century

@empyrhien

The hunter was young. Naive and delicate, he drew life from their neck with the ease that a millennium could gift you. He knew their tricks, for they had been his own once. When the well went dry, the young frame slipped from his hold. He’d been handsome, perhaps, if it weren’t for the gaunt appearance death induced. The corpse was left slim and skeletal, devoid of a substance that coursed through functioning veins.

“Pity,” he muttered, swiping a beed of blood from his bottom lip, “someone should have taught you better.”

The ages left him cynical, bitter, unamused, apathetic, displeased. Words evolved with years, and the glossary continued to publish volleys of piercing vocabulary which elaborated his exasperated stance.

If there was a key in unlocking the ability to coming to terms with his predicament, perhaps it would show in another thousand years. Yet he remained radiating an unceasing aura of pure, unfaltering rage. And he was exhausted.

He crossed the cobblestoned alley, his steps silent in their ascent from hell’s shadowed corridor. He dodged the glow of the corner lantern, startled a carriage horse by presence alone. As he continued down the street, its owner fought for control with muddled obscenities and tightly-gripped reins.

She was theatrical, and he loathed playing her parts. His suffering was eternal, and for such a sister as she came to be, he was determined to protect her lethal merriment. That didn’t stop him from feeling like an imbecile dressed in this era’s version of formal garb. It beat out Rome’s chitons, at least.

Esca studied this evening’s costume; a gown of deep scarlet and onyx lace. At least it would compliment the bloodstains. “Elegant,” he began, announcing himself with voice (though he was certain she’d been aware of his approach), “but it lacks something.” Porcelain fingers dipped beneath his velvet tailcoat and withdrew a silken pouch. The threaded cord unraveled at his tugged command, and thumb and forefinger plucked priceless glamor from its confines.

An intricate choker, adorned with rubies and inlaid with diamonds forged the future of a silver heirloom. Pricey pricey, the seller had said, you are young to afford such things.

"Turn.” Unlatching the clasp, Esca awaited Eva’s spin, and lost all appearance of a murderer with the dazzling item in hand. “You outdo her majesty, Queen Victoria, at her own coronation.”

[wraithesca]

[wraithesca]

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E M P Y R E A N.

@wraithesca·

Time settled like a cloak upon the eternal. She learned to wear it like a well worn jewel upon a graceful neck, roping death along her shoulders until it shined upon her skin like the gloss of her raven hair. She had seen the world turn and shift from tide upon tide now, seen the sun rise from east and bleed to its falling death in the west– -come century after century. She had seen the way this earth sighed, seen how it bowed under plagues of man and the wars he raged. Eva had seen it all. Eva had lived it all. ( Eva had been alive for far too long, legends would have it said. )

And her immortality came at cost of blood and life alike. She had shed who she had once been, taken on a guise of another with immortality by her side. ( The memories never faded, grew sharper like knives carving their place in the folds of her mind until it bled and she could not ignore it– -until it bled and sang its acknowledgement into being. ) By her side through it all, had been Esca. He was a brother to her farther than blood allowed. They had been by the other’s hand for an eon worthy of cull by the gods themselves ( the faithless said their names in vain, yet they did not burn for they were the undead– -scorned by death itself ), he was family in every sense of the word.

He belonged to another now too, and Eva shared him willingly so. The hunter held a part of his heart that she cherished for him to have as so, though she would never flower those words on her tongue. No, Eva could not. For he was a hunter, he carved those with her form lifeless on his stake. ( But it was matters of the heart, and she mused if he had garnered Esca’s attention and love after an eon of utter solitude, who was she to claim any higher a ground for his worthiness. ) 

A thousand years past with his home now apart from her, and they still saw it upon themselves to meet with every passing week, or a few. Calling him from his lover’s arms was a task, though Eva had now mastered it to a skill. ( With proper blood bags to accompany as bribes, of course. ) 

She smelled him when he entered, soundless as the fold in the shadows he had always been– -even far before he had turned. He smelled like him. Like honey seasoned by sunlight, like the taste of rubies and the curl of sun-rusted metal. AB negative. A rare thing, for a rarer love. ( Though she put neither revelation to tongue. )

“Late again, brother? You’d think an eon would be practice enough, but you are decidedly stuck in your ways.” 

He was late. The clock ticked five past, and he stood at the bed’s end, watching the hunter in his slumber. His eyes traced the hard line of his jaw, how easily pliable, how simple to shatter. His throat unmarred, heart intact. What he left was lover’s carnage and nothing more. His hair appeared in slight disarray, obscured by Esca’s earlier hand. He knew his own was untamed-- as overturned as the satin sheets he’d risen from. Next, he leant against the doorframe, cheek pressed against cherry wood. He knew his deaf movements would not matter. The hunter would rouse the moment his soulless figure departed. And as he sunk into the darkness, Ezra’s silhouette remained an engravement in his mind.

Vampires could hear vampires; there was no sense in stealth. A mile away, and she would have already known his approach. One more decaying minute, and her house occupied two ebony hearts.

And there, on her throne of ivory bone: femme fatale.

He had seen her adorn a dead Queen’s jewels (while he devoured the King’s heart), spin in silk of the deepest blue but saturated by scarlet. No matter what she wore, she was death’s truest vision. Time aged humans like tarnished pearls, cracked jets, and dented crowns. But they remained the purest of a museum’s artifacts, preserved in the shadows of solid catacombs.

And they had seen more bloodshed than the sands of Rome’s Colosseum had swallowed. Bloodstains crept across their porcelain flesh, painting scenes which set children on the edge of nightmarish tales.

Their tongues spoke languages both dead and new, and played millennium aged speech in the other’s company. Too formal for the days they dwelled in now, but as familiar to them as the world’s first revolution.

“Sister,” he greeted, a fleeting grin upon his features, “the day I am late will be the day you find grey in your hair.” But the reasons were no longer the same, the truth was now forbidden, and she knew it lay within an enemy. He had taught her, eons ago, how to demolish legions of hunters. Now he would lay siege to his own kind to protect one. “Are we here to snap each other’s necks, or convene on more mutual terms?”

[wraithesca]

ESCA & EVA AESTHETIC [ 1/? ] hellmouth au

she was no GODDESS. he was no DREAM. they were no FABLE, only every myth’s BANE.

[wraithesca]

I C A R I A N.

The light was golden, and it gilded the edges of the shadows that were brave enough to meet it. It was the kind of day he wanted to spend outdoors, speckled by the shadows of leaves in a groaning tree, eyes squinted by shafts of light determined to touch his skin. It was the sort of light he could only imagine on Esca’s skin, illuminating the many facets of colour in his hazel eyes, adding depth to the shock of his black hair — perhaps it was wrong of him to want such a thing. Did it make Esca feel like he wasn’t good enough just the way he was?

The black thought departed on arched wings as Esca spoke to the band of silver. The hunter couldn’t help but smile, reminding himself that long ago, Esca had been a human, and he had perhaps enjoyed the feel of his skin flushed by the heat of the sun. Maybe he was just as hopeful, but too much time had separated him from wishful thinking. 

“It’s no lie,” he said, muscled arms curling over his chest in arrogant defense of his gift. One moment, the lean image of the vampire loomed by the window, then next, he was deep at the darkened end of the room, illuminated only by the soft, yellow glow of a lamp. Ezra crossed to him, and crouched before him — weathered hands curled under the crook of the vampire’s bent knees.

“I don’t give a damn what we do. I’m just tired of hiding in the shadows.” He watched the familiar planes of Esca’s face, trying to decipher what went on in a centuries-old mind. It was deceiving, sometimes, how young he looked; the hunter had to sometimes remind himself that he had lived merely a fraction of the life Esca had. “I don’t want you to have to hide in the shadows anymore, either,” he tacked on, his voice a bit softer than it had been. “Don’t you miss the sunlight?” He paused, and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you trust me?” 

Trust was a constant battle between the two of them, but they had come so far. Hadn’t they?

“It’s no lie?” Esca repeated, a smirk disrupting the stoic expression he was prone to adopt. He leant forward as the Hunter’s hands curled beneath his knees. The firm touch brought forth strong promises, and no threat of vervain or splintered stake. A finger tilted his chin upward, and his mouth claimed a brief residence upon the other’s.

Sometimes, he’d catch himself lingering upon the veins of Ezra’s neck, and the pulse he felt at the man’s throat. It often struck as a hard reminder of their lethal predicament. Though the vampire could swear time and time again that no harm could befall Ezra of his doing, he did not trust his forced nature. Knowledge of his uncertain control, however, had not stayed Ezra’s trust. Instead of feeling relief in this, there was a fear that the vampire had never been privy to throughout the ages.

He tore his eyes away, hoping to quell animalistic thoughts in the process. “It isn’t real, and that is the definition of a lie, is it not? It masks me from the pain of the light. Without it, I would die. It gives me a false sense of ‘living’. It’s a lie.” Esca’s back met the remedial comfort of the sofa. More often than nought, he wished himself naive to an earth filled with supernatural hysteria. He wished, too, that he were younger than his thousand plus years. Truly younger.

He frowned, his gaze flickering from Ezra to the window. “I cannot remember it to miss it.” he revealed. As for the shadows, he thought, those are what I know to be safe. He knew it was a difficult concept to understand-- explain more than anything. No day released him from the clutches of mental depletion. He was constantly facing an onslaught of depressive exhaustion; facing a tsunami of mentally draining annihilation.

Lifting a hand, Esca’s fingers drifted through the darkness of Ezra’s hair. Like the shadows, the action promised comfort. “I trust you. And I will always follow you, even where my kind is forbidden.”

[wraithesca]

@icarianezra

He could almost pretend.

His hand toyed with the light-- or perhaps it toyed with him.

He stood to the left of drawn curtains, their dark silk much like the night he preferred to this flittering sunlight. It filtered through the blinds, colored his flesh, would have heated it if he could feel it, but did not begin to burn him with its immense intensity.

He could almost pretend.

That the ring he now bore was just a sweet token from Ezra, and not the reason that the light did not threaten to set him aflame. That the ring was not just a trick of a witch, but a gift that human lovers might exchange.

He could almost pretend.

Almost.

Esca drew away his hand, and sunk back into the shadows of the room. "You are a lie,” he told it, studying the silver ring beneath the scrutiny of his gaze. Its black stone, at least, mirrored the look of his decayed still heart. He twisted it upon his finger, rolled the aged band over and over, and the obsidian jewel winked when hit by a flash of bright rays.

For a second he stood, and in the next he was seated on a leather sofa; an item which existed across the room’s threshold.

“This is mad.” Esca reminded, peering over at the Hunter. He moved to fast, sensed to much, breathed none. He had a knack for compulsion. Then there was that one comical bit: draining a human of life. The list streamed onward, and was rather daunting when he cared to make a tally. He’d long forgotten how to act human. “Ezra, what is there for us to do that’s remotely normal?”

Before the ring, even the dim-lighted lamps about Ezra’s house pestered him. The ill fluorescents of his lights were minuscule flames playing beneath his skin. But he never mentioned it. Never complained. Esca knew he was trouble enough.