Aiasthlyn

°

Moonstone eyes gaze back at me, and even as mournful as they are, Malcolm does not try to beg or plead with me. He has done enough of that to know it is useless, and so, instead, he aims to relearn what he can of me before we part.

I do the same.

“No more than five days.” It is a command, not a request, and Malcolm knows better than to challenge those now.

“Five days,” he repeats to me while he keeps himself dangling on the edge of the finger I keep still beneath his chin. It is hardly a platform, but Malcolm, my overachiever, manages just fine. 

Pleasure cascades through me, growing stronger still when I drift my gaze down the length of his body, and watch it fill and twitch as though I do it with my hands. Malcolm stares at me, trying his best to keep still, but a shiver gets the best of him soon enough, and I can not help but smile.

I feel the tremors as though they are my own, a warm throb vibrating along my fingertip as I lead him closer to me with it. Our eyes never part, not even when there is no space left between us, so I see the hopefulness in his eyes as my lips tease over his.

“Remember who you belong to, pisen.”

Malcolm’s gaze ignites before my lips meet his lips for a brief caress that I take away just as quickly as I awarded it. He strains after me with a soft whine that makes me smile.

This was no punishment. He already had one. I only knew myself, and if I had more than a peck— allowed more than the edge of a finger to touch him— then his punishment would go unheaded. He would stay, and I would not have to face the question that has been haunting me since the moment he first placed distance between us.

If I lost all decorum at the mere prospect of being apart, then how would I ever complete my Charge?

“Sometimes, I wish I could claw my eyes out.”

If vermin could talk… 

I do not do the rat the honour of receiving my attention, or a response while I get my fill of my pisen, forcing myself not to follow when he guides himself away from me and retrieves one of the bags propped against the open doorway. 

“Let us go,” Malcolm says in response, as graceful as ever.

Leading the way, Malcolm strides out of the door while the pale lizard steals another moment to hold Kalem. They glow with their advanced closeness, their love brighter now that it has been verbalised—the news, the very first thing Kalem had shared when the pair had arrived to separate me from mine—and I turn purple with envy as I watch my pisen leave without us doing the same.

He walks on, and I frown.
He would not even look back? Was that it then? Time for him to go and it was as though we did not even—

Malcolm looks to me, returning the gaze, and I already know these coming feens will flay me.

Stronger still, Malcolm continues to his vehicle, adding to the pressure surrounding my heart, and when he sinks inside, it worsens.

Heart spiking, my mind racing, tugging together contemplations of recalling my punishment so that my pisen does not leave, but the thoughts are dashed to the wayside as the trollop joins him at their transporter.

In moments far too quick, Malcolm has them peeling out of the large driveway. 

Hateful black eyes find me through the open window, darkened by disgust and resentment that I am all too pleased to be the root of.

I had removed the outer traces of what I had done to Malcolm in there after his second cleaning, but some things were not so easy to erase.

I show him some of my smile and quickly let it grow wider when it incites more of his rage.

The amusement is, however, short-lived as Kalem and I watch them go, with him screaming ‘bye’ for all to hear. They disappear from view and while my magic vibrates where it is tethered to my pisen, the discomfort beneath my skin remains.

It is a fight to keep still, a harder one not to draw him back, but I manage it by sheer will. I turn my attention to Kalem instead and watch as he loses the battle to keep his smile.

“Are you alright, young one?” I ask, gentling myself in the way I only knew how to do with him. Malcolm’s version was different.

“Yes,” he replies bravely as he turns to me, and though I can tell that it is not entirely true, I see how he wills it to be. “I can be away from Master now that he loves me,” he says, and his smile is quick to return as he jumps up with a clap. “And we’re together! So we can spend all our time doing whatever we want! L-Like cleaning a-and—”

“Take a breath, Kalem,” I advise even as I chuckle. He tries only to almost choke on it alongside his excitement.

“It’s going to be amazing!” He proclaims when he is able, and then he is in my arms, hugging me as tightly as he can. My smile comes true as I hold the embrace, keeping him as close as our hearts would always be.

To start out ‘Extra Special Amazing alone time together’, I give Kalem the tour of Malcolm’s abode that he has apparently always wanted. It is filled with no surprises for me, but I do not appreciate any of it less as every nook and cranny reflects my pisen.

Each time that it does, the piercing needle in my chest sinks deeper, but Kalem is quick to distract with his enthusiasm.

We move to preparing our meal next, and Kalem fills the span of it by dutifully telling me all that I have missed since my last time seeing him. His garden is at an all-time high, flourishing and healthy; he eats all his meals and hungers for more, and he now— very importantly— knows exactly how to make the boor smile when his down.

“And,” he carries on when we are almost at the end of our meal. “I am reading so well now too! I can read entire books!”

“That is wonderful, Kalem,” I praise as I finish the last of my vegetables. “You are a very quick learner.”

“Master says that too!” Kalem informs with a giggle as his cheeks heat. “B-But now that I’m so good, I can look for what I am on my own.”

I do not know why those words cleave me how they do.

They have no right to when I know good and well that that is what I am supposed to be doing to, that the entire perceived reason for my proxity to Malcolm has to do with the boy across from me. That while Malcolm claimed his first clan with Lincoln, Kalem and I would spend our time continuing the investigation into his nature.

But regardless, they do and I pretend to be well-enthused while my former bliss is stripped from me, removed with force by Kalem’s merrily spoken words that leave me raw and unshielded from the reminder of the responsibilities I have purposefully neglected.

I pretend to be well-enthused while my former bliss is stripped from me, removed with force by Kalem’s merrily spoken words that leave me raw and unshielded from the reminder of the responsibilities I have purposefully neglected.

And it was purposeful because I knew this was still there waiting— the matters of my Charge, but such things had felt so small and unimportant when Malcolm and I lay together as a tangle of limbs, too-intertwined to allow for outside stresses.

But they return now, fast, and as Kalem speaks, I am split down the centre of my being with a sutured blade, leaving a burn behind as it frees the part of me that I have kept buried once more.

I was not here for me first, or my wants at all. It was for the sole purpose of carrying out my Charge. So why was it that I struggled to respect that, even when the reminder of it destroyed me?

“But anyway, do you have any new ideas of what I could be?” Kalem finally asks, leaning forward as he does.

My lips part, but it is not until I strangle my guilt that I am able to say, “No.”

Kalem pouts, slumping too, but he perks a moment later as he grins at me. “That’s okay! I’m just so special that I’m hard to find.” he blushes as he looks down at his knotting fingers. “That’s what Master says.”

“In that, he is correct.”
These words are just as hard to speak, but are at least true.

Kalem carries on narrating how we are to spend the rest of our night, his excitement leading the way from the topic of his nature, a mercy I am grateful for.

The matter of what Kalem was had secretly fled from my mind the moment Malcolm uprooted the alarm the discovery placed with me, and smartly, replaced it with himself. I had made him my world for the last set of fins, but he is not here now. Kalem is, and old roots know how to grow strong still.

°

The night is as silent as it always is, the lands around accustomed to respecting the monarch of this house, only he is not here. 

I lie where he usually does, as comfortable as I know how to be, but I never truly relax because Malcolm’s faithful breaths have been replaced by Kalem’s, and while his are true, they do not sync to mine as my pisen’s do.

Frowning, I roll from my side to stare at the ceiling, hoping that a prolonged viewing of it will bore me enough to tire me. It does no such thing.

My mind remains cruelly active with thoughts of my shame and even more of my pisen.

A nerha ago, or even two, the presence of the shame for my negligence towards my Charge would have been enough to spur me back into action—my bitterness with myself all that I would need to heed my responsibilities before my desires. I used to be capable of compartmentalisation, especially where my desires were concerned. But time has come and gone since then, and I have become a man of primal urges.

I want not to make up for lost time, and I do not want to uncover the secrets of my being here.

I want my pisen.

Not to couple, though I do enjoy and miss his body. I simply want him near, in my arms where I can be reminded of how sweet the world tasted when it catered only to him and not… all else.

The Charge. Kalem’s origins and time since. My realm and all that awaited me.

Ythene’s mercies, there was so much of it, and where before it had never weighed on my being like this, it sits heavy now with no hint of escape. None beside one.

I glance at Kalem. He sleeps soundly, deep enough that he would not notice a disappearance from me, but I would never risk such a thing. Protections aside, if he did wake alone, the damage that would have upon to his mind would wound far too deeply.

No, I had to stay, but there were ways to leave a mind in one place and let one’s soul glimpse another. Vulnerable ways, but I am tender enough without him, so I do not pretend to consider hesitation.

Closing my eyes, I extend my glamour over the entirety of the bed beneath me to, protect both Kalem and I, and when he reacts to it with only a huff, I strengthen it to be a fortress’s wall.

Dangerous to cage oneself with a nyphilim, any elf would say, but we had shared cage walls before, and all he had ever done was offer me comfort through them. I would not soon, or ever, forget that.

Besides, until I did what I must and confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that Kalem was what I suspected, then I could maintain the illusion that I was none the wiser.

I could be selfish.

I slow my breaths, taking my time to calm myself as would be needed, and only when my body is still as though I sleep, I free my magic to follow the thread it has been weaving since he left.

I let it take me to my pisen.

Day is already o the horizon where time allows my spirit to visit without my body. Its light festers behind a mountain range that stands sentry above a small settlement of vampires. Members of the Anouk Clan.

Malcolm had named them as a small collective that made up for their numbers in strength and morals, but there is no way of glimpsing whether that is true from my offered view, and I do not have the room inside me to care.

My focus does not linger on them or their camp. It sails instead towards my pisen.

I face the mountains. It is within the nearest where the warmth of his being calls to me, and near the peak of it that I spot a seated figure I know all too well. I drift towards it, him, like a leaf favoured by the wind, careful to keep myself hidden as I do.

The moment I am near enough, I feel the distant tremor of my body at the mere sight of him.

It is innate, as his pyro, as me, and as if he feels it too. I watch my pisen’s head lift and turn north towards where I lie.

Purposefully still, he holds his head high, breath held. It is as though he is listening for me, far as I am. When I prove to be nowhere close to him, he sighs and plucks a rock from the ground. It disappears into his fist for only a juel, but it is long enough that when he drops it, it is as smooth as a glass plate.

His frustration speaks for itself.

I drift as close as I dare, but no closer. It was bad enough that I was here, watching him, breathing his air from distant lungs because I could not manage allowing the night without seeing him.

I stare instead, listening to every huff and puff he makes until he had tossed every pebble near him into the sky. He only realises that he has done so after clawing aimlessly at the dirt before looking, but when he does, he groans and flops down hard enough to free a laugh from my lips.

It is soundless, and yet Malcolm’s eyes immediately snap up to the space where I am.

He stares, pupils wild and dilated while I do not dare move an inch. He should not be able to see or hear me, but there were a number of things that Malcolm should not be able to do where I was concerned. That was yet to stop him.

Still as a devilfish, he waits for proof of me for an entire jol before he sighs and closes his eyes. “And now I’m seeing things.” His lips are downturned and miserable when he tosses his arm over his face as if to hide.

My heart batters, and there is no way of calming it when I watch misery befell my pisen, and if there was, then it is removed and incinerated from existence as I watch him tug at something beneath his sleeve.

Silk. Cream silk. 

He tugs until more of it spills from, the beginning of a sleeve that he presses to his nose and his cheek. It tugs a soft whimper from his lips, one that grows stronger as his other hand slips beneath his black shirt to fist a handful of the silk hiding there.

My silk. My top, worn secretly beneath his.

I stall as I am, still and listless, while from afar, I feel my magic fray.

I could manage this scene for them, could I not? I could come here in the physical and secure this clan’s agreement before the sun stopped its dallying. Lincoln would hate it, and perhaps, Malcolm too, but he would toss the strife once we were together again. 

Longing breathes life into the idea, and I am already following its thread when a gust of wind blows over the mountain, too strong to be natural, and too strong to be of this realm. 

Malcolm shivers beneath it as if he feels its chill, clutching tighter to my shirt while I hold firm to my rage with the same vehemence.

Now, Ythene chose to intervene again, to make herself known.
Not when I discovered Kalem’s nature, not after all I learned about the vampires and the magic I made them, not after I realised that my pisen was just that, a pisen in a realm that knew nothing of them.

Now, she decided to remind me that I was not to interfere.

Resentment sours my mood and only grows more bitter as I watch my pisen hold onto his piece of me as though it is his lifeblood. It is, it seems, just as he has already become mine.

“Soon, pisen,” I whisper with no voice as I draw near him until I hover over him. “Soon.”

I press my lips to his forehead, and Malcolm gasps, lifting quickly as he reaches for the air I fill, but my soul is already returning me to its right place, and leaving him to his.

My heart beats wildly when I settle back into my skin, pounding to the point of aching. I clutch my chest, but even that movement feels strange, for my bones weigh heavier now.

It requires focus to calm, to breathe as I should, so much so that I do not notice the figure sitting beside me at first. When I do, it takes everything within me not to free my true skin and attack.

Kalem stares down at me with glowing amber eyes. They are almost empty.

“Kalem?” I whisper as though I have just woken up. “What is the matter? Did you have a frightening dream?”

He peers at me before he slowly cocks his head. Contemplation shows itself as he begins to frown. “You’re back.” 

I do not let myself shudder. Not even beneath my glamour.

“I left?”

I mean it to be sarcastic if not playful, but Kalem does not smile as he usually might. Instead, he nods. “You did. It was… weird.”

I stare back at him, careful to appear confused.

The very last thing it was for him to sense a difference in me while my soul was literally outside of my body was odd, but it was a larger concern when Nyphilims used to lead elven paths by the stems of our souls.

“Well then, I am back now,” I say softly before I open my arms for him. “Let us sleep so that tomorrow we are well-suited to learn about you.”

Kalem eyes me as if to protest, but exhaustion shows itself the moment I pat his pillow, and he is quick to lie down. He cuddles me, eager to be close, and I wait until his breaths settle and my terror calms to breathe the panic out of my lungs.

I had thought Ythene was warning me off of my own pisen, but perhaps she had been warning me of the danger that studied me in my negligence.

—————————-

They aren’t words left to describe how down bad Aias is

Thoughts?????

Thoughts on Aias’ mental disarray??? On the Malcolm scene?? On the Kalem one at the end?!??

It’s so funny how you could be in lala land with Aias about Malcolm, then next thing ya know, Kalem is there reminding you he’s a fucking problem lmfaooo. and it’s hilarious cause from his POV he was probably just worried about Aias spasming in his sleep lmfaoooo

Anywayyyyyy, hope ya’ll enjoyed the chapterrrr! I loved the yearning

I personally lost it at Malcolm wearing Aias’ clothes under his. Idk how Aias didn’t appear right there and then to rail him 

Next up are the extra for this month! Next update will be in 2 weeks roughly!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeeeee Humanssssssss