[ The skies rumble on their own volition today, clouds blinking out any light from the sun and darkening the skies to almost night. On these days, she doesn't need to sing. The pride of men makes their own path towards death. She doesn't need to serenade them laughing as they fall prey to her song. They become so intoxicated by her. And as they come closer, thinking they'll find pert breasts and the legendary warmth they ascribe to the place between the legs of their women lost on the rocks, she calls in a storm she's hidden from over the horizon. Her song gives way to the deafening clap of thunder when the sky is split by lightening.
Zoya usually delights when it's nature alone rather than the pieces of the storms she calls together to massacre the sailors that threaten her domain. It's as if the ocean herself decides to step in to protect her children from the intruders who think to tame the seas in flimsy wooden ships. They are like toys, play smashing them into the rocks and scattering bodies among the ocean.
Usually. That's what Zoya usually does, when the flimsy wooden ship on the crest of the immeasurable swells usually does not bear the name Volkvolny. It is not usually the home that carries the golden-haired sailor that leapt from the deck to dive into the depths and cut her free from the net that trailed behind a royal vessel.
It is the the urgent need to become karmically square, a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to make his favor whole that churns in her chest, surely. What other explanation would there be for the bold beating of her blood as she dives expertly through the waves? Certainly it is not panic, nor alarm, nor anything as silly as concern for a drowning sailor.
The Storm Witch is powerful, but she is not without her faults. She can call storms with ease, but dismissing them has never been a power that suited her and her wrath. She could not swim fast enough to have the storm trail her and give mercy to the whole of the ship's sailors. It is too late, when the ocean tosses the ship into the sharp rocks and men are thrown to their death.
It takes the whole of her strength to push through the churning swells that seem determined to keep Zoya from exercising any mercy. She crashes through the surface of the water without her usual grace, her head snapping to search among the bodies in a way that could, by someone thoroughly mistaken, be described as frantic. Her wrists snap sharply, forcing the water to swell in concentrated waves, flipping the bodies of men who lay bloated and breathless in watery graves.
He is still upright, struggling and grasping for breath and energy to continue treading water hundreds of feet away. He will not be conscious by the time she reaches him. She could draw him close on a wave, but she risks intercepting one of nature's roiling swells. She dives swiftly, surfacing behind him and hooking her arms underneath his. She propels them towards the uninhabited island, focusing only on the race of time and survival.
The storm has devolved into a pitiful drizzle on the shallow shores of the island. She grunts as she drags him ashore, her tail slapping gracelessly at the sand as she crawls far enough up that water does not threaten to to smother his nose and mouth. She has to tend to his heart and his lungs. First, she presses her lips to his, forcing air down his throat, an odd deviation from the way she usually tugs it. She does it again, and then once more, but his pulse doesn't beat. No matter how much air she pushes into his lungs it does not matter.
Steeling herself, she has to call on the one thing wilder than her. The hair on her neck stands tall, sensing the crackling of a dangerous long shot possibility. Curling her tail away from the water, she braces herself to call lightning down from the skies into the center of his chest. ]
[ in the end, it's his own choice to die. the demon that resides within him howls louder than the tempest that batters his ship and claims his crew, but sheer force of will — or bravery, or stupidity, or cowardice — keeps him human. keeps him sane. it keeps him lucid enough to see the darkened skies and unforgiving seas, his final glimpses of life. it's fitting, really, for an errant prince who'd run away to make the ocean his home to find a watery grave. at least his monster will die with him.
death turns out to be short-lived. and, maybe as punishment for his woeful lack of prayers to the saints over the years, shockingly painful.
he comes to with hard sand beneath his back and a live current pulsing hot through his body. the response is immediate — he turns over and expels seawater from his stomach or his lungs, he doesn't know which. his heart beats an irregular staccato, his chest throbbing in agony. too weak to hold himself upright, he sinks face first onto the shore — only it isn't a mouthful of sand he catches, but shining waves of dark hair and soft, damp skin. his green-gold eyes turn blearily skyward, burning bright with fever. ]
You. [ his voice is a hoarse rasp, recognition hitting him like a dead weight. his heart already feels fit to burst; he isn't sure he can take much more. ] Saints, I must be dead.
[ or having a very vivid episode whilst in the throes of certain death. it's the only way she could be here now, impossibly strong, impossibly real. nikolai shudders, vacillating between a fiery heat and unbearable cold, his golden hair curling against his clammy skin. through his wet, torn clothes, colorful ink sprawls across his skin, sea snakes and firebirds and magnificent ships tattooed over a sculpted chest and down muscular arms — and there, commemorated on his right bicep, is the siren he saved from a ship of poachers, the same dark hair and full mouth and glittering blue scales that sit before him now. he'd learned her name only through an obsessive hunt for answers that spanned nearly six months. ]
Zoya. [ he reaches weakly for her, his hand finding the slope of her waist, tangling into a fistful of her hair. his fingers are like ice, his lips tinged blue as he takes shallow breaths. still, somehow, his expression eases despite his dire state. ] I've been looking for you.
[ he burrows into her exquisite neck, a delirious huff of something akin to a laugh escaping him. perhaps this isn't death. but he's certain if he lets go, it will be the end for him. ]
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Zoya usually delights when it's nature alone rather than the pieces of the storms she calls together to massacre the sailors that threaten her domain. It's as if the ocean herself decides to step in to protect her children from the intruders who think to tame the seas in flimsy wooden ships. They are like toys, play smashing them into the rocks and scattering bodies among the ocean.
Usually. That's what Zoya usually does, when the flimsy wooden ship on the crest of the immeasurable swells usually does not bear the name Volkvolny. It is not usually the home that carries the golden-haired sailor that leapt from the deck to dive into the depths and cut her free from the net that trailed behind a royal vessel.
It is the the urgent need to become karmically square, a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to make his favor whole that churns in her chest, surely. What other explanation would there be for the bold beating of her blood as she dives expertly through the waves? Certainly it is not panic, nor alarm, nor anything as silly as concern for a drowning sailor.
The Storm Witch is powerful, but she is not without her faults. She can call storms with ease, but dismissing them has never been a power that suited her and her wrath. She could not swim fast enough to have the storm trail her and give mercy to the whole of the ship's sailors. It is too late, when the ocean tosses the ship into the sharp rocks and men are thrown to their death.
It takes the whole of her strength to push through the churning swells that seem determined to keep Zoya from exercising any mercy. She crashes through the surface of the water without her usual grace, her head snapping to search among the bodies in a way that could, by someone thoroughly mistaken, be described as frantic. Her wrists snap sharply, forcing the water to swell in concentrated waves, flipping the bodies of men who lay bloated and breathless in watery graves.
He is still upright, struggling and grasping for breath and energy to continue treading water hundreds of feet away. He will not be conscious by the time she reaches him. She could draw him close on a wave, but she risks intercepting one of nature's roiling swells. She dives swiftly, surfacing behind him and hooking her arms underneath his. She propels them towards the uninhabited island, focusing only on the race of time and survival.
The storm has devolved into a pitiful drizzle on the shallow shores of the island. She grunts as she drags him ashore, her tail slapping gracelessly at the sand as she crawls far enough up that water does not threaten to to smother his nose and mouth. She has to tend to his heart and his lungs. First, she presses her lips to his, forcing air down his throat, an odd deviation from the way she usually tugs it. She does it again, and then once more, but his pulse doesn't beat. No matter how much air she pushes into his lungs it does not matter.
Steeling herself, she has to call on the one thing wilder than her. The hair on her neck stands tall, sensing the crackling of a dangerous long shot possibility. Curling her tail away from the water, she braces herself to call lightning down from the skies into the center of his chest. ]
no subject
death turns out to be short-lived. and, maybe as punishment for his woeful lack of prayers to the saints over the years, shockingly painful.
he comes to with hard sand beneath his back and a live current pulsing hot through his body. the response is immediate — he turns over and expels seawater from his stomach or his lungs, he doesn't know which. his heart beats an irregular staccato, his chest throbbing in agony. too weak to hold himself upright, he sinks face first onto the shore — only it isn't a mouthful of sand he catches, but shining waves of dark hair and soft, damp skin. his green-gold eyes turn blearily skyward, burning bright with fever. ]
You. [ his voice is a hoarse rasp, recognition hitting him like a dead weight. his heart already feels fit to burst; he isn't sure he can take much more. ] Saints, I must be dead.
[ or having a very vivid episode whilst in the throes of certain death. it's the only way she could be here now, impossibly strong, impossibly real. nikolai shudders, vacillating between a fiery heat and unbearable cold, his golden hair curling against his clammy skin. through his wet, torn clothes, colorful ink sprawls across his skin, sea snakes and firebirds and magnificent ships tattooed over a sculpted chest and down muscular arms — and there, commemorated on his right bicep, is the siren he saved from a ship of poachers, the same dark hair and full mouth and glittering blue scales that sit before him now. he'd learned her name only through an obsessive hunt for answers that spanned nearly six months. ]
Zoya. [ he reaches weakly for her, his hand finding the slope of her waist, tangling into a fistful of her hair. his fingers are like ice, his lips tinged blue as he takes shallow breaths. still, somehow, his expression eases despite his dire state. ] I've been looking for you.
[ he burrows into her exquisite neck, a delirious huff of something akin to a laugh escaping him. perhaps this isn't death. but he's certain if he lets go, it will be the end for him. ]