The Earth That Shifts Where Flowers Grow
The Earth That Shifts Where Flowers Grow, Ten/Rose, completely AU. Adult. 2,380 words.
The glitter wafting from her hair sounds like bells, little tiny tinks beaten out into the air. She shivers and a rush of sparks flies off her, her tawny strands drift skyward. She's in my bed, but floats as if in water. Cries out while I work my fingers into her, and little goldfish swim around her ears and above her eyes. She says hello to them, I think; maybe her mouth only pops into that great O because she is breathless, and not because she is speaking fish.
A/N: This is, uhh... weird. o_O
There is a shy heat in his eyes as he looks at her, spellbook wide and pages excessively soft with age. His long, slender fingers touch the edges nervously. He's never done this before, but she's so powerful. He wants to know, wants her to stick around. They both step to the bed as his open palm cups thousands of grains of sand to make a barrier around them, wrapping them tightly together in a whirl of crackling energy.
"Are you sure?"
She will prove she is powerful enough. Covering his hand with hers, she finishes the spell for him, softly and with quiet confidence as the ocean explodes into refracted rainbow prisms and life around them, their bodies bursting open from the raw power into showers of glittering sparks and bioluminescence. Emerald sapphire ruby amethyst waters rush their feet, cool and warm and a cradle to rest within. Lips crash together onto shore, and their power has chosen its avenue of expression.
Shift, fall. The forest wakes.
The glitter wafting from her hair sounds like bells, little tiny tinks beaten out into the air. She shivers and a rush of sparks flies off her, her tawny strands drift skyward. She's in my bed, but floats as if in water. Cries out while I work my fingers into her, and little goldfish swim around her ears and above her eyes. She says hello to them, I think; maybe her mouth only pops into that great O because she is breathless, and not because she is speaking fish.
She puts her hand to my cheek and my tastebuds explode into sweetness, Jammy Dodgers in tea and sugar stars in a rainbow litany. Her fingerprints trace dermatomes and cut trails into my sweat and the blue and gold lights of our auras shimmy and shake. Her insides are tight, and I can feel the ether from her; the wolf is in the forest, the pink and yellow flowers choking on spring. Thick white fur smells like getting ready to run, and it is wet outside, the world trampled down with rain but we are warm in here, buried in each other and watching the fish.
She sucks the salt from her palm and little sounds come out, curious tapping on the tops of hollow seashells, a faded orange like a starfish but with the empty rattle of a sand dollar. The walls bounce the sound back to us and oh oh oh she cries as I curl my fingers. This is the frothy wave and I can't stop staring at her electricity, the waver of red from her skin and gold from her hair and the blue thunder that claps from her mouth. I paint marks of war across her belly with my hands, and she screams her battle cry, a shivering painted goddess riding her army into battle as she climbs above me, reaching for the inky black of the sky but touching only an angelfish hovering near the ceiling light. It startles, black and white scales fleeing to somewhere near the closet. Fins shiver. She laughs and sinks down.
This is fire, burning dancing wild bright until the forest falls fire. Her hips twist a new language on my cock, little spiraling words that stack up in uneven piles on my jutting, mountainous, snow-capped bones. The trees creak as their bark splinters and trunks break, tremble and fall into ashes and the wolf howls, keens, sprints and runs and oh god her body and my body and we are shaking, her glitter is getting louder than great chimes, the gold is cascading in my ears as she comes and I come and a little fish rests on my belly, between us.
I peel the edge of her cherry red ripe fruit away, the flesh is curious inside, little bubbles of wetness I bite with my teeth so the explosion of oils and tart sugar squirts down my throat. I lick the marks I leave behind, draw patterns in the sand of her shimmering dusty aura, and as we come down from the air, I invite her into my coven. She gives her answer to the little sleepy fish, nudges him with her index finger and says she already knew she belonged. The tumultuous harpstring that sings clear and loud inside of her lays down on my chest, falls asleep on a pillow of soft seas. The music does not stop.
The last time the moon was up, forever ago but only yesterday, she told me her name was Marion. I didn't believe her for a second.
Drawing the sheet of sky over our slick skin, the shifting land of our bodies, I float with her until morning.
---
She is reaching through the stillness to the shrieking of a foreign alarm clock, crushing its beige textured buttons down with angry fingertips. The flannel sheet shifts over her torso, exposing a breast that is pert with cold and being cradled just slightly by a long fingered hand. It's pale, she notes. And the nails are awfully pretty for a bloke.
She peers warily over her shoulder and there is a freckled expanse of skin, little dark dots like powdered sugar all the way to his hair, which is an explosion of mismanaged brown spikes on one side and flat tufts where it meets the pillow on the other.
She hears the magic in his bones.
The sun has already risen, and everything is different. He has piles of unsorted laundry in one corner near his closet, a wide array of watch implements and clicking gears littering a chestnut table below the wide window. Tiny screwdrivers not a third the thickness of her pinky, bits and bobs and gadgetry she can't name. Rectangular little brainy specs rest on the night table adjacent to the alarm clock, and as she stands naked and glorious to find his loo, her toes smudge and break open the circle of golden sand they drew around the bed in the jet dark that was Monday night after nine.
Rose knew she was more than powerful enough for the magick that electrified this town, but she hadn't known where the circle of power she made with him would take her. Her guides seemed to think this was the only path and that he himself housed power he was either too modest with or didn't understand. She thinks they are right.
On her way back from his facilities, she snags a baggy white tee from the floor and tugs it over her body, taking inventory of bites and scratches as the fabric falls. Nothing a whispered spell and a touch of the earth won't heal for her, but still a respectable number of teeth impressions and nail tracks.
He's awake when she returns, brown eyes bright and clear of the haze of magick.
"The fish are gone," he comments idly. Unable to help herself, she laughs, a ringing sound like wind chimes that shakes the air. The spell may be over, but her body thrums with power.
"The forest is still there, though," she says.
She fingers the hem of the borrowed tee while he skims his knuckles across the soft sheets. Both want to reach out to this tenuous connection, touch deep beyond the magick and see if there is more to the two of them.
"Want to go see?" she asks.
John Smith, he had said. As if it were his real name.
"Yes."
So they go.
---
There's this new girl in my coven.
She dresses like its 1984. She's all big, faded baggy sweatshirts, striped leggings like she's a little kid. Only she isn't. Magic glitters in her hair. Real, brilliant, gleaming magic. I can do a ward of protection here or there, a love spell. Made the headmaster fall head over heels with the school shrink, once. I'm pretty good at it. But this girl... she's the real thing. Like her skin is made of ether.
I might have also slept with her after a spell sort of exploded on us.
She's only just moved here, from over the hills and far away. Nineteen, first year of Uni, but Goddess, she's got more secrets wrapped up in her than Sheherezade. A thousand nights and I'd never unravel every thread. I wonder if she'll let me look inside her.
I should probably tell her I can do that. Of course, she should probably tell me her name.
---
The thick evergreen forest creaks around them, the spine of a book that hasn't ever been opened. It feels like an achingly long time since human feet have divided the grassy undergrowth, sodden with rain. A long, savoring inhale; scents of damp fur and crushed pine needles, a hidden and cloying tang of snow.
She draws a smiley face in the mud with the rounded toe of her boot. He gives it eyebrows.
"You know," she murmurs, and slips her hand into his like its the most natural thing in the world. "I've kept a couple secrets."
"Oh?" he asks, boyish smirk lilting along his features. He swings their arms back and forth. "The pretty stranger from the magical land has kept secrets from her dashing prince?"
She snorts but can't hide her smile. "My name isn't Marion."
"Mine isn't John."
A tree rustles as a hawk launches from its boughs. Fallen and wet pine needles smoosh under their boots, his watch beeps. The pause is long enough to be awkward.
"Well, then," he says cheerfully. "Marion."
"John."
"What other secrets are housed inside your mind? Tell me the story! What manner of whimsical madness can you cook up, what flavor of habberdashery?"
Effervescent giggles come from her like champagne. "Habberdashery! Oh, I love this!"
"It's okay, I understand. Intimidating pretty bloke like me, here all alone with you in these woods. Of course you'd be nervous. Good chaste girls don't tell wolves their secrets," and he waggles his eyebrows at her in a most unsexy fashion. "I'll go first!" he says, his arm arcing in a wide and grandiose gesture.
Instead of the smiles and peels of laughter he is expecting, she stills. Stops walking so that only the resistance of her hand alerts him to her presence no longer immediately beside him.
She is looking at him, and it is a dark look. "Do chaste boys tell wolves their secrets, then?"
He swallows thickly, finding himself hot under her gaze. There is so much more in her eyes than he has ever seen before. "They could be... persuaded."
Closer. She stands so close, toe to toe. The space between them is thick, like marmalade. He smells the forest coming off of her, and his skin hums in response. "Then tell me your secrets, John." Rests her head on his shoulder, snakes her tongue out to taste his skin and the crackle of magic that prickles there at his sudden alarm. She realizes with some smugness that part of him fears her, knows on instinct he has stumbled into a den with a great beast slumbering in the back.
She hopes he can keep up.
"I... well. Er, see..." he starts, nearly panting around each word as her mouth works deliciously on his neck. He wants her again on this verdant floor, without the dizzying drug of a spell. (She is spell enough alone, he decides.) Wants his hands in her hair and her fingernails grasping at mud as his cock slides home.
Wants to know what else she is hiding.
"I can read minds," he blurts.
She bites. "Do it," a challenge. There is a curled edge to her voice, like she can't wait for him to win.
One hand possessively brings her closer by her hip, grinding his hardness into her belly. The other raises to ghost over her temples.
---
raw earth, soil damp grass ants bark sky air trees something shifting cool underfoot running branches on my fur running run run run run
ecstasy, shift--
mate, where is he, where, run
there
dark oak smell endless
mate's howl, gullet wide into the rain
bird, there!
yip and smell and breathe and running with my mate, my mate, dark oak smell, endless time and running run run run
forest creaks, moon lights everything, roll in the earth and feed on the soil in our fur
pause. quiet. still. breathe.
prey. heartbeats so wild fast and fast and fast rabbit hunt--
The forest wakes and looks up. She meets his eyes.
We are, she says. Come.
---
He jerks back violently, shaking, spinning away from her, nearly ill with the return of his human senses.
"You're a shapeshifter," he squeezes out, coughing on the taste of air inside of his dull human lungs. "Wolf! You, you took me with you, we hunted, ate, killed a sodding bunny! Rose! Not a very good cover, giving me your middle name, is it? Are you listening to me, you mad, daft girl?"
She isn't. She is feet away from him, arms spread wide and eyes closed, laughing as she spins in circles over the earth. Twirling, baggy mauve sweatshirt catching air and silver leggings smudged with dirt and leaves, she lets loose a shriek of joy. Laughs and screams and cries, ecstasy rolling off her in such waves mated with her magick that flowers are blossoming from the very sodden soil at her feet, little yellow newborn things that have never seen such sunlight. Golden light glitters from her hair, a shake of thunder and mountains stir the earth from her feet, and he hears bells that sound far away.
It is only then he realizes she must be Goddess. And he, like so many before him but not a single one after, is swept into her spell and carried on the back of her beast.
She is thick white fur, damp with rain and snow and the wilds. She is the air he never learned to breathe, a powerful heartbeat that pounds under his hands as he holds on tightly. She is the sun, and the moon. She is the ether and the earth's magick, and she has been waiting for him.
She shows him everything.
He takes her hand and runs, and together they are free.
The glitter wafting from her hair sounds like bells, little tiny tinks beaten out into the air. She shivers and a rush of sparks flies off her, her tawny strands drift skyward. She's in my bed, but floats as if in water. Cries out while I work my fingers into her, and little goldfish swim around her ears and above her eyes. She says hello to them, I think; maybe her mouth only pops into that great O because she is breathless, and not because she is speaking fish.
A/N: This is, uhh... weird. o_O
There is a shy heat in his eyes as he looks at her, spellbook wide and pages excessively soft with age. His long, slender fingers touch the edges nervously. He's never done this before, but she's so powerful. He wants to know, wants her to stick around. They both step to the bed as his open palm cups thousands of grains of sand to make a barrier around them, wrapping them tightly together in a whirl of crackling energy.
"Are you sure?"
She will prove she is powerful enough. Covering his hand with hers, she finishes the spell for him, softly and with quiet confidence as the ocean explodes into refracted rainbow prisms and life around them, their bodies bursting open from the raw power into showers of glittering sparks and bioluminescence. Emerald sapphire ruby amethyst waters rush their feet, cool and warm and a cradle to rest within. Lips crash together onto shore, and their power has chosen its avenue of expression.
Shift, fall. The forest wakes.
The glitter wafting from her hair sounds like bells, little tiny tinks beaten out into the air. She shivers and a rush of sparks flies off her, her tawny strands drift skyward. She's in my bed, but floats as if in water. Cries out while I work my fingers into her, and little goldfish swim around her ears and above her eyes. She says hello to them, I think; maybe her mouth only pops into that great O because she is breathless, and not because she is speaking fish.
She puts her hand to my cheek and my tastebuds explode into sweetness, Jammy Dodgers in tea and sugar stars in a rainbow litany. Her fingerprints trace dermatomes and cut trails into my sweat and the blue and gold lights of our auras shimmy and shake. Her insides are tight, and I can feel the ether from her; the wolf is in the forest, the pink and yellow flowers choking on spring. Thick white fur smells like getting ready to run, and it is wet outside, the world trampled down with rain but we are warm in here, buried in each other and watching the fish.
She sucks the salt from her palm and little sounds come out, curious tapping on the tops of hollow seashells, a faded orange like a starfish but with the empty rattle of a sand dollar. The walls bounce the sound back to us and oh oh oh she cries as I curl my fingers. This is the frothy wave and I can't stop staring at her electricity, the waver of red from her skin and gold from her hair and the blue thunder that claps from her mouth. I paint marks of war across her belly with my hands, and she screams her battle cry, a shivering painted goddess riding her army into battle as she climbs above me, reaching for the inky black of the sky but touching only an angelfish hovering near the ceiling light. It startles, black and white scales fleeing to somewhere near the closet. Fins shiver. She laughs and sinks down.
This is fire, burning dancing wild bright until the forest falls fire. Her hips twist a new language on my cock, little spiraling words that stack up in uneven piles on my jutting, mountainous, snow-capped bones. The trees creak as their bark splinters and trunks break, tremble and fall into ashes and the wolf howls, keens, sprints and runs and oh god her body and my body and we are shaking, her glitter is getting louder than great chimes, the gold is cascading in my ears as she comes and I come and a little fish rests on my belly, between us.
I peel the edge of her cherry red ripe fruit away, the flesh is curious inside, little bubbles of wetness I bite with my teeth so the explosion of oils and tart sugar squirts down my throat. I lick the marks I leave behind, draw patterns in the sand of her shimmering dusty aura, and as we come down from the air, I invite her into my coven. She gives her answer to the little sleepy fish, nudges him with her index finger and says she already knew she belonged. The tumultuous harpstring that sings clear and loud inside of her lays down on my chest, falls asleep on a pillow of soft seas. The music does not stop.
The last time the moon was up, forever ago but only yesterday, she told me her name was Marion. I didn't believe her for a second.
Drawing the sheet of sky over our slick skin, the shifting land of our bodies, I float with her until morning.
---
She is reaching through the stillness to the shrieking of a foreign alarm clock, crushing its beige textured buttons down with angry fingertips. The flannel sheet shifts over her torso, exposing a breast that is pert with cold and being cradled just slightly by a long fingered hand. It's pale, she notes. And the nails are awfully pretty for a bloke.
She peers warily over her shoulder and there is a freckled expanse of skin, little dark dots like powdered sugar all the way to his hair, which is an explosion of mismanaged brown spikes on one side and flat tufts where it meets the pillow on the other.
She hears the magic in his bones.
The sun has already risen, and everything is different. He has piles of unsorted laundry in one corner near his closet, a wide array of watch implements and clicking gears littering a chestnut table below the wide window. Tiny screwdrivers not a third the thickness of her pinky, bits and bobs and gadgetry she can't name. Rectangular little brainy specs rest on the night table adjacent to the alarm clock, and as she stands naked and glorious to find his loo, her toes smudge and break open the circle of golden sand they drew around the bed in the jet dark that was Monday night after nine.
Rose knew she was more than powerful enough for the magick that electrified this town, but she hadn't known where the circle of power she made with him would take her. Her guides seemed to think this was the only path and that he himself housed power he was either too modest with or didn't understand. She thinks they are right.
On her way back from his facilities, she snags a baggy white tee from the floor and tugs it over her body, taking inventory of bites and scratches as the fabric falls. Nothing a whispered spell and a touch of the earth won't heal for her, but still a respectable number of teeth impressions and nail tracks.
He's awake when she returns, brown eyes bright and clear of the haze of magick.
"The fish are gone," he comments idly. Unable to help herself, she laughs, a ringing sound like wind chimes that shakes the air. The spell may be over, but her body thrums with power.
"The forest is still there, though," she says.
She fingers the hem of the borrowed tee while he skims his knuckles across the soft sheets. Both want to reach out to this tenuous connection, touch deep beyond the magick and see if there is more to the two of them.
"Want to go see?" she asks.
John Smith, he had said. As if it were his real name.
"Yes."
So they go.
---
There's this new girl in my coven.
She dresses like its 1984. She's all big, faded baggy sweatshirts, striped leggings like she's a little kid. Only she isn't. Magic glitters in her hair. Real, brilliant, gleaming magic. I can do a ward of protection here or there, a love spell. Made the headmaster fall head over heels with the school shrink, once. I'm pretty good at it. But this girl... she's the real thing. Like her skin is made of ether.
I might have also slept with her after a spell sort of exploded on us.
She's only just moved here, from over the hills and far away. Nineteen, first year of Uni, but Goddess, she's got more secrets wrapped up in her than Sheherezade. A thousand nights and I'd never unravel every thread. I wonder if she'll let me look inside her.
I should probably tell her I can do that. Of course, she should probably tell me her name.
---
The thick evergreen forest creaks around them, the spine of a book that hasn't ever been opened. It feels like an achingly long time since human feet have divided the grassy undergrowth, sodden with rain. A long, savoring inhale; scents of damp fur and crushed pine needles, a hidden and cloying tang of snow.
She draws a smiley face in the mud with the rounded toe of her boot. He gives it eyebrows.
"You know," she murmurs, and slips her hand into his like its the most natural thing in the world. "I've kept a couple secrets."
"Oh?" he asks, boyish smirk lilting along his features. He swings their arms back and forth. "The pretty stranger from the magical land has kept secrets from her dashing prince?"
She snorts but can't hide her smile. "My name isn't Marion."
"Mine isn't John."
A tree rustles as a hawk launches from its boughs. Fallen and wet pine needles smoosh under their boots, his watch beeps. The pause is long enough to be awkward.
"Well, then," he says cheerfully. "Marion."
"John."
"What other secrets are housed inside your mind? Tell me the story! What manner of whimsical madness can you cook up, what flavor of habberdashery?"
Effervescent giggles come from her like champagne. "Habberdashery! Oh, I love this!"
"It's okay, I understand. Intimidating pretty bloke like me, here all alone with you in these woods. Of course you'd be nervous. Good chaste girls don't tell wolves their secrets," and he waggles his eyebrows at her in a most unsexy fashion. "I'll go first!" he says, his arm arcing in a wide and grandiose gesture.
Instead of the smiles and peels of laughter he is expecting, she stills. Stops walking so that only the resistance of her hand alerts him to her presence no longer immediately beside him.
She is looking at him, and it is a dark look. "Do chaste boys tell wolves their secrets, then?"
He swallows thickly, finding himself hot under her gaze. There is so much more in her eyes than he has ever seen before. "They could be... persuaded."
Closer. She stands so close, toe to toe. The space between them is thick, like marmalade. He smells the forest coming off of her, and his skin hums in response. "Then tell me your secrets, John." Rests her head on his shoulder, snakes her tongue out to taste his skin and the crackle of magic that prickles there at his sudden alarm. She realizes with some smugness that part of him fears her, knows on instinct he has stumbled into a den with a great beast slumbering in the back.
She hopes he can keep up.
"I... well. Er, see..." he starts, nearly panting around each word as her mouth works deliciously on his neck. He wants her again on this verdant floor, without the dizzying drug of a spell. (She is spell enough alone, he decides.) Wants his hands in her hair and her fingernails grasping at mud as his cock slides home.
Wants to know what else she is hiding.
"I can read minds," he blurts.
She bites. "Do it," a challenge. There is a curled edge to her voice, like she can't wait for him to win.
One hand possessively brings her closer by her hip, grinding his hardness into her belly. The other raises to ghost over her temples.
---
raw earth, soil damp grass ants bark sky air trees something shifting cool underfoot running branches on my fur running run run run run
ecstasy, shift--
mate, where is he, where, run
there
dark oak smell endless
mate's howl, gullet wide into the rain
bird, there!
yip and smell and breathe and running with my mate, my mate, dark oak smell, endless time and running run run run
forest creaks, moon lights everything, roll in the earth and feed on the soil in our fur
pause. quiet. still. breathe.
prey. heartbeats so wild fast and fast and fast rabbit hunt--
The forest wakes and looks up. She meets his eyes.
We are, she says. Come.
---
He jerks back violently, shaking, spinning away from her, nearly ill with the return of his human senses.
"You're a shapeshifter," he squeezes out, coughing on the taste of air inside of his dull human lungs. "Wolf! You, you took me with you, we hunted, ate, killed a sodding bunny! Rose! Not a very good cover, giving me your middle name, is it? Are you listening to me, you mad, daft girl?"
She isn't. She is feet away from him, arms spread wide and eyes closed, laughing as she spins in circles over the earth. Twirling, baggy mauve sweatshirt catching air and silver leggings smudged with dirt and leaves, she lets loose a shriek of joy. Laughs and screams and cries, ecstasy rolling off her in such waves mated with her magick that flowers are blossoming from the very sodden soil at her feet, little yellow newborn things that have never seen such sunlight. Golden light glitters from her hair, a shake of thunder and mountains stir the earth from her feet, and he hears bells that sound far away.
It is only then he realizes she must be Goddess. And he, like so many before him but not a single one after, is swept into her spell and carried on the back of her beast.
She is thick white fur, damp with rain and snow and the wilds. She is the air he never learned to breathe, a powerful heartbeat that pounds under his hands as he holds on tightly. She is the sun, and the moon. She is the ether and the earth's magick, and she has been waiting for him.
She shows him everything.
He takes her hand and runs, and together they are free.