TDM 003

[erkumods]

TDM 003: #BEACHBUMS

I. BEACH Welcome arrivals, new and old! The skies on Erku may be perpetually gray, but the weather has taken a sudden turn to summertime heat. Fortunately, soaring temperatures have chased away more of the strange fog that conceals so much of the island, unveiling a charming, sandy cove dotted here and there with rustic love shacks. These shabby little lean-tos are dusty and sparse, but they provide everything one (or two, wink wink) might need for a little relief from the sun. Just don’t wander too far... that fog has memory-loss properties. II. DRINKS The 'bots are very apologetic about the whole fog incident, and they are trying to get on the new arrivals' good sides by giving out fancy drinks. Of course, they still haven't mastered the art of making things properly, so each drink has a little something... extra. Geloso: Has a slightly bitter, yet refreshing herbal taste... and it will make you feel inexplicably envious of virtually anything, to a petty degree! Be it someone else’s shoes or their incredibly muscular physique, you’re jealous enough to tell them about it! Colpito: Fruity and sweet like candy. If you drink this, you will feel hopelessly infatuated with the very next person who catches your eye! Vivace: Delightfully tart, with a flavor somewhere between citrus and raspberry. This summery drink will fill you with bubbly energy. Whether you’re feeling flirty or just mischievous and playful, you’ve never felt more alive! Verace: Creamy, earthy, and a little nutty - the flavor is hard to describe, but delicious. After drinking this, you’ll feel strangely compelled to spill something you’ve been keeping a secret, no matter how incriminating or embarrassing. Conoscere: The robots are especially excited about this flavor! They’ve heard organic beings enjoy chocolate, and hope you like their first attempt (it’s a little bitter, but it is chocolatey). Those who drink this will feel incredibly confident and sensual. Better yet, if you share it with a partner - which the 'bots encourage you to do - you’ll find that every touch is enhanced, and every sensation is shared between the two of you. A lucky few may even be able to sense one another’s thoughts! III. SNACKS Lo! As you ask, the Augur shall provide. Thanks to the efforts of your organic predecessors in restoring the planet’s Eros energy, edible fishes and seaweeds have returned to the ponds and the shores of Erku. If you fancy yourself savvy to basic survival skills, why not fashion up a fishing rod and catch yourself dinner? Just be careful if you happen to hook one of the octopus creatures from the deeper waters - they can be quite forward with their tentacles! Or, if primitive angling isn’t in your repertoire, you can always trade some credits for a tasty catch from one of the food stalls along the coast. Most stalls are manned by 'bots, but there’s nothing stopping an enterprising arrival from setting up shop. No credits? No problem! The robots have also provided a bit of entertainment, and any volunteers to man the kissing booth, get dunked in the wet t-shirt dunk tank, or grill up some fish - among other opportunities - will find credits automatically loaded onto the payment app of their bracelet devices. The 'bots are recruiting especially hard for participants to work in the gloryhole tent! IV. SPARKLES As dusk descends, the white sands of the beach suddenly come alive with glittering lights. It’s as if the darkened waters have carried a thousand shining stars from the depths of the sea to the shores of the cove. In actuality, each little twinkle is a bioluminescent plankton or jellyfish! Feel free to wade among them and admire their shine; even the sting of the jellies won’t hurt you... though they do pack a different punch. The tentacles of the jellyfish elicit a powerful aphrodisiac response, which gets the heart racing and the blood pumping for an intimate touch. The effects come on within a matter of minutes, and last for a few hours. Only time will relieve the symptoms, but a partner will help to make it more bearable. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● N A V I G A T I O N

Comments

[luciing]

[ Her hand is loose within his, making the softness of her touch seem almost delicate. What right has he to hold something so precariously light? ]

Otherwordly-born, and nascent to this one, I am as any other.

[ Turning slightly so that his shoulder points towards her, he offers his arm for her to take. Long has it been since he’s offered a woman his arm, even longer still since anyone would have wanted to take it, grim and severe monarch that he was in life. But here, neither does that severeness appear within his features nor display within his movements, upright and with a formal grace as his posture and strides are. Somnus leads, but does so at a pace she can match.

They come upon the evening shoreline. Calmer still, the waves do not swallow his voice, but accent a low lull, as if he’s piecing together a mystery. ] Yet you... [ A pause.

He looks sidelong at her, causing half of his pale visage to be casted in shadow, the other half washed gently in the oranges of the slowly waning sun. His voice hushes as if speaking of something to be revered: she is beautiful and mysterious, a stranger, a woman, an question for which he cannot parse. ]

...Wherefore are you ethereal?

[aflowers]

[ She slips her arm into his, that dreamy smile still on her lips as they move down towards the shoreline. So he's like her, then - someone not from this world, but another. Drawn here by that... Augur thing? Is that what it was called? She can hardly think of it now, drawn in as she is by the grace of his movements, the sweet depth of his voice. It only serves to add to the mystery of it all, one that on her side is romantic and perfect for what it is, even as he tries to piece it together.

When she feels his eyes on her, Aerith tilts her own gaze back toward him, and the look on his face makes her breath catch. It's for a moment as if she's the only thing in his entire world - as he is right now in hers, her eyes searching his face as the light of the fading sun dances over his skin. ]

Ethereal?

[ She shakes her head, hoping that the orange sky can hide the pink in her cheeks. ]

Hardly. I'm just a girl.

[luciing]

[ Could just a woman captivate him so? He thinks not, and the protest nearly finds itself emitted between his lips. Before he speaks, however, he steals the sight of the tinge of pink complementing her cheeks. The sun may be at his back, but it catches upon her face so perfectly that she may as well be a painting washed with pastels of amber and gold, peach and pink. She is a garden of colors.

...

Somnus' free hand rises, and to the side of her face it goes, fingers dusting just at her cheek, brushing back a loose strand of her chestnut hair to tuck behind her ear. She's warm, he realizes then. So is he, for no longer is he a mere specter. ] Such vibrancy of yours is not found upon our Star.

[ --Quiet literally as his world is shrouded in darkness, a fact that he does not volunteer.

His hand lingers upon her cheek, as if hesitant. Now that it's there, he doesn't wish to part. ]

[aflowers]

[ How many beats can a heart skip? For Aerith, the answer is both too many and not enough at the same time. His words are everything she longs to hear, and at the same time they leave her helpless, not sure how to respond. It's not like her, to be this lost for words, even in a situation such as this - usually there'd be some kind of clever quip, some playfully flirty banter. But when his hand finds her cheek, warm and soft, and those words part his lips, she has no hope at all.

(It's the drink, she'll realize much later, dragging her deeper into its spell.)

Her head cants into his touch, her eyes closing briefly. His touch is like a drug, sending warmth all through her; she doesn't particularly want him to stop. She feels the hesitation in his movement, and it's enough to spur her to action, reaching her own hand to cover his own as her eyes open again, searching his. In the end, the only words she manages to speak are a surprisingly soft admission: ]

Somnus, I... don't know what to say.

[luciing]

[ Would that she say anything, he thinks, for her voice is as river-reeds gently singing to a breeze. How imposing it is that his palm is upon her cheek, when before he would have spared little thought to marching through any flora in an effort to quell the Scourge. She knows not how bloodied his hands are. Her skin ought to be revered by someone with a heart as lovely as hers.

But her head cants into his touch, and his doubts freeze beneath her gaze. ]

Speak only what you will... [ Quiet but urging, his hand drifts down and curls, a thumb pressing lightly to her lower lip. His eyes lower, following the trail his touch to her mouth, then back up to her eyes. He's struck then: if she is ethereal, then he is blasphemous for this touch, the inkling to remain, the urge to move closer to her, to fall to her. ] ...and only of what you wish.

[aflowers]

[ Speak only what she wills, and only of what she wishes. That's easy, she thinks; when she looks into his eyes there's only one thing she wants, and it's only helped along by the soft touch of his thumb against her lip. ]

What I wish... is that you would kiss me.

[ The admission is just as soft on her lips as the last as they move against his thumb, a new smile playing at their edges, something shy but eager, tinged with hope. Surely he already knows that she wants this; surely he's asking to be completely certain... Yet she still feels so vulnerable in front of him. ]

Is it too much to ask?

[luciing]

[ He should not indulge. For millennia he has paid fealty to a Prophecy to restore the light to their world and gift his brother an end, yet she radiates a force that he cannot ignore, in this moment holding command of him in a way none of the Six could deign to replicate... But isn't it just, that such indulgence is just how one might restore this world? What harm is there in capitalizing on giving into an indulgence, when it is the reason for being spirited to this world? And she-- Aerith-- is lovely, gazing at him as if he carries something that might answer that hope. Who is he to deny her?

In the end want gives out, for its lion's cry is far louder than any clinical thoughts he may have. Thus, she needn't say more, for his body is already moving to close this distance between them.

With his thumb brushing to beneath the edge of her chin, Somnus tilts her head upward just as he leans forward, two forces enacted at once to bring them together all the more quickly. The touch is guiding, and his cloak shifts forward over his shoulders as he moves. Finally his lips find hers for a pressing kiss, clinging, soft yet urgent, and perhaps stiff, too stiff for his posture-- as if he expects it to end too soon. As if in defiance of that his head inclines, his lips languid upon her bottom one, drawing in a quick, silent breath, taking in her scent. His free hand twitches at his side, raising higher and closer to her body. There's a delay, a conscious one, and then his hand falls upon the curve of her hip as he lingers to taste her more. ]

[aflowers]

[ Truth be told, Aerith probably shouldn't be indulging either. She already knows too much of what her future holds, and as much as the drink may have caused her to want that to be the man whose soft hold in which she stands, it's not. But logic doesn't rule right now, or even the want to be back home - infatuation does, heady and sweet, and even if she wanted to just ignore it, she doesn't think she can.

It being her wish, it should be of no surprise that the young woman doesn't resist his touch, her head obeying the soft press of his thumb under her chin, and her eyes sink shut as their lips meet. It's everything she never knew she wanted until her eyes first fell on him mere minutes ago, her heart beating a dizzying rhythm in her chest as she presses into him, a soft sigh on her breath.

Her arms lift to wind around his neck, feeling the stiffness in his posture, such a contrast to the way she is practically melting. A smile at the edges of their kiss, Aerith slides one hand up the nape of his neck to bury it in his hair, fingers stroking against his scalp as if to soften him somehow. After all, this is what they wanted, right? It's okay with her, if he wants to melt into her too... ]

[luciing]

[ With her fingers through his hair, her mouth pressed against his, the hint of a smile upon his lips, she serves him a sweet wine. He only knows her name. Within the recesses of his mind he's aware of how unprecedented this is, but the heady fog, like a stupor, has clouded any thoughts of stopping.

His eyes slide shut, and with the relinquishing of one sense comes the more powerful sensation of others: her scent-- flowers, earth; her touch-- warmth, affection, the way her body melts to his. His hand tightens upon her hip, he tilts his head, angling the kiss. His lips part for a breath, heavy and unlike anything he's taken before. It grants him the final sense, a brief taste of the drink upon her lips, tangy and sweet and mysterious; he feels a shiver of heat travel through him, down him. He swallows, then breathes, ] Aerith...

[ Instead of granting him the clarity of respite, the pause swarms him with a single, sudden want: more. Praise, compliments, are not enough for this woman, and he's always been stilted in conversation. Actions speak louder. If he cannot speak them, then he must show her, to sing praises of her wonder with more of--

No longer will she just be melting to him, and her name whispered had been perhaps a prelude, a warning. His hand upon her hip moves imperatively, pressing, sliding, curling around to the small of her back. Fingers spread, he takes her hard to him so their chests meet, lifting her against him. His other rises to her chin, tugging it down just as his mouth crashes against hers, demanding entrance, tongue, her, as if ignited with a purpose to give her all at words cannot. ]

[aflowers]

[ The kiss is soft, sweet; like nothing she's ever known it encompasses every thought in her mind, every last sense she has left focused on him and the tender press of his lips to hers. Her name on his tongue sounds like music, but in whispering it, his mouth pulls from hers, and it's with a soft sound of protest that her eyes blink back open, heavy and drooping, the drink's magic clouding her gaze. It's been years since she last felt this, since she needed someone this much, and for it to be over as quickly as this, with that tender, lingering kiss... it seems unfair somehow— ]

Somnus?

[ There's something in his eyes in the split second before his hand presses into the small of her back, something that has her answering the call of her own name in a soft, quavering voice. The reply is the pull into his embrace, the fingers tugging her jaw into a new kiss, open-mouthed and hungry. It's different to the melting she wanted, but there's no complaint on her lips; her fingers seek purchase against his shoulder as she's lifted from the ground and she returns the kiss with a hunger of her own, tongue rising to meet Somnus's as it seeks her mouth, her breath mingling with his in short gasps.

Is it possible, to want someone she's only just met this much? Until today, she'd have said no, but... ]

[luciing]

[ OOC: Continued here. ]