Placeholder I want your mind, not your body (Cypress)

[Wrenmae]

Winter 48, 512 AV


East street held its unique aroma, seasalt, blood, and sweat. In a way it was like Sunberth, a piece of the anarchic town taken wing and settled onto this shady corner of the port city. He took some heart in that, some familiarity in the careful one-two step of his stride. While he didn't expect the Daggerhands to descend from the roofs with murder in their hands and flesh on their breath, he was also wary of the eyes that caught his clothes, the way they carried from the gutter orphans to their clumsy grown-up counterparts. A misstep and he could be beaten and robbed...or rather, a misstep and there'd be a body to clean up.

The hypnotist did not consider himself arrogant...of course their kind never did. Instead he simply assumed a guise of complete confidence. There was a name for those that toyed with emotions and minds that did not belong to themselves, that name was god...a divine envoy of fabricated fate and subtle, yet terrible power.

Did he consider himself a god? Certainly not. He had been in the presence of a few and not one of them had been even remotely close to his pathetic mortal seeming.

But in mindset? Perhaps he wasn't so different from the grand meddlers after all.

He paused in the open door of the Whorehouse, lingering to take in the twisting scents. So much perfume, the false sweet of blush covering bruises and scent over blood. There was a coy secret here, a promise of mutual discretion.

It was perfect.

He stepped inside, having discarded his Waveguard uniform on a matter of principle, he was approached by a woman with bright green eyes, the kind that danced even when her body was still, the kind that hunted him, cornered him, marked him.

Wren was cautious of those eyes, for they held their own backalley wisdom, sizing up a hundred like him and maybe more. If she saw the diseased dark of his character, she did not shrink from it. Instead she smiled, and held an arm out to a number of paintings on the wall.

All girls, all in compromising and alluring positions.

"What's your taste, Waveguard?"

Wrenmae opened his mouth, but she shut it for him, laying a lily-whie finger against his lips and silencing his words with a touch. "No need to fret, Wrenmae. You don't exactly hide yourself and we understand the value of discretion."

Nodding, Wrenmae considered the paintings. But he did not look so much at their image...that would be for a man looking for a night of passion.

He looked for the frayed edges, the pawed, the handled, where eager fingers had made their imprint.

He pointed at one.

"Ah," she crooned, "Jocelyn, you have a good eye."

"Cypress," another voice interrupted, "She likes to hide her name, but I find the second more alluring, don't you...boy?"

Wren turned to behold a dark eyed man with a cool smile and a confident swagger, he nodded up at a staircase. "First door on your left. 30 gold mizas for the night. She's pricey, but the girl knows how to buck."

Wrenmae said nothing, merely counted the coins and added an extra ten

"I want no curious ears. I'm...particular with my tastes, and I don't want any of that to leave this place."

The mans eyes rose a notch, but never threatened to be more than softly startled. "Such a kink for a small man like yourself, I might not have guessed." He looked over to the woman who had first spoken to him, "Let's prepare the room below, then. I promise you won't be disturbed. Just remember..." He stepped in front of Wrenmae, towered really, and the hypnotist looked up to him attentively, suppressing the smile that sought to worm its way across his face. Let the big man tower. He had tied a bigger to a cage in an abandoned warehouse and set it ablaze...and that was before he was who he was now.

"No marking her face."

A nod was all that sufficed and the man stepped aside. "Enjoy your night, Wrenmae."


And so he was led, in a way, past the painted girls and to the stairs at the back of the establishment...down the wood that creaked and groaned like ghostly moans and left him at a single black door that led into a room, gloomily lit, beyond.

Inside a red canopy cascaded around an equally vibrant red bed, the candle on the table complimented by one other. All had been prepared...and the door had two latches, on the inside, and one with a keyhole.

He was handed a brass key by the woman who let her skin linger on his and then depart, the phantom kiss of past passions. Her body promised so many things and yet it was not her picture on the wall, she had earned the choice of the man she bedded.

"I'll send for her," she said.

And Wrenmae waited.

[Cypress]

It was a quiet day, something had kept the clientele away; a needy wife, work...whatever the draw, it held the pace of the day to a crawl. Only those most desperate seemed to be skulking through the doors, men, and the occasional woman who could find intimacy only by paying for it, though to be clear, that was most of the patronage, but especially on a slow day. Cypress rested against a side wall, leaning casually on her clasped hands, pale blue eyes stopping to linger on every person who walked into the small, dimly lit room. No one had requested her company so she had been as such for some time and she grew bored, and boredom allowed her mind to wander to places it shouldn't . Hopeful places, locked carefully inside a guarded heart. Places that took away her advantage of detachment to make her vulnerable. Stop it. With a slow push she moved away from the wall and walked the room. There was no purpose in her movement save to bide the time and give her mind some other distraction. As much as it repelled her, she almost wished for someone to come for her, to pull her back down to where she belonged, away from those weakening musings. Her wish was granted when Margot appeared at her side, moving like a sultry whisper. "You have a 'visitor'." Margot insisted on making it appear as though Cypress had a choice, romanticizing the act. But she had that luxury didn't she, because she actually had those things she feigned for appearance' sake. Cypress looked toward the stairs, and Margot caught her chin with the tip of a graceful touch. "Not there. Downstairs. Clean yourself up, this gentleman is different." With that, she left her to get ready, piquing a curiosity in the Drykas. Weaving her way through the small parlors, Cy headed for her room. Once there, she changed into one of two dresses she owned, this one being the finer of the two, though fine was an overstatement. It fit her body nicely though, and showed skin in areas that to Cypress seemed less blatant, possessing a nuance of a more subtle sexuality. It was a pale gray dress, tightly corseted around her breasts, but loose and flowing over her arms, like a delicate bell that hung from her well toned shoulders. Her stomach was left bare, the top and skirt connected by a spiderweb of laces that spread into a long mesh that floated around her legs, translucent and airy. A smoothing hand run over the fabric confirmed to Cypress that it was the right choice. She pulled her long fingers through her hair to release some of the loose braids, while leaving others in tact, then gathered a section and looped it into a knot, exposing most of her long pale neck. A few curling strands were left to rest like raven feathers on her shoulders and on the fine line of her collarbone. The rouge was reached for but not applied, and even the remnants of that she had put on at waking light were brushed away with the back of her hand. Her lips unpainted, were now kissed by their natural hue. Neither was the cloying perfume applied, for once, she wished to stand out from the sickening sweetness that she lived with each day. A glance at herself in the looking glass and she almost recognized herself. But it was time. Using the palm of her hand, she threaded fingers between fabric and flesh to position her breasts to nearly spill from the corset, not everything should be subtle after all. Steeling herself, she left her room to make her way into the basement. This wasn't the first time, and would not be the last, but for some intangible reason, she was nervous. There was little that received her attention until she reached the door and with a hand on the latch, she expelled a long breath and gave one quick knock before entering. Like second nature, her eyes instantly lost focus and she looked beyond the appearance of the man in the room. The area surrounding him was murky, at best, and in the short window of opportunity she had to look, was nearly unreadable. She had no wish to put him off, this stranger who seemed to hold some power. So she left it, taking several steps into the room, her eyes now focused on the literal version of him. He was not typical, and though she did not meet his eyes, she did not get the sense that she felt from most, the ravenous hunger that precluded common courtesy and social grace. She got no impression that he wished to devour her without so much as a turn of phrase. If she were to be honest, he seemed almost disinclined toward sex at all, but that notion was dismissed by Cypress, clearly that was not the case. Finally, she looked into his eyes and moved to his side,flanking him she faced the bed, while he faced the door. Her shoulder barely brushed along his and without a spoken word, she slid her hand along the inside of his arm until her palm met his, then like water running across a smooth stone, she slipped her hand into his. "My name is Jocelyn. What can I do for you?"

[Wrenmae]

While he had a few moments to think, he steeled himself for what lay ahead. The woman who came to him expected to be bedded, perhaps even tortured first. He dared not ask the proprietors what sort of men dined on their bought flesh in a sepulchral room such as this, but his imagination painted a clear enough picture for him. Breaker, the torturer in Sunberth...he had been a man who thrived in the darkness, seeking out others to try his perverse torture upon.

When Cypress opened the door, she did not look at him, not at first. Her eyes were misty portals to a realm of muted pain. She had removed much of herself before entering, releasing it from her neck and shoulders as easily as a dress or piece of jewlery. Somewhere above them, in a lockbox the shape of a heart, her dreams and soul lay tucked away.

She was only flesh come to the snake-charm of mizas in a brothel of her own choosing.

Such sad fates these mortals weave.


Mortals.

Did he think of himself as different?

But his thoughts were shattered when her skin touched his. Every defense, every meditation, every measure he had prepared was as dust in a single instant. There was electricity in her touch, only her touch! A sensuous promise of what he could do to her, what she would allow to be done...what she would encourage. Her breasts heaved, nearly spilling from the dress she wore, green like thick moss on the banks of a wildland brook.

Babble, babble, it seemed to whisper.

Babble, babble, but you will never speak aright.

"Wrenmae," he said, surprised at the calm in his voice, "Wrenmae is enough, I think." No matter how his soul quailed, his body quivered, his voice remained sure, crafty, strong.

Perhaps that was where his strength had fled to, to a place it could not be seduced.

A voice sought only to sound, never to receive.

He drew his hand away from her with a little more force than he'd planned, his body all awkward movements, half awakened with a tingling desire. He averted his eyes from all the places they sought to perch on her body, focused on the candle, flickering...but in it he saw her dancing and almost started from the bed.

Hypnotism?

No. Simpler than that. It was only his emotions.

Perhaps more dangerous than magic itself.

"I have you for the night, but I will not have you..." he started, crossing to the door and closing it, turning the key in the lock, "I am...a Waveguard, you see, perhaps not so strange to find one of the blue in a place like this, but it is business, not pleasure, that drives me to call you here."

He paused a moment, inspecting the room for holes or places where one might seek voices through. Finding none he returned to the bed, sitting far from her on the other side, averting his gaze.

"You are beautiful..." he started. Stopped. Took a breath, continued. "I believe that you may entertain many guests and it is precisely that reason I chose you."

He put a hand on his coin pouch, letting it fall away carelessly over the bed, too wide, almost reaching for a shred of her fabric and he tugged it away. His face was red, beet red with the concentration of maintaining his composure. Had he been this incompetant with women before? No...never then, never before had he them in such a private place, had them so open, so willing.

A part of him struggled to free itself, to cast away this brothel and find another way. He could become a woman, could he not? Why then did he quail?

Because in heart he was still a man...and a man who did not let himself be touched for long.

And in that, he had cultivated a horrifying weakness to the wiles of the feminine.

"Do you seek more fortune than you make for a purpose greater than simple nights of pleasure?"

[Cypress]

Wrenmae. So it was. He offered his name before asked, jerked from her touch as though she had burned him, and avoided any contact - visual or physical. He was nervous. A smile threatened to curl, but she stopped it, holding her face in a pleasant mask that betrayed nothing, so unlike the girl she had been whose heart was on her sleeve and whose history was written on her face. But if Wrenmae was nervous, it was not his voice that revealed the secret, for it remained even and unreadable. He sat perched on the bed, far from Cypress, fidgeting with his coin and spouting rhetoric about why he'd 'really' come when it was clear to the drykas that all he could concentrate on was the brief touch they'd shared, and what it would be like to feel more. But he continued to speak, speaking of clientele, and more fortune. He wants a spy. His hands strayed across the bed , searching, but he squelched the desire before it had time to take root and puled back. While he was distracted by his forced focus, Cypress withdrew her gaze to a point off the tips of her lashes, removing a clear view of Wrenmae so she might look deeper. Everything about his aura was muddled, dark and layered, but now there was an undertone she had not seen in her first stolen look, it pulsed, radiating through the murk until it glowed transparent. But the crimson pulse was weak, woven in duress between layers so dense it seemed strangled, it struggled to emerge. There was one area of concentration, almost a stripe of red, this one clear and vivid, it ran along the inside of his arm, settling in the palm of his hand. It followed the path traced by her hand. She could not longer suppress a smile, and her eyes snapped back into focus to find him looking at her, waiting on her response. He would have to wait. Cypress turned, cocking her head to one side until her black hair spilled over her shoulder, then she walked toward him. Her hands slipped along her hips and she gathered a handful of her skirt into each palm, exposing her legs to the knee and without warning or invitation, she knelt on the bed, a knee on either side of Wrenmae's hips, and she lowered onto his lap. She trapped him, straddling his legs with her own, and holding him captive unless he used force. No other touch was advanced, and layers of fabric acted as insulation that she did not remove. Aside from a position reminiscent of sex, Cypress had done nothing sexual; she simply closed ranks to make their conversation more intimate, and to remove a bit of his ability to lie. If his offer was made in earnest, it was one she would consider, but it had to ring true, to Cypress that was crucial. Her hands rested flat on her thighs, and she let her eyes roam over his face, getting a better view. It was a pleasant face, unlike most she saw, innocent and jaded all at once. Mysterious. Without blurring her vision, an aura glowed from his eyes and lips, it was so clear that it was a little startling and she may have jerked back just a bit, but in the next breath, her fingertip was softly pressed to his lower lip, drawing an invisible line along it's curve. Without really thinking, she leaned closer, closing the distance from her mouth to his; but she did not kiss him, that, he would have to ask for. Cypress spoke, so that her breath would tickle the surface of his lips, making it impossible for him to deceive her. "So you want a spy?" Her hand trailed along his chin, and curled around the back of his neck, holding him without chains or even a heavy touch. "What's to convince me that you are not the spy, seeking to mark me as some kind of fool caught in a game of your own creation?" She waited for several heartbeats for him to answer, then moved her hips, tightening the clutch of her thighs along his. "Answer me Wrenamae, why should I believe a stranger would offer me a greater fortune?" Her other hand reached to join the first, and they rested behind his neck, her fingers tracing a line of distraction from the top of his spine to the thin strands of hair the rested on his neck. "I am your captive audience." She smiled sweetly, her pale blue eyes inspecting him.

[Wrenmae]

Power was a curious thing. It existed in an ephemeral state, constantly shifting from place to place, capricious lightning. At any moment he could have turned her into dust, conjured fire to burn her body to ashes, morphed a shark's jaw in his stomach to devour her whole, broken her mind in so many places she'd need instruction to breathe. And yet her tone, the way she moved her body, the light of the candle glancing off her unblemished skin...

He might as well have been chained with Isur steel.


Blood, more like fire, coursed through his veins. He felt stronger and weaker at the same time, higher logical functions grappling with the baser instincts he'd long repressed. It was all he could do not to throw her off of him or throw her under him, and in that concentration he was granite. She slithered onto him, the pressure of her body all too clearly on the parts of him that ached to explore. Both his hands knotted in the comforter on the bed, clawed at them until the thought he might slice through the fabric or crack his nails...one or the other. White knuckled, straight-faced, he breathed through his nose.

But even that betrayed his weakness here, bellowing gasps his mouth would not open to regulate.

Her words were made of nothing, notions and phantom glass, shattering over his ears and across his skin. He felt her fingers, her weight, and there was nothing else in all of Mizahar but that.

And when she spoke to him, he did not hear her words, but he felt them against his own lips. Without even realizing it, he'd craned up towards her, pursing his lips as the rough intoxication of lust drew lines in his logic, dissolved his composure.


So. I'm confused. Is this supposed to be human mating?


Had it not been for Zan, he might have truly been lost. The familiar voice in his skull, the familiar in its sealed form at his belt, it pulled him from hypnotic trance as suddenly as if he'd been doused in cold water.

Wrenmae? Helloooooo? So...what's the deal here? Does the female hypnotize the male and then you breed through your mouth holes?

Gods....why would you EVER think that?

Think? Me? Wrenmae...I'm appalled. Since when did I give you the impression I thought things through?

Nevertheless, thank you. I think without you here, I might have been lost.

Oh. Well, let me clear that up for you. You're in a brothel, on East Street, downstairs in their pleasure dungeon...or something.

Not...literally...

Shaking his head, his eyes sharpened as they locked on hers, his momentary lapse in judgement at least abated. He still throbbed beneath her, the shameless caterwauling of his body for comfort, for release. But his mind was momentarily freed those baser urgers...at least for now.

And she had not yet touched him, not truly, nor disrobed.

He was a fool, a damned fool for coming here.

"The same reason I would believe a woman I do not know would bed me at request," he answered her simply, his voice more shaken than he'd intended, "Mizas. There is enough in it for the both of us to make it a profitable venture."

He took in another breath, held it, tried to purge the lust from his mind by exhaling...found the fire only fanned as he inadvertantly squirmed beneath her. The pressure of her was enough to sound heartbeats like drumfall in his head. Great resounding booms that shook his wiry frame.

"I...would...have you spy on...a certain man...erm, a Waveguard...much like myself...who...who."

And he couldn't remember his excuse.

So instead he just stopped talking.

"Perhaps we'd speak of business better if...if not so close."

It wasn't an order, it was hardly even a request. It was more an after thought, the drunkards self admonishment that one more drink would be too much for him, mug in hand, and lip raised to lip.

The room spun.

So did his conviction.

[Cypress]

A dam, built in the blink of an eye to reclaim control. She saw it happen and applauded his will in the moment, but could still see Wrenmae teetering on the brink of losing himself. Is that what he wanted, to be driven to lose himself? It wouldn't be the first time Cypress had been called upon to yank abandon from it hiding place. To force some kind of ripple across a surface of glass. But he was not glass, she could see the struggle glowing on him, reaching with the tilt of his chin, and squirming beneath the pressure of her hips. No, he was not glass. She quirked a grin at his response. "Well I am a whore, it is somewhat expected of me to bed you for pay." One brow rose a fraction and pulled the corner of her mouth along with it. "But true enough, sex for profit would be something new." In his next breath he sought to reinforce his 'real' purpose by dropping the name of his intended mark. Cy listened with parted lips as he struggled, nearly ready to offer up her own suggestions simply to come to his aid. When the sticky words were free of his lips she simply nodded. "Shh..perhaps it is best left unsaid for the moment." He spoke of business and she could only focus on his disarray, however subtle. For the first time in memory, she was almost enjoying her...job, and to free him now to speak of business would seem a waste of an opportunity. Therefore, his request, his suggestion really, to insert a little distance was met with a shift of her hips, and the touch of her cheek as she whispered in his ear. "Yes. I imagine it would be easier." Her lips brushed his ear, leeching just a little of his warmth. "But from my perspective, it would give opportunity to that little voice in your head to convince you that this sexual business is best approached without the sex when every indication is screaming in a contrary voice." Once more, her hips moved against him, exposing the weakness of his argument. Her hands dropped from his skin to rest upon his balled fists, laying across them like a filmy shadow. She pursed her lips and blew out a small release of breath to calm his hands. "If you destroy the bedclothes you destroy my 'profit'." Her attempt at playfulness only highlighted her pitiful existence as the words left the safety of her mouth, but she moved past it without a backward glance. With the guidance of a master, she moved Wrenmae's hands over the plush bedding until they slid over the warm skin of her thighs. There they were held with soft pressure, palms flat, connection searing. "Rest them here, if anything happens, I am more resilient." In this torturous web of proximity she held him, without movement beyond the rise and fall of her chest with each breath. The moments passed and the signs his body offered snapped into focus, and Cy may actually have begun to crave him. She let him marinate in the combination of her skin, breath and touch until his defenses could be broken, then as softly as she had placed them, her hands were removed, leaving his flattened palms stuck to her skin as though with glue. "Be still..." Her hands lifted to his throat to thread beneath the collar of his shirt, thumbtips sinking into the hollow between collar bones. For the first time, her lips touched him with intent as she dragged them slowly along the line of his jaw. In so much as Wren seemed to hide some unreachable mystery, there was also a small thread of innocence. Cypress seemed to hold that thread in her hands, and suddenly everything was revealed, Innocence was not innocence, it was inexperience. She pulled back to look in his eyes, perhaps she would be able to see it there. As with his on her thighs, Cypress 's hands rested on Wrenmae's skin, flat palmed, and without any movement, she could feel his heartbeat, it raced, she was convinced that had it the method, it would have run from her and taken his body with it. "Have you...have you had a woman, Wrenmae?"

[Wrenmae]

He did not speak a language put to words, no, his body reacted with a tongue as old as man itself. It spoke in thrumming heartbeats, a solid stiffness in his groin, the rush of blood in his ears, pooling beneath his skin like rose petals unfolding. He did not speak so much as breathed, and all the meaning was in his swift intakes and exhales, following her movements as if conducted.

Zan could have said anything and he would have not heard it. He was drowned by the noise of her presence. For a moment, and only a moment, he wondered if he bedded a goddess.

Then she put his hands on her thighs and he realized he didn't care. It was only the barest thread of control that kept him from seizing her, throwing her down atop those sheets, and devouring her whole...till no inch of her body had not felt his.

Instead her touch send ripples of numbness across his flesh, shivering like snow-cold and yet hot with passion's fever. At first he could not register her question, barely holding onto the tails of sentences, periods, fragments of thought in original purpose, all but forgotten by his body that bent and slipped to her command.

Eager for her.

Pressing for her...and perhaps he did press up against her, but could he be blamed for that? He was young, and a youth untested, unexplored...well, he might have been normal for a moment and parts of his mind and all of his body wanted that.

There was hardly a challenge.

"N...No," he stuttered, blushing more furiously for the hitch of word, "I...I once t-touched a Charod-d-dae from the sea b-but not..." And he trailed off, for his words had failed him and he would not give them another chance till his blood had simmered.

Instead he simply surrendered to her, almost everything, barely holding back the vestiges of his dignity and ever suspicious control.

He did not know her...and she moved him like a puppet.

She could not be trusted.

[Cypress]

As Wrenmae answered her question, and perhaps even before, something shifted; his perception of the siruation? His resolve? To Cypress it represented the shrugging off of one thin layer of his defense. "No. Well then, you and I could not be more perfectly suited to each other." From the center of his chest she lets the pads of her thumbs follow his collar bone, tracing a straight line to his shoulders. A simple touch, meant to explore without advancing the threat of intimacy any further than she had. The quaking voice that had answered her question sat poised on a narrow ledge, and the choice was to jump, or cling to the dense stone wall he'd erected to protect himself. She knew that too much intimacy would sever their tenuous connection quicker than she could fathom, so the simple, harmless touch was all she ventured. "Yes, a perfect fit." Her fingers touched on raised skin, a scar. She paused, taking a short detour along the raised flesh, but allowed no change in the soft sultry look in her eyes. "I can seep into the empty places and fill you." Though she had no grasp of the history of her client, she could feel the voided spaces in him as though a wind blew through them. "I am soft, where you are... not." She quirked a playful smile at him, shifting her hips just a fraction. "And I am open, where you are guarded. You came here to talk of business, and I offer you a most powerful tool." She leaned close and kissed the corner of his lips, feeling him twitch beneath the whispered touch. "I am yours for the night. If you still wish to talk of business we can, but let me first give you all you will ever need to make anyone your willing puppet." Her hands faded from his skin like breaking shadows and she looked into his eyes as she pulled his hands along her thighs, guiding him to grasp her hips beneath the fabric of her skirt. "Let me have you Wrenmae. And you can have me. A perfect match." She lifted her hands from his, leaving them to hold her hips. She kept a close eye on him with every advance she made, making sure the sliver of open door in him had not been sealed by some internal defense. A slight blurring of her eyes revealed a brilliant flash of red that had nearly engulfed him, but there was still an area that was unreadable, unreachable. Neither time nor experience would allow her to delve too far into the man before her, so wit and instinct would have to suffice. Her slender fingers lifted to the loose tail of the tie that kept her corset laced, and with a slow and graceful motion she began to pull the tie free. Without making a sound, she moved as though Wrenmae was a timid animal ready to dart into the anonymity and safety of hiding, so as not to scare him, she only loosed the tie without going further. Then with the softness of a flower's petal she rode her cheek along his to reach his ear. "Tell me what you wish, and I will see it manifest." Her breath curled around his ear, pulling it to her waiting lips. "I am your puppet. You have all the control."