When Darkness Falls ((Open))

[Jade Amnell]

8 Tredecimber
18th Hour
Year LV

Night was coming fast upon the village of Benevolence and yet Jade Amnell refused to move. Her tan and green dressed wiped around her figure...she was showing more leg and chest than was considered lady like, but Jade had learned a long time ago that she was not a lady like the rest of the world...she was a psychic, a witch born with powers that she did not even understand much of the time. Now...that power rolled over her shoulders as the sun slide behind the horizon. The stars were beginning to blink into existence as if they had been afraid their bright relative would keep them hidden forever. The wind swept around Jade, the high weeds and grass tickling across her exposed flesh...hands slowly moving across the tops of the plants feeling them, understanding them...or so she liked to believe. She was more in tune with mother earth...that was certain, but that did not mean she knew anything of the plants she stood among.

At one time she had prayed to end this existence...long ago...before Meredith had saved her. There were still scars to remind her of her captor and the words he spoke before she was saved from him. "I will find you again...my promise among the gods." It was all Jade could to as his voice swept through her memories, reminding her of all the pain she had suffered as a child...the whip on her back...the hand bruising her cheek. Subconsciously she raised her hand to touch her cheek as if the memory brought back the pain as well and in way it had. It wasn't until the sun sank thoroughly behind the sky and a howl sounded loud and clear that she pulled back into her own mind. The memory was gone...there was nothing written on her face, nothing that would betray her as her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark field around her. The field was snow covered...in fact everywhere around her was covered in snow except the small patch of weeds and grass that seemed to bloom around her. She had found in recent years that her healing powers did not only work on animals and humans, but on the plants of the earth. The patch would be swallowed by the snow soon and she would allow that as it was part of the circle of life.

Slowly she moved from the spot her eyes falling back on the village of Benevolence. Her husband would be waiting for her as he always seemed to be. Kieran was everything she had in this world now and she took advantage of that at every turn. He was everything she had ever wanted and he made her feel safe. At that moment though, standing in the swimming darkness with the howls of wolves sounding around her she did not feel safe....not even close. Her body shivered and she moved her hands up to draw her cloak in further around her body as she began a slow trek back to the village. She must not be out after dark...it was not safe, not even for her. The sound of crunching snow met her ears and she froze. Panic was trying to swell inside her breast...steal away her breath. She fought the panic, but was not strong enough as she turned to the sound, her eyes straining in the darkness. "Who stalks me so?" she asked into the darkness...the shadows were too dark for her to see into and the moon had yet to rise. Hand slowly moved to the knife that was sheathed on her waist...she would not die without a fight...unless whoever was there truly did not wish her harm. She prayed they did not.

Oilean Draiochta - Melanie O'Reilly

[Weylon]

..the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night..

Night wrapped him in bone chilling cold, drawing goose pimples from his naked flesh and making it ache. The pain brought a smile to his lips. He crouched beneath a twisted oak tree, feet sunk into the damp wintering earth, knuckles levering him away from the ground and grimed with loam. His head tilted back, straw blonde hair matted and glorious; his exposed throat pulsed as he breathed, swallowed dry and then bit his lower lip. It was chapped and cracked from the unsympathetic conditions of winter and bled as he did so. His tongue flicked out daintily, a small pink serpent, to taste the iron bite of it and he savored the jagged shot of crimson it sent through his brain. Interesting, he thought, that even his own blood was pleasurable to him. The tongue lapped at the livid crack in his pouting lips, searching for the last traces of the self brewed aphrodisiac and, finding none, disappeared again.

Despite the flawless alabaster of his hide, the pale young man was nearly invisible in the hulking shadows of the night. His thick, muscled body was clad in nothing but a pair of worn britches. His chest and feet were bare and exposed to the air: every inch of nude skin was raw with cold. He could smell the woman. She was waiting in the field: she was not like the other humans, for there was something Other about her. He could sense it with his blood and with his mind. But she was still human; and she was still afraid. That he could smell with pungent certainty and it fed the fire in his veins like nothing else. Still as an effigy carved in ancient stone he squatted in the umbrage, then his ribs moved in a deep shuddering breath. The scars across his broad chest writhed with the motion of bone and sinew beneath them and then, abruptly, he shifted. One instant a grotesque churchyard angel - aeternus calx - the next a wraith untraceable in the dark.

His feet cracked the snow beneath them as he paced towards her. He made no effort to hide the sound of his steps or of his quiet harsh breaths; only his solid frame did he cloak in shadow as he came near enough to hear her speak. He did not listen to the words or try and make sense of the language he knew and rarely used. All that concerned him was the quaver in the sound: it indicated a tightness of the throat, a quickness and fluttering beneath her utterly vulnerable ivory breasts. The whispered query, the hand reaching for a weapon, screamed fear. Weylon's boyish lips parted in a slow smile, stretching skin, and the cut reopened. Blood beaded on his lip and the tongue snaked out to claim its prize and heave another bolt of ragged red into his mind. The cold drove needles through his skin and not once did he take his ice blue eyes from the woman in the meadow.

..and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core..