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Contest Theme: Happiness
Entry Title: We start where we end
Brief Background: A demon king who is as relieved as he is nettled by his high consul's disappearing acts. Another bit of RP!snippet something or other.

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Benedict had not slept since Cressida had stepped off of Valoren soil. It was true that he did not need to - no immortal did, but it had been an indulgence on his part in response to the younger demon's penchant for human habits. It was one of the many unofficial rituals he shared with the golden eyed demon that he had come to enjoy for both the simple peace of laying together as well as the underlying reaffirmation of his consul's complete loyalty and trust. For what creature made up so completely of strength and violence and vice as Cressida was, would sleep so willingly and soundly in the presence of another? It was those little moments, the ones that on the surface were so inconsequential and yet revealed the unfathomable depths of their relationship, that made the play of wills between them so tantalizing an exercise.

In layman's terms, Benedict missed him.

"Is it a deal, your highness?"

Storm cloud eyes are dragged from the graying horizon to the girl who stood beside him on the dimly lit street - a child really, not yet old enough to realize how transitory the desires of the flesh could be or that love garnered out of trickery was as tasteless as ash, but she is not his daughter and it is not his duty to guide her.

"It is." he answers, reaching out to touch her cheek, eyebrow quirking when she flinches reflexively away from the cold of his skin - and then in pain as he seers his mark into the skin at the nape of her neck, out of sight but not out of mind.

On her necklace, two more pearl colored orbs blink into existence, perfectly camouflaged amidst the sea jewels. He does not wait for her breathless words of gratitude, turning away from the wide glittering of her dark eyes and striding onward down the street. He ducks into an alley way - and moments later takes to the sky as a raven, an ink dark shape against a quickly lightening sky. It is a short flight to his favored rooftop perch to watch the sunrise - a towering office building whos glassless windows are like so many empty, gaping eye sockets turned to greet a dawn they would never see again. Cressida called it morbid. He considered it poetic....if admittedly morbid. He is startled, however, to find someone has beaten him to it, transforming mid-air to land on two very human feet even as amber sunlight lances across the indigo sky. Gold eyes catch the first rays of morning and blaze just as brilliantly as Cressida smiles and stands so he is haloed by the strengthening light.

As vain as ever.

"It's good to see some habits don't change."

They speak the same words at the same time, Benedict snorting as Cressida offers him a faintly affronted glance, but neither deny it is the truth. Neither admits to having missed the other - that Cressida had returned specifically at this time and in this place so they would not be interrupted by outsiders, that Benedict had quietly called up a lace fine mist of ice and snow over the entire roof top, holding each droplet and flake in just the right place to reflect the sky and rising sun like a mirror and otherwise hide them in plain sight for the exact same purpose. If there was anything either demon had learned over the eons, it was that words were nothing more than a collection of sounds produced by lying throats. Cold hands reach for hot, and though Cressida does not take them, he steps into the demon king's body with a sigh, fingers curling around the lean muscle of Benedict's upper arms. It is that sigh, that unspoken 'It's so good to see you again' that undoes him, Benedict cupping Cressida's face and drawing him into a long awaited kiss.

Cressida shudders and utters a soft sound of accent against the elder demon's tepid, velvet lips. Neither could say who pushed whom, but they were both down on the dirty tile of the roof a moment later, burning hands clawing the length of Benedict's back as hungry lips devoured one another, fire and shadow a smoldering curl of energy that slithered around them, the elements which answered to their call responding to their surging emotions. When all is stillness on the rooftop again, the dawn has long since matured into mid-morning and Cressida lays where he had first sprawled in breathless satisfaction, Benedict's head pillowed on an out flung arm and snoring softly into his shoulder, dead asleep.

Contest Theme: Happiness
Entry Title: Great Good Earth
Brief Background: A young mage is reminded how to properly live in her element

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"Your toil at the root of all things is concluded Aria - go greet the sun."

It had been a simple command - one she had only half heard as she'd continued to place the last of the materials she and the geomancer to whom she'd been apprenticed had only moments before been using to trace the unusual flow of energy from one of the many "main streams" the ran past the walls of the stone cellar where the Sage of Ellen did the majority of his work.

When it had registered however, she had been both stricken and relieved, turning to face the geomancer who only smiled and shrugged.

"You are not made to work in the darkness and in the bones, but all that I have taught you will not go to waste, of that I am sure. Be well."

The dismissal was not unexpected, but it was so sudden and so terse she'd found herself lost as she made the long climb up and out into the world. She moved like a ghost even as she passed the final doorway and felt air stir across her skin for the first time in almost a month. It was a moment before she realized she was no longer caged in stone but that it was soft grass beneath her bare feet, the fresh scent of soil and decay and growing things so heady that she flung herself flat right then and there and nibbled a blade of grass. She lay her palms flat to the ground as she all but rubbed her face in the sod, sighing as she finally stilled and closed her eyes. Slowly, she sank her nails beneath the shallow grass roots, careful to avoid upsetting them as she delved into the dirt beneath, willing her consciousness into the soil. She immediately felt the presence of the multitude of insects and burrowing creatures which moved and toiled just beneath the Earth’s skin, their activity a constant and throbbing hum punctuated by the sighs of growing roots. Below the sound of their surface scrapings came the deep gurgle of water as it seeped and settled into the water table to begin its seaward journey once more. If she listened hard enough, beneath the bedrock skeleton she could hear the distant thunder of burning magma, the Earth’s blood. If she had ever doubted that Earth was her element, she found her reassurance now; the Sage had been right to send her away. She would never find her strength in the unchanging stones as he did. She withdrew from the depths then and stretched her conscienceless out across the Earth’s skin much the same as her corporeal body was stretched in the grass, listening to the news of the forest - of berries a day from ripening, of flowers so heavy with pollen that bees from miles around were flocking from as far away as the very northern edges of the Kendalwood valley to gather from them, of a cave which had once belonged to a wolf and was now home to a vagrant and his dog. The longer she lay and the further she traveled, the more the Earth attempted to draw her into it and she giggled as grass blades bent and curled along her sides, weaving across her fingers which were still buried in the dirt.

What need had she of a master? The thought crosses her mind idly as she listens to the gentle thrum of life around her.

The Earth would teach her all she needed to know.