At any time, @Isildur was welcome to withdraw his permission for Genesis to experiment on him. His nervousness suggested he might, and in fact, the meeker side of her hoped that he would so that she would have an excuse to avoid any potential consequences of a wrong move or a lapse of judgment. Even though her lack of practice and experience had not served her well in growing her trade, the girl had gotten far too comfortable with her reputation among her family as the weak link, to a point where it almost felt easier (and safer) to believe it and let it be true.

Almost.

Throughout the span of this encounter, Isildur had made her feel nothing less than capable, and she was quickly finding that feeling--however foreign--to be invigorating. Enough so that, despite the self-sabotaging thoughts swirling around in her mind, she was more enticed by the opportunity to prove herself deserving of more: of his interest, his knowledge, his trust, his...company. For once she was sharing a piece of herself with someone who not only cared but believed in her, and the more they did, the more she was ready to do whatever she needed to do to hold onto this special find--this special companion.

Her eyes danced restlessly between his own and the paw that parted his mane until, revealing the scrape on his shoulder, he turned to her with a reassuring smile that brought her to pause upon his face. "I trust you, Genesis." With that, she felt herself loosen, though whether it was his affirmation or his own calm that did the trick was hard for her to tell. She reciprocated his smile with a nod and scooted up to him with the sprout in hand.

Despite being accustomed to others of his stature, Genesis could not help noticing the gravity of his presence up close. His body radiated a warmth she had not felt since the last time she had been among her brothers and sister, and even his paw seemed like it might disappear into the hair of his lush mane. Between this and his earlier show of strength, she was almost shocked there was even a blemish to be found at all. It looked so out of place on someone who could have convinced her that he was unshakeable.

Genesis did her best not to make a show of what he might surely see as gawking, but there was little she could do to hide the warmth that tinted her cheeks beneath the white. And it only burned hotter the longer she sat here with him. "I'll give you some to try, but let me try it first...in case something happens. Okay?" She would have hated to rope him into all this only to get him sick. It was only fair that she made the first leap, right?

So she did, picking up and pinching the sprout between her front teeth, taking care to present him with the slightly longer half as she lifted her head to him.

(523 words)

code by scorpixia♡︎

Isildur

everything around me wants to stand silent unmoved by the air or by my breath. everything wants to stop for this moment. even our olive tree bends

There is something uncompromisingly captivating about @Genesis, and Isildur is beside him that he's found such unique company. Different, yet the same. A mantra he's repeated in his head over and over now as he watches her silently. Emotions and thoughts telegraph across her soft expression, before she finally settles on a small, yet confident nod.

As she ambles closer, he's suddenly reminded of just how tall he is. Isildur does not remember when he started to have to crook his chin downward in order to see the top of his sisters' heads, but he does remember the care he takes around them. He is still beyond the gentle rise and fall of his chest with every breath, and his gaze regards her with a boyish curiosity, rather than careful scrutiny.

He had meant it when he said he trusted her.

His eyes fall to hers, and he expects to see focus or caution or even neutrality. He does not expect the swath of heat upon her face, or the rosy tint to her cheeks, or the owlish stare with which she regards him. In the dim light, her eyes appear almost celestial; the beads of water forming on the stalactites above them glitter like stars in the reflection of her gaze.

Suddenly, he feels a heat come to his own face.

They both do their best to hide it.

It's a mercy when she finally speaks.

I'll give you some to try, she proposes, but let me try it first...in case something happens.

His brow crinkles as he frowns, and the urge to stop her and protect her wars with the one that wants to respect her wishes.

Okay?

Okay, he finally relents.

The stem rests between her lips as she lifts her head up, leaning forward just enough to clue Isildur in on what he needs to do next. Slowly, he closes the distance between them, catching the roots between his own teeth until he's got a sizeable portion. He can feel the fan of her warm breath across his mouth from this close a distance, and it causes his heart to flutter in a way he doesn't understand.

He's once again caught in the war of taking as much of the stem he can into his mouth, or risk putting himself too close to her and frightening her off.

Oh, but she is so lovely and so warm.

He hears the familiar click of his teeth snapping shut, and all at once the decision is made for him. With his own portion clipped away from hers, he reels back before the stutter of his heart becomes audible.

code by cala, art by geotalon

If not for the herb pinched between her teeth, Genesis' nerves would have been much more apparent on her face. Yet, as she peered up at @Isildur, she was able to focus just enough on not shying away from him to maintain a relatively easy, albeit masked, expression--even as he descended upon her. As his virtually unending mane just barely disturbed the surface of her fur. As his comparatively massive maw parted overhead, flooding the whole of her vision with his form alone and revealing thick canines that she knew could split open flesh just as easily as hers could split the stem she offered him.

But it was not fear that would have crossed her features, no. It was something different...something that had activated in response to his interest, his genuineness. She wanted to chalk it up to the loneliness, something she could be sure would resolve itself with her family's impending arrival, but the longer she sat with it the newer and more foreign it felt.

Snip.

With one precise motion and a fan of his breath, he withdrew from her with his half of the plant, leaving her to linger for just a moment's longer than necessary before she blinked and turned her attention back down to the task at hand, attempting to narrow down her focus again before the mask had a chance to come off completely.

Genesis took care to crush her portion gently at the front of her mouth, gnawing away at it until she could taste the beginnings of its bitter--but not upleasant--juices. Once released, she deposited a small dot of paste onto the tip of one forepaw, taking a moment to study it and test how it treated her own skin. It...tasted harmless, and if nothing else it felt almost soothing. No burning. No itching. Her confidence blossomed then, assured that she would not bring this innocent boy to harm in exchange for his help.

So much so that, rather than look to Isildur for confirmation, Genesis proceeded to gently dab the paste into the blemished skin. If she had hesitated--she tried not to--it was due to the fleeting thought of what awaited her beneath her touch, which turned out to be the oddest mixture of electricity and calm. The noise in her head dissipated, leaving behind only the sound of her heartbeat, their shared breaths as even they echoed off the cavern walls.

"Does it feel okay?" she asked as she worked, perhaps an involuntary bid to replace that lost noise.

code by scorpixia♡︎

Isildur

everything around me wants to stand silent unmoved by the air or by my breath. everything wants to stop for this moment. even our olive tree bends

Something lingers in the air. Tangible, suffocating. Even as he pulls away, it lingers like an unspoken question. Something young, something fledgling, something neither of them understood quite yet. Isildur's felt it once before, at least. With Manon. In her sharp, bewitching eyes. In her lilting, accented voice. In the air she breathes, in the presence she creates.

He has a boy's heart. It feels just as wrong as it feels right to think of Manon while @Genesis is standing right before him. He's allowed to have more than one friend—and Mother knows his family is never shy of keeping company. So why, why her and Manon are so vastly different, does he feel just the same? Why is it overpowering, all-encompassing; teeth-chattering, knee-knocking?

He's so distracted by his thoughts and her that he's hardly noticed she's chewing the herb into a paste, her expressions reflecting the way it feels and tastes. Each twitch of her lips and curious quirk of her brow quickening his heart.

He's in far more trouble than he knows he's in.

Mercifully, he has just a little more time before he has to find out.

A cold, stinging sensation wrests him out of his thoughts. She's reached forward and applied the salve to his shoulder with a confidence he's yet to see so openly. It gives him pause, though he's noticeably tense. But as the salve eases from a chilling sharpness to a soothing numbness, he relaxes. His jaw unclenches, his taut muscles loosen. Even his shoulder, abrased and rubbed raw, eases.

Whatever this is—it's heavenly.

It's making his mouth nice and numb, too.

Does it feel okay? he hears her ask, and he's in such a state of curious reverence that it takes him a moment to answer.

It feels numb, he answers honestly, at first. After all, they were testing the herb for a purpose, right? It's good. It feels great.

It's getting harder to talk with his mouth so anesthetized. Does her mouth feel the same, he wonders? It's difficult to tell any difference, and he's certain he's bitten his own tongue twice now. At least now he can't feel the heat in his cheeks, borne of their continued closeness.

But Mother, his heart is still beating a mile a minute.

Very— he swallows, —numb.

code by cala, art by geotalon

Genesis felt tension give way to relaxation beneath her working paw even before @Isildur spoke his confirmation of it. In fact, it seemed to travel into her, up her limb, and throughout her own body, taking the form of relief that their daring little experiment had not ended in consequence. Added to the fact that their mutual touch appeared to be the remedy for their respective jumpiness, she relished in the newfound ease of every breath, in the way it dulled every jolt of electricity through her skin with every swipe she made over his shoulder.

"It feels numb. It's good." So relaxed was she that she hardly noticed how long it took for him to respond to her. By the time he finally did, Genesis had admittedly almost forgotten that she had tried to check in with him in the first place, her attention made hazy by the slow release of adrenaline's grip on her nerves. After all, it was too late by now to undo what she had done, and if they were both still breathing and their hearts still beating, surely that meant they had already seen themselves through the most crucial moment of their experiment. Yet, as his voice broke through a pause in his words, something about it rang alarms in her head.

"Very numb."

The girl looked up at him again, this time watching him with concern as she held her paw in place over his shoulder--as if she would somehow be able to steady him if he threatened to faint. What puzzled her, though, is that he sounded alert, if not still a bit choked. Genesis tilted her head. "Isildur? Isildur, what's...what--?"

Oh.

She was alerted to how her teeth did not feel like her own, how her tongue felt like a haphazard weight resting on the bottom of her jaw. Even as she forced down a nervous gulp, she felt nothing even as it reached--or she guessed it reached--her stomach. Realization plastered itself across her face, and in reflex she withdrew her touch to take a step back and examine him in full. If nothing else to see that it was only numbness they needed to look out for.

Even then, though, her limb betrayed her, buckling under her weight when she did not register the contact between her paw and the ground underneath.

A thud, followed by a startled squeak...and a giggle, an innocent yet involuntary release of all the concoction of strange emotions that had taken their time to pile against her conscience since he first offered to help her with her foraging.

art by moogle

Isildur

everything around me wants to stand silent unmoved by the air or by my breath. everything wants to stop for this moment. even our olive tree bends

Maybe it's a mercy he's so preoccupied by the numbness in his mouth.

It gives him little room to consider just how close she is.

Isildur? she asks, and his only response is the smack of his lips, dancing between nervous and amused. Isildur, what's...what--?

The first thing he takes note of is the fact that it, mercifully, is not spreading. There's a pleasant chill in his throat but he can still breathe and swallow with little difficulty. Eventually, it begins to take on a sensation and flavor similar, but stronger, to certain mint plants. He's seen his aunt and cousins use them before, to ease the hot sting of burns. When his silvery gaze turns its attention to his shoulder, he realizes that he no longer feels the lingering sting. He can no longer feel his heartbeat just beneath its raw, angry skin.

It is only when he notices the hollow coldness of her withdraw does his attention snap back to her. His eyes lift just as @Genesis steps back, her focus so intently on him and the near-comical nature of the poultice they'd just ingested that she doesn't realize that her paw had been covered in it, too. Then, she trips.

Isildur lunges forward, catching her in his arms.

But his shoulder is numb, too, and they both fall to the ground with a resonating thud.

Then her laughter fills the air. And as Isildur lurches up, a furl of fur and frenzy, he bellows out a laugh of his own.

Well, he begins, carefully trying to pull himself from their entanglement of fur and anesthetized limbs, looks like we'll be here a while.

Not that he minds that at all.

---

Fade, via talking.

code by cala, art by geotalon

In all her giggling, Genesis was momentarily oblivious--or was it numb?--to exactly where she had fallen, aware only of the unexpected sensation in her paw that had caused her tumble in the first place. But as @Isildur's own haughty laughter reverberated in her chest, she became suddenly, painfully conscious of his limbs underneath her. Of the cold, hard floor of the cave that contrasted with his warmth as they each withdrew and attempted to right themselves. Part of her wished, then--fleetingly, daresay hopelessly--that the plant had been in such abundance that they were forced to lay there in a tangle of hair and limbs until the feeling returned to their skin.

Or maybe not, for then she would not have had the privilege of being flooded by the very touch that had lit up her senses just moments prior.

One thing was certain: her cheeks burned hot enough for the both of them. However, much of her previous tension was long gone now with the dissipated echoes of her laughter. Isildur concluded they had nothing to do now but wait, not far off from her uncharacteristically greedy wish, and she sighed, propping herself on one elbow. "It looks like it."

The question struck her then, and she tilted her head at him with a curious blink as she played with different ways to eventually ask him: Where did you come from?

-exit-

art by moogle