Written Wonderland

Evan trudged through the woods for what felt like an eternity, but that wasn't the only way he existed in the dream.

Thoughts projected forward, hopefully, to the moment when he'd make it to safety and could finally rest. He imagined it so vividly he may as well have experienced it--stumbling into a healer's home and practically being lifted off his feet onto a cot or a bed, a warm fire stoked to ease his shivering and someone else's hands taking over the duty of putting pressure on the wound at his side. Maybe even a caring hand on his cheek, someone actually giving a shit about this boy's suffering.

Thoughts also projected backward, angrily, to the fight he'd had earlier that day with his father. The man's words were nonsense, but his voice stung at Evan's ears and his eyes threw torrents of judgement and disappointment, hardening the boy's already dense defences until a flame finally bellowed in his chest and snapped that outer shell open. He burned as brightly as he could, hoping to either overpower or maybe, miraculously to awe the man before him, but it didn't work in either respect. Unimpressed, all his father had to do was wave his hand, and Evan's flame extinguished in an instant, and just like that he was left alone in his room, an empty, devastated ache in his chest telling him he'd only ever amount to a disappointment.

He tripped in the woods, maybe just over his own feet. Mercifully, he landed on his uninjured side, though ended up slamming half his face into a slick of mud. Some part of him wanted to cry, but he felt too damn empty. The hope and the anger of the thoughts swirling in his mind were distant when he wasn't actively in them, and try as he might to pull them for motivation, it was growing more and more difficult with each step. He managed at least to sit himself up with a groan, and scoot over to another tree to lean against. He pressed his cheek into the bark, eager for the sharpness of the sensation, but even that was growing dull. Desperate for lucidity, he reached up with his free hand to dig his nails into his neck, his throat pushing out a determined, frustrated growl. He could barely feel anything; he needed something stronger to reach for.

He imagined that, in his escape, he'd found himself in the realm of the Demon Queen. She'd found a boy desperately chasing attention, and she was delighted to give him hers for a time, in whatever ways she pleased. The wound at his side wasn't a wound at all, but just a torture she was putting him through, eager to watch him withstand it. He knew that if he just continued to lay there against the tree, she'd grow bored of him and send him home, where he'd be nothing but a disappointment to everyone. This was where he could prove his worth to someone; he would show the goddess just how much he could take, for her. Even if some part of him thought this childish, it wasn't about to complain about how potent this fantasy was, because it just might be able to get him back onto his feet.

With another heavy groan, Evan pushed himself up once more, fighting back the weakness and the dizziness that threatened to black out his vision and send him back to the ground. If he could make it through this, she'd reward him. If he could just impress her enough, she'd keep him around, and he'd never have to go back. That was plenty of motivation to put one foot in front of the other, and to start the slow trudge towards safety again.

The goddess watched Evan's thoughts and vivid imaginations at first with a despondent sort of curiosity, though his trembling and shaking from the snow and cold constantly threatened to seep into her own bones. She kept that at bay, though, watching the younger version of Evan imagining being taken in by some miraculously appearing healer, and she saw that fade away, the hope too faint to encourage action. As he imagined a hand on his cheek, however, she felt the first pangs of desire to comfort him, though the goddess knew that, still, it wasn't time to intervene. Given that this was a memory as well as a dream, she had to be careful.

Then, Evan reached for his anger, the images of his father's uncaring words so much more potent and powerful than any physical abuse Evan could have suffered. Hell, he might have preferred physical abuse. Dehaljadrun enjoyed the way the fear of disappointment and the anger at being sent away literally fueled his body and kept him moving, but soon that, too, faded into the blankness of cold and snow.

Evan fell, and Dehaljadrun realized all at once that this was the memory of the moment when Evan was closest to death. The cold in his body, the numbness of his mind, the emptiness of his heart, all began to pull on her until, if she hadn't been a disembodied presence in the reenactment, her eyes might have filled with tears. This was the moment that he would become useful to her. This was the moment that he would mark himself forever changed and able to enter her service.

When the teenager tripped and fell into the mud, she felt it. The freezing sensation against his cheek, the frustration that not even tears would flow. She was with him, then, not exactly in his body, but all around him, sensing into him and his experience, just a sliver away from being a warmth he could draw on.

The goddess watched him as he leaned against the tree and pressed his face into the rough bark and was amazed as his nails dug into his own neck to scrape the last of his resolve up to the surface. His growl reverberated the goddess and lit up her heart with all the ways this younger version would become the full man, all the ways this experience would shape and create what he would become, what he would do later with her.

And then he imagined being with her.

In the dream, it was difficult to tell the difference between imagination and hallucination, and she saw briefly her own forest--before its trees had blackened--superimposed over the forest Evan found himself in, the images his mind could not possibly know or imagine combining with the reality of what the goddess knew such that they arrived at some merged vision of her realm and the goddess herself, distorted somewhat, but potent in Evan's imagination. She had given him the wound simply for her own amusement. She would be disappointed if he didn't fight to stay alive. She was waiting, watching to see if he would withstand this for her.

Dehaljadrun had seen some of this when she had pulled up all the fantasies Evan had had of her, but she hadn't fully registered the potency of this one. In many ways, it appeared that the very idea of her had been enough to keep Evan alive, and both disbelief and gratitude flooded her sensation, suddenly so very aware at how tied together the two of their lives had been, at the very least since this incident. How could she have not heard this desperate wishing for her presence? How could she have not felt this potent desire to please her?

And then, all at once, it hit her. She had. She was here, now, in this dream that was also a memory that could alter the reality of what had happened. Evan had wished for a god, and she had found him, out of time, out of place; he had pulled her here and created this loop they found themselves inside of, meeting and pulling one into the other's reality.

Which meant she needed to save him now. Or at the very least, she couldn't let him die here. But, she did need him to see death, needed him to be close, to be tempted toward the depths and comforts of not being alive and turn away from them. She needed to see, right now, for herself, that he would withstand this for her in the future, when he woke up from this dream, this memory.

So, still, though her heart ached and her being flowed with the desire to protect and save him from an experience she suspected was only about to get worse, Dehaljadrun knew she needed to continue to wait.

Evan's trek through the woods continued to be long and arduous. The scenery around him grew dark, not that he could much tell the difference between the time of day and his own diminishing perception. He breathed heavily, the sound and sensation of it somehow far off in the distance, as though the real version of him was truthfully buried under entirely too many feet of snow. He clung to the thought of the goddess, trying to renew his resolve every so often with visions of how she might reward him once this was through. Some of them were certainly sexual, some of them tender, but the most potent idea of all was simply that she'd allow him to stay with her, forever free of the unfeeling prison from which he'd escaped.

Then, somewhere off in the distance, barely audible above his breathing and the deafening silence around it, he heard his name. At first he focused in on it, some part of him rejoicing that perhaps he'd be saved. But then, as his name was called again and he listened more closely to the approaching voice, it cut through his numbness just enough to sting harshly at his ears. Some part of Evan thought that he should feel glad that his father had come looking for him, but he couldn't bring himself to feel anything other than dread. All of this was for nothing if he just ended up back where he'd started. The old man might save Evan's life, but then he'd just lock him away again, and probably make him that much more miserable for the crime of having been an inconvenience.

The boy let his dread and dizziness overcome him. He fell down onto his hands and knees, the mission of keeping his jacket pressed against his side now abandoned. He then sloughed himself down on his side and curled up into a ball, purposefully making himself small. He didn't want to be found. He wanted to die rather than go back to the life that would await him. He let himself grow still, no longer clinging to the distant sensation of breathing. Everything went dark...save for a single purple thread that he just couldn't let go of.

If there was anything beyond this life with his cold, judgemental father and his distant, uncaring mother, he didn't want to let them steal it from him. If there was just the tiniest sliver of a chance that there was something worth enduring it all for, he wanted to keep going, and he couldn't abandon the thought that there would be. Above all else, he didn't want to die thinking he'd ever in his life simply given up, and that's what he'd be doing if he failed to reach for the lifeline his father offered him, no matter how badly he didn't want to take it.

"I'm here--"

At first the call could only come out as a whisper, which scared and infuriated him. Gods damn it, here he was willing to accept this shit as fuck lifeline, and he couldn't even fucking reach it. But he regathered himself from his frustration, breathed in deeply, and spent all the energy he could gather to manage a holler:

"I'm here!"

Now here was just fucking hoping the old man would be able to follow his voice in time.

Dehaljadrun startled when she heard the sound of Evan's father's voice calling Evan's name. She felt Evan's anger, frustration, and fear as he considered his options and decided he would rather be dead. The goddess held her breath, watching until his being narrowed to just a spark of a thread, a brilliant purple that made her glow and shine with awe. There was a part of him that was determined to live, which made Evan, in some ways, unable to die. It would do anything to seek out survival--not just survival--bliss. And Evan was beginning to realize he couldn't just give up on it, even if it meant going back into his own form of prison. The goddess' heart ached at the thought, uncomfortable with the parallels.

Still, as Evan tried to shout for his father, she realized Evan was truly on the edge of death. The cold was getting to him, blood still flowed from his wound, and the thread of purple screamed at Dehaljadrun to do something. He still had to make it somewhere warm. Dehaljadrun looked in the direction of the voice that had called Evan's name and knew there was no warmth there. She had to give him something now.

But what?

Finally, she decided. Inwardly, she closed her eyes and concentrated, pulling in all the energy around her for this one objective. Then, releasing the electricity around her all at once, an electric purple fireball came crashing through the canopy above and landed squarely on a stump a few yards away from Evan. The stump splintered and shattered, some of the pieces flying against Evan's clothes, and erupted into purple flames. They glowed that way for a good thirty seconds before transitioning to a more expected color, the flames threatening to lick the trees near the stump.

Evan was too exhausted to be startled by the fireball. Its warmth barrelled down through the trees and exploded behind him, and all he could really feel in the moment was relief. He rolled over onto his back to look at the flaming stump, the warmth of it hitting his cheeks and pulling him back towards life. He had more problems than just the cold, but this was certainly a start. He emanated gratitude towards the fire, though also felt a strange sense of embarrassment. It was difficult right now to imagine that the fire had come from anywhere but the Demon Queen herself, and if that was true, it meant she had seen him like this, and knew just how close to death he was. He felt ashamed--for the ways in which he'd been reckless and stupid and ended up so close to death in the first place, but especially for how much of him had nearly just given up altogether. As grateful as he felt, the part of his mind still vividly in that fantasy was sure that the goddess was disappointed to have had to save him, and was sending him back to his father in kind.

Almost uncannily on queue, his father's hand lightly slapped at his cheeks, trying to get Evan to respond in some way. The boy's senses had still mostly been numb to anything but the heat and the light from the fire, and only after he shifted his gaze to his father did Evan realize that pressure was once again on his wound. But all Evan could see in his father's face was anger and disapproval, and he muttered words that Evan frankly didn't care to even try to hear. The boy turned his gaze back towards the fire, and tried to focus on the fantasy that even this was a trial he'd have to endure for her. He let his father do what he needed to do with his body; not that he had much strength to fight him on it anyway, but he'd genuinely made peace with this next leg of the journey. He drew as much resolve from the fire as he could as his father lifted him up, and began the long, cold trek back home.

Evan was ready to endure it--the occasional stinging voice of his father; the constant, encroaching dread of their destination; the unyielding cold and the exhaustion that he had to relentlessly fight to stay awake. But some strange sensation nagged at a corner of his brain that he'd already done this part before. He started to feel distinctly like he wasn't actually being carried home by his father through the cold woods right now, but any time he tried to imagine what else might be happening, it was like the weight of his exhaustion and numbness held him there despite the increasing sense that it wasn't real. Finally, some confused, exasperated part of his brain begged whatever would listen:

Please, don't make me do this again.

Dehaljadrun watched as Evan's body returned to warmth, feeling his relief as it waved off his body and the shame that followed. She wished desperately to soothe that, to give him something more to hold onto, to save him from the harsh reality she knew would follow him home with his father, but she knew that taking him away could significantly alter the course of Evan's life, threatening, perhaps, the very idea meeting the goddess in the first place.

Briefly, she wondered if it was selfish of her to refuse Evan more support, but the goddess shook her head at herself, knowing better than to unravel that much time.

Please, don't make me do this again.

What she could do was give Evan the escapism he was so hungry for. Clouding his other senses--which proved easy as they were so dulled already--the goddess gave him visions and glimpses of the fires in her palace, the forests in the far reaches of her room, and--she couldn't resist--one brief image of her own appearance smirking but falling into a softer, unreadable expression.

And, she could wake him up to the future he wanted, here, now, so many years later.

When she awakened them both from the dream-memory, the goddess' cheek pressed against the center of Evan's chest where she had sucked and bit at him. She allowed just enough sensation to rouse him, still a pittance of what she withheld from him, flowing into him in a sensation not unlike the feeling of the river they had experienced together just the day before. Letting just that small amount out made the rest of Evan's sensations so much more difficult to hold back, and the goddess momentarily grit her teeth before she got it under control again.

Dehaljadrun lifted her head and shifted atop Evan's body so that her cock lay between his legs and waited for his eyes to open, the glorious halo of her black hair and the electric purple haze of her eyes and skin radiating with the masked delight of having him here.

Upon seeing his eyelids open, Dehaljadrun waited for a few moments of silence and eye contact before pressing her lips gently to his--at least at first--as the longing and the sensation she held back from him spilled over and began to fill Evan back up, her fingernails stroking at the back of his neck as though to indicate her hunger. He was healed and whole now, and, surely, now, she could do whatever she wanted with him again.

At first, Evan fought to try to keep some semblance of his senses in tact, afraid that losing sight of the cold and the dread completely was giving up. But the visions of a warm fire in a palace in a forest that wasn't here and a goddess--well, in the end, it was entirely too enticing. For better or for worse, the boy gave into--grabbed onto--the idea that he was in the goddess' realm, and not with his father at all. Just to get through this journey.

Well, that's what he told himself, but once all he could feel was the pressure of a cheek against his chest, the journey and surrounding memory faded quickly into the distant past. Relief pooled heavily in Evan's throat and spread and connected with a warmth in his chest, flowing through him and re-connecting him with the fact that his body was on the ground in the forest he'd dreamt of, with the very goddess to whom he'd so often imagined escaping. He felt her shift, but only barely, the sensation of her still held at a distance like it wasn't quite real. The captain forced his eyes to open, despite their heaviness and despite the fact that he knew his gaze would be brimming with emotions he couldn't quite grasp.

Some part of him was happy to see the goddess looking pleased--and, honestly, just to see her, and help solidify that this was real--but not only was the feeling dull and distant, but it also had to share space with hints of embarrassment over what the goddess had presumably just seen. He watched her expression, wondering how long she'd keep him in this weak, distant state that still felt considerably closer to death than he really cared to be. Almost as if answering his unstated question--if maddeningly cryptically so--the goddess leaned down and touched her lips to his.

At first the kiss was still heartbreakingly faint, but then it brightened and deepened and started to fill him with warmth. The feeling of the goddess' nails against the back of his neck biting into reawakening skin was sharp and arousing and bittersweet, pulling a growl from his throat not unlike the one the boy in the woods had uttered. He dug his heels into the ground with newfound strength, and made a push to roll the goddess over, aching to gain back some feeling of control over his situation.

The goddess reveled in the ways sensation came back into Evan. As good as holding it away from him had been, giving it all to him at once was even better. The simultaneous relief of not having to hold it back and the ferocity with which Evan growled and rolled the goddess over--her back and head hitting the mercilessly hard surface of stones--brought an elated grin to her face. She was ecstatic that he had his energy back, ecstatic that he could fight her again, ecstatic that she had healed him and seen the depths of his fears and desperation for her in the snow.

Why stop at the sensation Evan was used to having? She intensified Evan's sensations now, making every touch full of fiery desire and potency as she ran two fingers down his bare chest while he straddled her body.

But, then, her grin started to fall as the realization that some part of Evan had given up, given power and control over to her in the dream memory. The goddess tried to reassure herself that he would have endured the situation if there had been a purpose for it, but she couldn't shake the thought that, had she been attempting to enthrall him, had she been less careful with him or released him from the dream much later, he could very easily have fallen into thrallhood. She could have made him stay there. She could have made him face his awful past again, again and again and again, and surely the underworld wouldn't be as kind...

She gritted her teeth, then, embarrassed and frustrated at how soft she was becoming with Evan. Wrapping an arm underneath one of his legs, the goddess pivoted, not caring how hard Evan might hit the ground as the result of her movement. Keeping that leg captive between her chest and his chest as she rotated him onto his back, she dug her knee into his other leg, wrapped her ankle around his shin, and pinned both of his wrists back toward his neck with her hands so his arms were utterly incapable of movement. She knew the distance between their chests would make him ache now that all his sensation--and more--had returned, and she desperately wanted him to feel that. The corners of her lips turned up a smirk as she looked at him, helpless, powerless to her whims and commands.

She wished desperately that he could truly overpower her, and she was ever so tempted to let him, but not now. Not after everything she had already done for him. The goddess had a reputation to uphold.

The goddess pressed her weight into Evan, deepening the pin and holding strong through any attempt Evan would make to throw her, smirk deepening each time. Finally, all at once, the weight of her and all the sensation of his skin and body against hers disappeared entirely as she released Evan and stood up in one fluid motion, moving swiftly outside the circle of torches and turning to face him with one eyebrow raised, pleased that, with all Evan's newfound sensation, the agony of being so far away from her touch would increase manifold.

"This is for keeping me waiting," the goddess said, crossing her arms.

((OOC: So, the torches create a protective dome-like field that will shock Evan pretty fucking hard if he tries to cross the barrier, and he could make it across, but it would really, really, really hurt, and she really doesn't expect that he will be able to get through. She intends to play with him here for a while, but he could, you know, thwart her plans if you so choose. Also, touching the barrier will almost definitely activate the stone in his pocket. Additionally, Dehaljadrun's dragon basically made it so that any time Evan gets significantly aroused, he becomes electric enough to activate the stone. We've mentioned it when it felt relevant so far.))

A feeling of satisfaction lit up Evan's chest and sparked elated tingles up the back of his neck as he felt the goddess hit the ground. All at once it seemed he was bursting with life and vitality again, exhilarated to be here and to have the goddess within his reach. He couldn't help revelling in that a moment, his expression flashing towards a wicked grin as he looked down upon the goddess below him.

But, then the goddess' expression fell, and in a way that worried him. In a way that hurt--grabbed hold of that satisfaction in his chest and twisted it into a terrible kind of yearning. It pulled anger to the front of his expression, and his hand rose to strike the goddess, just as she managed to snag his leg and wrench him off-balance. The captain let out another growl and tried in earnest to kick at the goddess with his free leg as she maneuvered him onto his back, but soon enough she also had that leg pinned, and scooped his wrists into her grasp before he had a chance to re-prioritize his resistance. His embarrassed frustration shone brightly in his expression, his icy blue eyes somehow absolutely burning as they glared up at her. The yearning in his chest scratched at him from the inside, tearing and tugging and screaming for the goddess to come closer, like if she'd just touch her chest to his it would relieve the frantic agony that was building up inside him.

For a split-second, he experienced a shot of hope as she leaned into him, but his godsdamned leg was in the way, and the goddess knew it. Evan narrowed his eyes and tried to shift his weight so he could use that fucking leg to kick her away, just to spite the feeling in his chest--which really, by now, had flailed its way into all the rest of his torso--but he couldn't fucking budge, and the goddess just smirked wider, stoking his anger even further.

Some absolutely stupid pissed-off exclamation was on the tip of his tongue, but just before he managed to find words for his present ire the goddess lifted herself off of him, which was simultaneously relieving and horrifying, something which was evident as his eyes widened and his hands couldn't help following the goddess' for at least a moment as she pulled away. He tried to recover quickly, and rolled over in a haste to push himself to his feet and lunge after the goddess. His motion was interrupted by a powerful shock, too overwhelming for him to even understand what was happening. His body could only barely make out that it seemed to be coming more from in front of him than behind him, and so it stumbled back as his throat pushed out a hoarse, angry--

"FUCK!"

He ended up on one knee just behind the barrier he couldn't see, his lungs breathing heavily as his nerves and his muscles and his mind recovered from the shock. Once he stopped reeling, he lifted his sharp angry eyes to the goddess.

"Fuck off!"

He snapped at her in response to her comment, honestly before her words even quite registered. Once they did, there was a brief glimmer of realization followed by just the tiniest hint of embarrassment before his expression hardened fully again, doubling down on the idea that he’d already apologized to her--and already been through a fucking nightmare tonight, to boot. If the goddess still wanted to hold that he’d missed her portal against him at this point, then she was just being a fucking bitch.

Having caught his breath and mostly regathered himself, Evan pushed himself to his feet and set one hand on his hip as he glared at the goddess, surely well aware of how his posture might draw one’s gaze over his muscles and his tattoo and the now impossible-to-hide bulge in his pants.

He put in a formidable effort to reel in everything he was feeling--his irritation towards the goddess; his frustration with himself for missing her portal in the first place; his lingering embarrassment and rage from the memory he’d fallen into; his desperate, palpable desire to touch the goddess again; the strange enclosed pressure on his skin that he frankly had no idea how to process just then; even a rash, self-destructive urge to charge headlong into the barrier again, though to what end he had no fucking clue. The air around him practically vibrated with all of his sensations, but he somehow managed to collect enough control to keep his body and his expression almost eerily calm, though certainly quite a lot of energy seemed to focus powerfully into his glare.

Dehaljadrun could not help but sense into the shock her protection spell sent into Evan, sinking as deeply as she could into the sensations within his body without eliciting any uncontrollable responses. Her eyes did momentarily roll back into her head, but she returned to her steely expression quickly, eager for more play.

The goddess ran her tongue along the top edge of her bottom lip as though she could taste the disdain Evan's words conveyed for her. Oh, she was very aware that that was a thin veneer, but something about telling her--a goddess--to fuck off... A smile played at her lips as one of her hands came up unconsciously to absentmindedly touch her own collarbone, somewhat relinquishing her folded-arm position.

Once Evan had pushed himself back up to his feet, the goddess stared at him unapologetically. If anything, her eyes drank in the sight of him , his lungs heaving, electricity pulsing through him, his fierce glare, the inked markings across his skin, the dragon that tauntingly disappeared into his pants. Gods, he truly was beautiful. Something to behold, disheveled as he was.

The goddess' fingers wandered from her collarbone to her lips, and she could not help but imagine all the things she wanted to do to him, her eyes uncontrollably rolling back again. It was a few moments before she righted herself, shaking off her mounting lust and walking with metered steps to the very edge of the barrier. She wondered for a moment why she had ever made the spell such that she herself would be unaffected by the shock; hadn't she been jealous of Evan's experience of it, after all? Well, there was no changing it now, not without losing this game first, at least.

Meeting Evan's glare, the goddess moved her fingertips away from her lips and raised her hand to gently stroke the curved edge of the barrier. It was a light, sensual touch that made the edges of the spell visible in a gently sparking purple. The buzzing sound of the spell against her skin, the way it responded to her touch, was intoxicating, even if she could not feel the shock of it herself. Her fingers undulated against the edge of the barrier, making lines and delicate shapes in the air that faded almost instantaneously. Was she showing off? Undoubtedly, but she also desperately wanted Evan to come closer, and every movement of her body--each cock of the hip, each fluid movement of her arm, the glistening moisture on her lips--was designed to make that almost imperative.