Sleeping Beauty by Lyra
Book Two: The One Who Came Back To Life
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Sleeping Beauty
Book Two: The One Who Came Back To Life
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I don't have a nevermore. I don't have forever. In the sand,
victory leaves its lost footprints...
I don't know who you are. I love you. I don't give out thorns or sell them.
Some will know perhaps that I weave no bloody
crowns, that I battle trickery,
and that the fact is I fill up the flood tide of my soul...
I have no never, because I'm different . . .
always was, still am, and always will be. And in the name
of my changeable love, I proclaim purity.
Death is just the stone of forgetfulness.
I love you. I kiss happiness in your lips..
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Who does not know it? The story of the Princess who slept among roses and thorns...one thousand years of silence laid over her warm as wool; one thousand years of dreams as ripe and precious as her waiting kiss. She waited, it was said, for a prince – a nobleman; for one strong enough to break the deadly barrier and pass within to her tower chamber. She was waiting for her alpha – as he waited for her.
Yet this was not always so; a curse has its beginning, as it has its ending. For a time, a few short years, the Princess lived in peace.
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For fourteen years, Kagome lived as a mortal princess, vivacious, beautiful, kind as the coming spring. She lived in the palace with her mother and her grandfather, waiting for the return of her father from endless campaigns in the distant south; she filled her days with lessons meant to teach her the occupations of a royal lady. At three, etiquette; at five, koto and zither, at eight, calligraphy, history, and needlepoint – none of the lessons ever stopped.
By twelve, she was praised with perfect; at fourteen, she was a legend of beauty. It was a legend that enticed men from near and far...a legend that incited jealousy from more than one lesser-favored lady. Humble and courteous, Kagome lived unaware of the darkness drawing near; she, who had never known jealousy, did not understand.
It was sunset and the day of her fifteenth birthday when an evil priestess, prodded beyond enduring by the unattainable perfection of the Princess, tossed enchantments over the castle.
The magic fell swiftly, as soft and clinging as a web of silk. Inside, everyone from the Queen and her father to the stable boys and cooks fell into a cloying nightmare sleep.
Last of them all, the Princess walked dazed to her tower bedchamber, and lay herself down, and dreamed.
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What of the dreams that rolled like waves of stars across the Princess' millennium of sleep? What did they tell her of the blind void of the future? What did they murmur of the hidden truths of life?
No one knows for certain; only the Princess herself could say. Yet we know she woke wanton to the hands of a Beast in man's shape; that the castle around them broke out of sleep to the echo of lustful cries.
Perhaps she was taught the ways of a lover; perhaps it was the flush of her body's heat and not a maiden's blush that stained her cheeks through a thousand years of sleep.
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The dreams began quietly; testing, as it were. She walked down long paths of silence, bounded by roses, bounded by fragrance like fire; she came to a clearing where a bed of stones lay covered by fur, beckoning. Eventually, she stepped forward, and ran her hands over the soft layers, and then lay down.
The next time she walked the rose-limited path, she knew that she was not alone. She felt a watchful presence, strong...overwhelmingly strong. A wave of darkness rose up over the flowers and turned them shimmering indigo in the shadows; she took the last turn of the path and saw him waiting there, golden-eyed, night embodied, the surest flaw in heaven's great plan...if only he chose to be so.
In the dream, she walked forward unafraid and reached out to bury her hands in white fur, to press her body against a velvet-soft nose, and let out a long breath.
“I have been waiting...but has it been a very long time? Have you been here all this while? Have I never been alone? This is not yet the moment; and yet somehow I know you, Inu mine.”
The Inu did not, could not speak; still, Kagome sensed in him recognition, acceptance, desire – but what was this last? A thing with which she had no real experience; a thing for which her flesh was just barely reaching; still, she felt her body responding, reacting, pressing outward to match heat with heat.
The gold eyes of the Beast pierced her like a lance of fire; she closed her eyes, and then began her walk once again down a path lined with roses, roses orange as flame, roses pink as a blushing bride, roses red as a maiden's secret flesh.
She walked and it seemed like forever, but the end that waited for her was like nothing she had ever dreamed, bespelled or safe in the sweetness of her youth.
She dreamed a man-who-was-not-a-man, the Beast of other dreams given a human shape. She dreamed gold eyes that drew her, beckoned and consumed her; she dreamed the touch of hands on her wrists, at her shoulder; she dreamed of hands with sharp claws that cut away the loose fabric of her gown.
She felt the fabric slither off her body, felt the breeze that wafted the scent of the roses playing cool havoc with her nerves.
With a strength she could not deny, the Inu pressed her back against the bed, flat on her stomach. Soft fur slid between the lips of her sex, tantalizing her nerves with new sensations; she learned erotic in that moment, and then felt hands on her thighs, forcing them apart.
Something blunt and hard and hot prodded at the secret entrance of her body, and then sank instantly deep.
The Princess tossed back her head and cried out the submission that had been taken from her.
His thrusts drove her down against the fur; she howled and pleaded and cried for more.
Perhaps it was her howls that he understood; even in the dream and the throes of her first passion, she knew that her word were not known to him, that conscience was unknown to him and consciousness fledgling, growing.
It was known to her as things are known in dreams; without reason or motive, without research or intention. She accepted it, as she had accepted him inside her; she was full of nothing, now, but longing for all these new sensations.
The discovery of her body as a sensual being, the discovery that she was a lustful Beast in her own right...these were things that pleased her. She wanted...more. Again, more; always, more. Always.
And when she asked for it, he gave it to her, dragged her hips tight to his body and drove deep inside her, pressed in and up, touching the center of the burning flame in her belly. Each thrust brought the smooth head of his erection against that spot; her hands wandered, trying to fill the tiny void of sensation that kept her hovering at the edge of something she did not know – something she wanted.
For a moment, her fingers hovered at her nipples, pinching the tight pink nubs, rolling them gently – and then his mouth was on them, sucking, biting, and she let out another cry and pressed her breasts up to his mouth.
Her hands grasped at the furs, at her thighs, and then slowly, oh – so slowly, two fingers of her right hand crept between their bodies. She felt wetness, and then slipped the fingers lower...lower...
Just above where he pressed into her body, her fingers moved a swollen nub of flesh – and then she did it again, purposefully.
The Inu growled as silky walls closed tight around him.
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So that was the way of it, and years passed into decades of darkness, centuries of shadow, while silence drowned the court and towers of the palace and thorns swallowed the silence whole.
As time wound by, the thorns came to bear roses, lovely to behold and bearing a sweet and luscious fragrance. Through the years before the Inu's coming, and after; during the years of his long sleep, the beautiful blossoms lured many men with the promise of the still more beautiful flower hidden within.
The Princess dreamed her dreams, of lust and then of love; of demon heat, and darkness.
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When the Inu came, breaking past the barriers that had been set to defy all comers, he broke the dream that had held the Princess in sweetness for a thousand years. In the haze between dreaming and waking, she felt a rough tongue caress her parted lips, once, gently.
This, she understood; he was Inu.
Was it not the only kiss he knew?
For a moment, she shuddered; and then she woke. Her eyes blinked open lazily, oh – so lazily; as if she had had but a few minutes nap on a languorous afternoon. When they did open, blinking, the blue of the autumn sky peered up into gold summer's sun. She took a deep breath, and let out a sigh.
Though his shape was almost human now, she could see the beast in his face; the wild-eyed stare of the Inu, its darting desires, its fleshly conscience. She was not surprised, not afraid. One thousand years of dreams had prepared her for this moment; in her sleep, she had lived it many times.
Her finger slipped up and touched his lips, their new softness. She pressed her mouth to his mouth, tasted fire and honey and taught him kiss, as he had taught her – one thousand times, in dreams; one thousand years that were forever, newly awakened.
“My Inu; my demon. Sesshomaru -”
And so she named him:
Killing Perfection. The one that ends the circle, though the circle was made to be without end.
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End of Book II
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-r0o's GM Challenge-
Third Challenge: 11/1/11-2/15/12
A/N: Well...phew. Part II, complete. One more part, probably a bit shorter, is to come...most of this was written during r0o's super awesome GMDDN last night, in 300 word bits. Hopefully I edited it correctly together. The following prompts were used in the making of this chapter: Alpha; Darkness; Forced Submission, Discovery. And perhaps one more...which I cannot remember. Oh! And the epigraph - once more, Pablo Neruda :D
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