Private Tales Lost It To Trying

[Rhidian]

Rhidian didn't need to turn around from watching the pot begin to boil to know what it was she was speaking about.

"Well... let me get everything in this pot to simmer and we have some time to work on it together." He flashed her a reassuring smile from where he stood, before turning back to add the chicken bones and vegetables into the boiled water. Rhidian placed the lid over the pot and turned the hour glass around, placing it somewhere he could see.

Moving towards Odessa, he took the box and her hand and pulled her to join him on the only bed in the quarters given to him. He already told her she could take it, and he would make do on the chair in the living area. He kicked off his boots, already loosened once they had gotten in, and patted the space next to him. "Lie down. If we are going to do this, I think I rather you first experience softness and comfort." It did better than being sat on a wooden chair and acting anxious without so much as feeling an inch of it.

"Here, hold my hand if you want to... just, we can do this slowly."

 

[Odessa Urahil]

The smile he flashed made her burn up somewhere deep inside. She wondered once she could feel, if she could feel, if it would feel the same. She only offered a hesitant smile back before he turned away to tend to his cooking. It had been a smart choice, she realized, to prepare something that he could leave for half a day to warm over the fire. They may very well need that time.

Odessa had long since abandoned her snowy boots and sodden coat. She knew not of how they would feel from experience, but the complaints of her siblings and classmates had never quite left her. Oh, and the colds they would suffer from if they were soaked a little too long. She did not wish for her first go at feeling to be so miserable.

And so, Odessa sat at the edge of the bed until he told her to lie. Then she did as she was told and let her head rest gently on the servant’s lumpy pillow. She passed the tiny box between her hands before accepting the hand extended to her. With the other, she opened it and slipped it on her finger.

She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until her body forced a gasp of air. She looked at the ring, at Rhidian’s hand, and then at the ceiling. Nothing. She felt absolutely nothing. Tears threatened the corners of her eyes and she shut them, shaking her head and pulling her hand away. “I’m sorry.” She said to no one in particular. “I have wasted enough money to have bought two houses. We were scammed.” Heavy breathing followed, she tried not to cry from whatever it was she was feeling. Embarrassed. Disappointed. Angry.

There were a few minutes of silence before she sat up swiftly, swearing to get revenge on the conman jeweler. But the world seemed to spin around her. Quickly, too quickly.

The tips of her fingers on one hand- the one with the ring- burned. Burned in a way she couldn’t describe. It started as a tingle and after a second it felt like flames flowing up her arm and through her whole body. And as soon as it began, it died down. Odessa wasn’t sure if she screamed or if it had been her imagination. But when she opened her eyes again, she looked down. The blanket she had gripped. It felt scratchy, strawlike. But more importantly, she could feel it.

“Rhidian!” She wanted to shout, but it was barely a whisper that came out of her mouth. “I think it has worked!”

 

[Rhidian]

He wanted to move to her, to touch her arm and let her experience his touch first, but he did not wish to rob her of going about what she wanted to experience first. Rhidian stayed on his side of the bed, grinning at her as she sat with her back to him.

"Stay there." He said, rolling off the bed and rushing towards the kitchen. He had bought some berries for breakfast from the market, and after washing them in a bowl, he now turned back around and wandered over to Odessa, towering before her. "Here, try the berries." There were different sorts there, all different textures and bite.

Taste, he thought, was perhaps the most important thing to experience first. Touch and emotion... he could not feel a pang of guilt she was going to experience that with him. After the first night they spent together, and even at dawn, they were practically at each other's throats. If she could feel then, he was sure he would be in more trouble.

 

[Odessa Urahil]

She couldn't decide where to start and with what. Everything, from the way things smelled to the way she saw things- so vivid for the the first time- was completely overwhelming. She was shaking when Rhidian returned and held a berry out for her. It was embarrassing, having Rhidian watch her struggle to lift her own body up enough to sit. Like a baby, she thought, learning to use its muscles for the first time to prop its head up or flip over. The thought of that made her face redden.

She carefully reached out, after she'd managed to swing her legs over the side, and plucked a blueberry. She almost hissed at the feeling of cold water on her skin.

The berry, she held it up to the light, was bizarre. Both spiky and soft, it felt weird. And she grimaced when those textures touched the nerves that had awoken in her mouth. Still, she bit down and when it burst, she looked at Rhidian with wide eyes. "It tastes..." She hadn't had a word for it. Sweet, perhaps. She'd heard other people describe them that way. Maybe bitter. Perhaps if she had known how these were supposed to taste, she wouldn't have spent a week recovering from the effects of the poisonous berries she'd once devoured on a mission as a dare. A lethal dose for anyone else, Perri told her in a lecture, she was lucky.

She spent the next twenty-five minutes picking up each different berry. Odessa inspected them, felt the grooves and spikes. The softness of some and firmness of others. She asked Rhidian what they should taste like. Then, she popped them in her mouth. One by one. And used his guidance to determine each unique flavor.

By the end of it, she had grown tired of the overwhelming flavors and wanted to move on to something else. Odessa had been hateful, cold, and angry. This girl was the opposite- a girl given the opportunity to experience the world. Given everything no one else could. And even then, she couldn't hide her need to move quickly from one thing to the next.

"Give me your hand. I want to feel it." She demanded, though her voice was merely filled with curiosity as she slipped from the bed and stood- or tried to. She struggled to stand. Her legs shook as she tried to move towards him, but she only managed to collapse into him as she cursed herself. She was not angry, but noted how weak she felt. How disgustingly mortal.

 

[Rhidian]

Both is hands went to catch the clumsy on her feet Initiate, but he had not been fast enough to steady her. Instead, he wrapped her in his arms and moved her to fall across his lap. Helping her, he supposed it was no true harm to leave her to now sit on his lap, the wooden bowl of berries on the floor and the few fruit left having rolled away.

Rhidian dared not to breath deeply, one hand resting behind her back and at her hip, another coming up to be offered for her to take as she had requested. To have her this close, this intimate as she newly came to discover slowly how it felt to feel... He knew he had been reeled back into his fancy of her. "Let me warm your hands." He murmured, aware that his voice was at her ear.

He reached around and took her hand, pulling it to her lap. His thumb began lightly rubbing the back of her hand, a gentle massage done slowly in order for her to sate her curiosity.

"I don't want to overwhelm you... so you tell me when to slow down, alright, Dess?"

 

[Odessa Urahil]

Odessa couldn't fight any of it. The way her face burned, bright and pink. The fact that she could feel the burning and couldn't quite describe it to herself, in her head. Couldn't fight how gravity worked against her or how oh so fragile she felt now that she could feel.

She couldn't fight the gasp that escaped her when Rhidian obliged and pulled her hand into his lap. Or the laughter that hung in the air like windchimes from a sort of joy she had never felt before. Her laughter had barely ceased when he began rubbing the back of her had, but she offered him a feline smile when she looked up.

"Do you feel fragile?" Her eyes alight with curiosity as she watched his hand and savored every strange sensation. His calluses on her smooth skin were irritating, yet with the lightness of his touch seemed to be soft. She didn't want him to stop and certainly would not ask anything of the sort.

She couldn't imagine a life feeling so delicate. Perhaps that was what made her so deadly. Odessa, born as she was, felt unbreakable. Like the strongest diamond, she was sharp and strong. But now, she felt like glass. Like she might have shattered if he let her hit the floor. It was a miracle she'd managed not to get herself killed yet.

 

[Rhidian]

"Me? Fragile?" He gave her a quizzical look, unsure of what she meant until it clicked for him. Realisation softened his face, turning him to smile and give a soft chuckle. "No, Dess. I feel my natural self."

He could not help himself, not now when she peered up with those crystalline eyes. For the first time, he saw that delicate expression, the softness in the way she spoke. It was Odessa, but it also was as if she had woken up and forgotten all sense about herself. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her in to his chest. He cradled her, gently, not putting too much force in the way he held her.

"And now? Do you still feel fragility?"

 

[Odessa Urahil]

She stared up at him, eyes wide as he pulled her into an embrace- one he may have thought gentle, but one that Odessa felt crushing her. Though, unlike her legs collapsing under her weight, it was not a bad feeling. She nestled into the warmth of his neck as he pulled her in close and allowed her to breathe in his scent.

"You don't feel your skin burning?" Her breath was hot on his skin as she spoke, "Or your heart beating so fast? I am not going to die, am I?"

 

[Rhidian]

She was a precious thing. He wanted to hold her there, feed her his warmth, but it also brought a chuckle out from him. He rumbled with it, trying to stifle it but it was soon becoming entertaining. "Are you saying I'm hot, Dess?"

He nuzzled his face into the side of her head, still holding her. Rhidian exhaled, warming her cheek before placing a small brush of a kiss there.

"Listen to my heart. It beats the same as yours, but there are times it will... poud faster. A lot of feeling will determine that but I can give you an example..." And so he brushed his lips along her jaw. Found a kiss pressed behind her ear before caressing a line down the side of her throat and nuzzle in where her jacket restricted him. "Soft touches like that... but even something such as sudden and shocking things can make your heart poud."

 

[Odessa Urahil]

"No!" Odessa laughed, "Well! I mean....yes but no! My skin!" Oh gods what was she trying to say?! There was no use trying to explain her burning cheeks. He could probably see that god-awful shade of bright pink that was spreading over her entire body as she rambled.

She followed his instruction and shifted so that she could hear his heart. Hers felt like it was going double the speed, but his seemed to increase as she kept her head there to listen and feel the beats. At his touch, or perhaps his explanation, hers seemed to pound harder. "How bizarrely human." She commented, barely a whisper on her lips.

But her curiosity did not stop there. "Mine. I can feel it in my throat." She pulled one hand out from Rhidian's grasp and placed it over her heart. "There!" She grabbed his own hand and placed it under hers, guiding it along her skin. "You mean to tell me this is normal?"

 

[Rhidian]

Odessa always felt warm under his touch, but his growing affection for her led him to wish to redo the night before. It had been clumsy of them, foolish even. But now? It was the chance for Odessa to see what it meant to Rhidian.

He dragged his hand up to her throat, where she said she could feel her heartbeat, and held her still.

"Very normal, Dess."

His thumb ran up the front of her throat, tilting her chin back so he could look into her eyes. "I like hearing you talk about how it feels to be human... to feel it all." But was this not taking advantage of her in such a new state?

But... a kiss was such an innocent thing, was it not?

Rhidian pulled her to him, not going for a gentle kiss like he thought was best, but rather had gone for one that begged to remembered. She tasted sweet, the berries lingering there and driving him to take more of her breath as his own.

 

[Odessa Urahil]

"Promise me." Odessa demanded, shivering as his fingers tickled along her neck and rested on her jaw. "This is all how it's supposed to be." Her words had barely left her lips when his own pressed into hers, a sensation she had not expected to feel so soon. There was nothing delicate, no hesitation as if he cared that she were testing the waters with her newfound ability to feel.

But Odessa preferred to dive head-first.

The warmth and gentle pressure as their lips molded together was not something Odessa wished to lose so soon. And the electric spark that traveled down from her lips into her stomach, her spine, down to her toes...She felt like she had been born anew, finding a part of herself that was missing in the embrace of Rhidian. When he pulled away, she stared up at him. Eyes wide, Odessa Urahil was pouting. She was begging him not to pull away so soon.

"Please don't stop..."