User blog:MockingJester/The running man

The cacophony of screams merging and feuding with encroaching roars. Anguished, victorious, somewhere in between, all resonate and echo through the leaves and trees, grass and soil, almost tempted to be filtered as background noise, white emissions.

The kingdom of scales gives little warnings to those falling for those desires, the most direct being that of a creature's screech, either bestial, raw, violent, dripping with hunger, glaring at unsuspecting preys. One that, tired with the incessant cacophony, decided to blur out its declaration, the sight of its prey being teeth, claws, or something else entirely.

If not for a creature of horrid sight and intent, then a ravenous creature walking in a woman's form and flesh. Alluring to gaze at and a honey trap for the unwary. Concupiscence dips their lips, their fruitful organ, and lust greater in size and potency than that of a woman. To relentlessly drink of a man's nether fluids, often with others following near, smelling a delicacy so often dismissed.

Man is a delicate resource, after all, in this land of danger and allure. As substance. As a mate. And more often than not, spectators to the skirmishes of countless beasts, grounded or not. Natural or not. Ice versus fire. Earth versus lightning. Poison versus strength. Spectators unwillingly dragged into the stage by the admission of wanting wits.

Not everyone, however. Not Murcyre, a runner. A courier. Currently gleaming through faunas, his feet, hydraulic effectiveness of flesh, and bones. They run in faultless steps, followed closely by a starved pack of raptors.

Drool carves its way out of their gaping maws between the porous teeth devoid of red. Their atrophied stomachs speak of the hunger that trailed behind them, having been unable to satiate their need for fresh flesh, the particular taste of men.

Yet, for their desperate run, their continual trampling, graceless in their blind strafe, Murcyre had ample steps ahead. The wooden box buckled on his back did little to fulfill their fantasy of wearing him down. Not when he was only starting his day.

"Sorry, teeth, I'm not feeling like being a seasoned snack today". Murcyre sends a two-finger wave at the pack of fangs snapping in his direction, infuriating them...if it was possible, doubling in their running effort. They hurl their bodies forward drawing on the dwindling reserves already acrid from their starvation...

...and trip. Murcyre accelerates, taking a deep inhalation as he looks forward, his focus dilating his view. Earthen branches, he jumps. Tree bulks, he sidesteps. A tree twig, he swings upward, turning into a leaper for the ones forward.

His predators fail to keep up, the speed at which they run cutting their reactive instincts to nigh-impractical as they trip on his jumps, collapse on his sidesteps, and fall over their attempt at jumping, leaving most of them mangled wrecks. Injured and at a loss for distance, the uninjured roar in his direction, spewing promises of vengeance in their garbled screeches.

Murcyre's run continues, relented as he no longer feels any eyes on him. Only the shout. Only the fauna's atmosphere...and possibly a T-rex feuding with a woman.

"Hmm?" Murcyre stops his monkey leap across the sturdy branches, one of them weighing down from the cradling weight the man imposes on it. He squats as he gets semi-comfortable, intrigued by the scenery before him.

"Man...that's a lot of dead T's". Murcyre's black-stained glasses reflect a plethora of deceased Tyrannosaurus over dozens of smoldering craters, the ashen smoke still dancing in the wind. There was no grass to witness this destruction, evaporated in what looked like multiple detonations.

Only brown soil remained. Brown soil and slagging rocks once buried within. There was barely any living creature around. Only it. And only her...

"I knew moving to the soft lands would give me no end of disappointment, but this...!" A woman. The sky blue plates masquerading over her immediately set her apart from a human with how thick and blunt they were. The only piece of clothing that clings to her body. At least, to his definition of clothing.

"I told him this place had nothing for me. They're too entitled, here". Her fists and forehead, embalmed in this natural armor glimmer in the sun in a green hue. Usually yellow in battle, this boxing woman had quite the disappointed visage, unwilling to muster her super-reactive slime to their utmost potency. A sign of pity toward the T-rex?

"Ok, buddy! You survived trying to make me your lunch so far! I mean, compared to your dead mates. Come on, come on! Try again! Maybe you'll get lucky with a bite!" Definitively pity. Mercy that the last Tyrannosaurus spits on, hurling its defiant rage as it brings its row of teeth to the front in a charge. A grinning counterpart awaiting him, the sludge on her fists illuminating, hues changing.

"Well, that's interesting enough, but..." Murcyre preferred not to be a victim of explosive punching. Even at his distance where it was unlikely that she would accidentally spot him, caution was the line of safety.

From his squatting position, he leaps to an alternate run, ignoring the reverberating detonation and the shockwave traveling alongside. And an anguished screaming.

Murcyre's travel is elongated via the loop taken. The clock still ticks in his favor, upkeeping with dozens of minutes to spare as he finally relents, landing over to the carpet of a door, a hefty loot crate set in front of a wood-laminated door, surprisingly polished for a place that does not tolerate the pompous display.

The surrounding did little to help, what with the golden lion statue pieces standing idly with a grilled gate between them. The stone placed as ramparts looked individually picked, polished, and ground in their luster, sporting a rarified teal. It stretches over what looks like kilometers to the left and the right, driving home the wealth of whoever happened to own this piece of land so far from the faunas and jungles. A piece of civilization away from the kingdom of scales and teeth.

Murcyre nods as he puts down the loot crate that has been enjoying a ride on the courier's back "I can see why this one was an express run..." From his pouch comes a paper with the details of the delivery. Time, in this case, was on his side with minutes to spare for the unforgiving elite.

"Poor sap paid extra for an express run that I would have gone the full mile regardless. Aw, well..." Murcyre shrugs as he tapes the paper to the crate before taking a hollow cylinder painted in steel red. A trigger and butt are graciously crafted into it, making it look like a pistol, only with a much shorter barrel.

He pulls the barrel cylinder downward where space was waiting for a projectile. A porous, red crystal encased in a metallic loop. The ammunition.

Hearing a click of the ammo's insertion, Murcyre points the flare gun near the four-story house, its foundations, and height presenting it more as a mansion than anything else.


 * thump*

A smoking trail follows a burning hot star expelled out of the barrel, arcing upward as expected. Whatever potential as a damaging projectile is replaced by the ammo's loud, and boisterous manifestation, sure to catch the attention of whoever is present, likely waiting for the holy sword said to help them retain their 'elegance in a land of unrefined savages'.

Before the master of the house even acknowledges the sudden detonation and a fluorescent light traveling the sky, Murcyre was already gone, sprinting away. The day was only starting for the courier. More deliveries, more runs, more teeth, more claws, more everything... --- His blur darts to the safest of routes, meeting folks on the road sometimes. His astute nature, especially in a place so chaotic allowed him ample time to spare.

Of course, his detours to the most inhospitable uncharted parts are also part of the ordeal, much more than the previous as few fools had enough stubbornness to upkeep a route likely to become a site of prowling. Those that hunt for a living would never give in to a courier's request. Not a lot of people do...

Still, Murcyre moved to the high and low, a frequent companion to his runs to the beginning of the night where a bed awaited his weary body. The steam that carries his feet is nowhere to be found, leaving the man with little stamina at each night.

"Phew...man, you'd think this place would drop the occasional heat". His finger plucks the piece between his goggles, pulling it up to drop on the kitchen table. Hefty droplets of sweat peel off his brow as he sweeps a hand across.

But, sweat inhibits his entire wracked body, more uncovered in his unclothing. His winged helmet and thin-plated chest plate. His winged greaves and sleek thigh protection. All reveal a layer of sweat. The sweat unveils the weary muscles and tired bones.

Eating was a matter of a single loaf, too tired to think of brewing a more balanced supper. A supper for night's beginning...that never happens with the mask that he forgot, still clinging to his cheeks and chin. A piece he always held apart from his helmet despite the two coming together.

"Oh, come on! I forgot my mask--ugh, forget it, I'm too tired to pull it off..." He drags his aching body to his room in a house among many, a limbo dance that enfeebles him whenever. He falls flat on his bed, welcoming its fluffy embrace as a therapy for a worn body... --- The dawn comes as abruptly as ever, virulent in the screams of beasts at no end of feuds. Disputes, hundreds of them, with one, in particular, echoing throughout the surrounding space, near Murcyre's place.

His awakening comes. Slightly groggy. Slightly sluggish. But it comes, mostly from his overclocking instincts, honed on a razor's edge "Good grief, another territory dispute?"

Waking up to the sound of conflicted screeches is never the most docile chirp, even in the crucible that is this realm. Shaking his head, Murcyre forces his feet off his bed, staggering up as he makes his way through breakfast. Sleeping on an empty stomach was one thing. But running on one...

"Never felt like sleeping on the job. Not with such lovelies just waiting to intentionally mistake me for free dinner cooking on the sun..." Murcyre takes the best of five minutes to cobble up a mix of bread, salami, and lettuce. A ramshackle attempt at breakfast that ends up half-eaten as the courier speeds his way out of his place, a hand hastily searching a mailbox midway his run outside.

So early he began tearing the envelope of one, Murcyre was already standing over a tree. A familiar bulk among recognizable ones that he devised as one safe spot over many far from home "Let's see...report...report...report..."

Paper after paper, the letters fall, all spouting generic praises for his on-time delivery, a thing becoming white noise to his eyes. He knows he's a fast mailman. If he botched a job, he would be the first one to know. What attracted him was the following bundle. Delivery offerings "Royal courier...merchant delivery man...we are happy to extend a hand to you--we promise a most reputable pay--the honor of--blah, blah, blah. They keep sending these like I'm dying to deliver nothing but vanity items while spending most of the time rolling my thumbs...pff".

The gild-plated papers are torn asunder and left to fall as Murcyre continues to go through his mail, now into the section of deliveries available. One, in particular, involved a few backs and forths "Ohh? Now, this is interesting".

He swoops off a tree, taking a falling glance off a distant butting of heads between beasts as he runs away, the memory of the address burned in his mind.

As ever, his running speed carries him to the place. Mostly a field of...well... "Jeez, it'd be easier to write off what isn't here..."

A beautiful, golden field of wheat stands before him. It is like a spot particularly carved by the sun to shine on, reflect its lustrous image. A golden yellow standing out in what was essentially chaos. A slice of someone's peace happily standing out.

"Ooh, man that place sounds pretty quiet. I wonder what could keep this place from being--" Murcyre noted how...clean this place is. No predator. No scavengers. No one and nothing here but the golden wheat field and the distant house presented at the back. Remote as it was, there was bound to have interested parties setting here. Mostly herbivores seeing this place as a haven.

And it was a farming haven. Not for them, however. Not with the sudden, bursting field of magnetic flickering alive to his step. Murcyre snaps alive in a half-second, his instinct pushing him away in a backstep.

His eyes catch the particles floating. Dust, tiny spits of stone, bits of wheat, all hovering in a slow ascension in the corner where he stands. Inches from the soft, dull green glimmer glowing in an almost invisible shape.

"Woah..." Murcyre is tempted. He jests a finger towards it, expecting a force to push it away, acting as a repulsor. Yet, the moment his finger makes contact with the field, it seemingly attracts it further, pulling it close. Pulling him close.

"Ah, so I can pass? Sweet..." A moderate, but direct attraction pulls forth, one that he gives in, crossing the magnetic force seemingly responsible for keeping this place untouched.

His body is pulled inward, stepping through what should be a rejecting wall of magnetism. The transition between space is instant, as seamless as everyday steps...

...at least to him.

"Hmm?...ok..." Only when he fully converges inside...only then do his eyes turn to the back, seeing the facade of the formless dome he walked retuning to idleness. Stones litter a pattern looking to arc the further he follows their path. At a certain distance...

"Guy must have thought this place as the perfect corner to catch dinner". A deceased creature lays close to the stretching path of stones charged with power. One piece of rock lies inert not far, a few distinct cracks by the flank. Its size is notably larger than the pebbles decorating the richly fertile ground. Judging by the adjacent damage to the creature's teeth and neck, the head-size rock must have had been involved in its demise.

But...how did that come to--

"Wait...why am I even thinking about this right now? Clock's ticking!" Murcyre shakes his head, dousing the immediate space around with spare sweat before jogging over to the blowing wheat. He does so, pushing his mind to forget about the rumble settling inside the thin plates of his chest and quickened breaths behind his mask.

A curious scene welcomes him as he finally makes his way to the inner circle, the place beyond the gorgeous field of enriched wheat, almost ripe for the picking.

A burrow vomits upward from a certain distance, surrounded by ample, brown worked grounds. Looking to the surrounding he approaches, Murcyre spots a few metallic tools encrusted in earthly grime, freshly so.

A finger on his chin, Murcyre began his formative thought...only to have it spit out equally with the earth from the mound closer, in greater quantities.

Hands spew out, clutching the ground from the hole they hail from. An olive shade blurs out the dull brown that dominated the ground with lemon eyes looking back like a mirror.

"So sorry for not seeing you earlier". A faint giggle accompanies her blatant attempt at a pun. One that goes through Murcyre's ears as his eyes were taking most of the thoughts. Thought directly mapping the woman halfway buried to the hole just emerged.

The green shade he initially spotted spilling alongside the woman was but a cowl. A beautiful, radiant olive cowl dressing her head, but a simple cowl none the less. One not unlike the sort that women of monastic churches. Identical to a tee, save for the color.

The hair the dirt-stained silk covers is a luscious golden brand, knotted into a ponytail, the sort common among field workers who enjoy keeping their hair reasonably long. Hers, if Murcyre could see, stranded behind her head.

An area attracts his eyes like a blinding light that he cannot help himself but stare at. But he does, shaking his head as he forces his view away, trying to remind himself more than her of his presence "Yea...I'm here to help with the...delivery?"

"Ohh!" The woman claps her hands in a jubilous surprise "Right! I didn't expect someone to be here so quick, let alone anyone. Barrels of bread aren't exactly the most exciting of goods". A bright, almost blinding smile peers through her teeth, shimmering two abnormally large fangs. A quick flash of teeth quickly sealed behind sun-tanned lips marbled in a delectable caramel glistening. All while her hands join in a prayer-like gesture, humbled by his presence.

Once again, it attracts just as it forces his mind to realize where he stares, finding the woman hopping out of the hole a strangely magnetic pull to his eyes. Once again, he forces himself to look away to the dancing weaves of the numberless wheat. In this state, he was blind to the exotic apparel blending a dancer of the sun and a humble woman of a church, washed in green. Opened in certain areas, such as between her chest and waist, bridal gauntlets, and sleeves. A mix clouded in modesty and allure, one wholly alluring to the courier's eyes. It dances with his words, blurring them slightly "Well...that's...that's why I took it. Better off to...well, almost get eaten for something valuable over something...vain".

Her legs are entirely devoid of any footwear any at all, making it a surprising sight to witness them as spotless as they were, judging by her recent emergence from the earth. She walks to a few crates nearby, enjoying the shadow of a sturdily built rooftop. The temperature is noticeably lower compared to the scorching heat she and Murcyre bake under, him more than her with his outfit.

She taps one of the tiny crates, sighing while shooting a look to the delivery man "These are what I need delivering. barrels full of freshly baked bread...probably from the sun while I was tending to the field. Though...with the numbers of these..." She taps the closest barrel, the latter, echoing in a fulfilled sound "...you might feel overwhelmed by the task at hand".

His eyes still locked around the woman, subtly admiring her shape, blending tones, and smoothness. An unintentional look he still falls for again, glad to be wearing goggles to mask his wandering eyes. He gestures to himself, patting the plates on his body halfway "Don't worry about that, ma'am. I'm used to that".

"Gracious! Well, I'll leave you to it. I'll have your pay waiting by the end of the day depending on how much you can deliver".

"Of course! Don't worry..." Murcyre takes one of the dozens of barrels near the shack. Stacks loaded with a supply much taken for granted...like those who burn their backs making the stuff in ample quantity.

With it, he runs, his velocity rapidly ramping up to his optimal run. His run...attracting an ever bundle of salivating predators looking to follow the running man beyond the protective ward.

His run, more welcomed than the many returns to the woman who's surrounding dirt cannot blemish her allure. Nor dirt, nor sweat, nor exhausting muscles.

A mere first day on the run for this oddly charming woman and his muscles already seemed on the brink of exhaustion. A faint sensation pulling at the furthest recess of his mind. A faint whisper, a quaint tug, only present at the back, barely gaining any ground over the day's journey... --- "Are you sure you do not want a stay here?" The day fell to the evening, a herald of the encroaching stars. Murcyre's feet throb with sore touches. Moreso than the rest of his body. Even his hands and fingers, as red and sore as they were, cradling the numerous and much-needed batches of loaves could hope to imagine the wracking ache of his shins.

"Yea...yea...do-don't worry". He grits his teeth, a fiction as much as any. One that his body bites him for with additional tiredness feedback "I don't need a crash at your place. A worker sleeping in his employee's couch? Way too weird".

Another deception that hides behind his mask. One that he refuses to acknowledge.

"Are you sure?" The woman takes a step close, hands behind her back. Her expression is mostly that of a basic sense of understanding. Though... "I would have enjoyed the fortune of hearing the wonderful stories you might have. Someone this able-bodied surely must have had riveting tales to share".

"Maybe if I come back one day..." Murcyre bows slightly, a slight, yet increasingly unhinged expression under his mask Something was becoming wrong with him, and having the night to deal with only made whatever his gripe was much worse. Much, much...

"Ohh..." The woman bow, a soft smile peering from her face, one stroking a particularly sensitive chord somewhere in the man. It only seemed to make his pace a hurried one, his payment concealed in a tiny box on his belt.

He makes a speedy wave while running away, leaving the woman alone with his last words. 'Maybe if I come back one day...' --- "Jungle fever. Should be down now..." The night slept on an empty stomach for the runner. Aching and bruised from the ordeal of repetition, he slumped over to his bed, far too tired to bother with anything innocuous. Taking five minutes to remove the speedster plates on his body...even this asked too much from the tired man.

It was a relief to hear the morning dew of Saturday pooling to the tired man. It and its twin, Sunday, brought rest and relaxation.

Far from the numerous danger zones of the massive land, Murcyre wakes up to the humble rumble of a stomach. His stomach...

...at least in his self-made mind, thick with the sweat of what sounded like a nightmare. A delusion trailing off the increasingly hazy thought, perfumed with a sweetened scent and visions of green. The so-called 'jungle fever' that made itself an unwilling visitor to the runner.

"Ohh, I'm starving!" His stomach had space to fill, however, with yet another evening skipping supper, far too tired to have bothered. With two days to recuperate, there was little excuse for the man not to at least put something down his gullet.

His body still aches from the non-stop running of yesterday, making repetitions for the sake of this emerald woman standing in a field of gold. An oasis calling...

He shakes his head, eyes glazing the return of his dream as he fashions a mundane sandwich of meat and cheese. Another one, enough for him.

He bites down the plain combo as he walks to his mailbox "I don't usually get things int he weekend...eh, never hurts to check". One of his hands searches the hollow compartment, finding nothing as expected.

His eyes glaze over the distance. Moving shades. A remembrance from one of the duos. Marvin. Another delivery man who managed to survive and thrive in this race&delivery, even while relentlessly trailed by all manners of creatures.

A good friend to Murcyre who knew a lot about the best paths to run and those to avoid in a place seemingly filled with nothing but the latter.

But, at this moment, it wasn't the man that stroke familiarity with Murcyre, despite well knowing the man. Not when he sees him almost every weekend.

No, that honor belonged to the woman panting and moving beside his morning footsteps, taken in what looked like a morningtide run at jogging speed.

Their arms are entwined with the other, joined in cooperative pacing. The thick, sticky glue that coated her armored fists in volatile jelly did nothing to worry the man who ran, joined to a very embroiled woman, far from the explosive temperament he saw her before. Even her voice has a radical shift, far from the apathetic boredom she scolded her vicious victims "Feelin' up for another lap, hon'? Or maybe you'd prefer me to whip up something in the kitchen? Seriously, I couldn't care less with my best spar partner here!"

"Whatever fits your boat. This is a vacation compared to getting run down by starving beasts and lazy robbers". The man looks back to her grin, a tide of warmth warping her expression. Almost awaiting these words.

"Is that so?" A red flow jams her cheeks, anticipating a hasty grab over the man, setting him over the tone and teal armored woman's back. Once again, a bit of surprise comes to Murcyre, seeing his good friend casually hopped on her back with little, if any worry over the green gelatin known to deliver explosive demises.

Waiting for her mate to set his arms over her neck in balancing, the creature of volatile dotting sets herself in a running stance, breath fuming with excitement "Then we're gunning straight for home, hon'! My brave mailman needs the 'Charlotte special' to decompress...and I know just what body part to use--

The jog they joyfully partook in was a snail pace in comparison to the dust-trail the teal woman left in her wake, gone before Murcyre could even acknowledge that they were no longer under the choking screen.

"Hehe, looks like someone got too...too..." A snide comment was making his way through to the man, watching a fellow runner-in-arms now in the arms of a woman, an explosive one with competition in her mind clashing with bearings toward the man of her choice. A comment about his would-be snail pace.

Only...

Murcyre turns away, unable to make his jab as his mind replayed vague images of his dream "Jungle fever...looks like I'm sticking to bed this weekend...great..."

He returns to his domain, the morning just waking up to a man going back to bed, dazzled by this heat, forcing a mirage of green dancing in his thoughts, beckoning. It gradually simmers down over his two days off... --- Monday came with famine. Famine came half-filled on a meager mix of bread, cheese, salad, and salami. A daily picture on Murcyre's table, often the result of a shoddy breakfast judged enough for the man.

His body follows, slightly sluggish, slow to fully awake to the mailbox, catching whatever bundle of paper awaited him in the fold of his fingers. His run is uninterrupted by the quick action, giving him the leisure to read it.

"Ehh?" The hundred cries screeching out throughout the land mean nothing to his focus as the man set his goggle-addled eyes on the first letter, familiar writings waiting.

"And here I thought I was the avid runner...she's a faster baker than I've thought..." The very first letter, the very first array of deliveries available was of the same place from the same person. The sapient brilliance of emerald colors wrapped in a field of gold.

The immediate thought of her pulsates strongly with his heart, pumping a singular, strong beat. One that feeds a wholly different tide of electricity across his body...followed by warmth.

The jungle fever, it seems, vividly returned to strength. One he has no choice but to endure...and struggle against as it was the more promising delivery of them all. He goes, leaving the flat words of empty praise from the more wealthy and their request for particular deliveries in torn, shredded paper braided in gold, failing to catch any sliver of interest from the man. --- "Still mind-boggled at how hard at work she is..." His sprint to the field of wheat was mundane, the jungle, merely throwing out the unrelenting roars and whines of victories and defeat, survival, and death. Nothing more than wayward shadows he thought to have seen the previous week. Shadows that felt tethered to his sun-bathing shade.

Right now, the trivial interaction with the magnetic field separating him and the farm of wheat provided entertainment. To see it flicker alive wherever he poked, accepting his entrance was interesting.

Especially when compared to the carcass of a carnivore laying on the ground, not too far from a defaced stone the size of a fist. A different one from a different entrance "Feels like rocks have a thing against critters, here".

He steps in, feeling the slight magnetic gluing to his armor before giving up, absorbing him in the place where a woman immediately prompted up from grounded mold.

"Haha, I never knew I was so magnetic!", she expresses, seeing the man from last time with a jubilous laughter, hopping out of the hole once again ingrained in dirt and stone giblets.

"Hard to stay away with a wealth of work here". Murcyre raised a simple waving gesture, looking to merely greet the woman to draw his mind off this 'jungle fever' becoming an unwanted companion.

Instead, with no recourse to react, Murcyre feels the thin plates of his runner set fold to the soft, gentle embrace of the woman who came in lightning speed for a more intimate greeting.

A surge of warmth fills the man, briefly stunned by the impromptu accolade, unable to speak. He feels her, even crosswise the metal of his armor. Her touch, soft and smooth. Her scent, strong and faint. Especially faint, laced with an odor just outside of a name. A scent he had yet to put a name on.

Her gentle joining of hands before the man sets him back to attention, having been enchanted by this simple hug, a meager embrace "I am grateful that this meager woman of the earth can bring a man so reputed to her service. Come, let me show you what is ready to be brought off".

She turns, hands and arms away from the man, her imprint still leaving an impression on him...and a faint scent. Pleasurable. A visible spot on his mind occupied by his nostrils.

Another came to occupy it as he followed the woman to the shed where the barrels waited. The week prior had him unsure of her appearance, as human-like as she was, and is. The gown she wears still, initially thought to be something out of a desert dancer, elegantly wolven alongside with her hips in a perfect match.

But, now that he has a 'closer' look, she looked more like a mix of a nun and dancer of the desert, featuring modest concealments to her arms and head. From the waist to the feet. And still, this modesty carved out a piece of what sounded like an attempt at seduction, to be looked at, as her flawless belly stood out in the open, unstained by clothing, between her chest and hips.

Her arms followed suit, cloaking themselves up to the shoulders in gild and emerald olive. And so did her leggings, a long skirt threaded for scorching environments, leaving the side of her hips open to anyone catching a rare glimpse of them.

All of this seems to further this 'fever' he stows away, now within the range of the back wood barrels stocked in vast quantities, ready to be carried off. Murcyre's head sways left and right, followed closely by tiny cracks in his stretching.

His feet jolt in place, pumping themselves in small, rapid hops before promptly snatching the first of many, a piece of paper in hand to the whereabouts of its delivery. And the next one...

...and the next one...

...and the next one.

As he runs back and forth, burning through the meager calories stored in his body, Murcyre cannot help but feel the roars and screeches. White noise. Most of them were. But many and few, he feels, were closer to him. Almost targeting him.

He shakes his head, holding one of the many barrels of cargo on his shoulder whilst leaping from tree to tree "Man...I feel weirdly hot. The place isn't scorching enough for me to be so...must be that jungle fever again..." --- The week goes on, turning into two, turning into three, and beyond. They all see Murcyre speed his way through vines and faunas, kicking dust towards the reptilian beasts smelling the man's sweat, interpreting it as a tenderizer, and the cargo that would serve to sandwich him. Some places featured the choking gaps between trees and elevated grass, giving them no end of opportunities.

If not for the concentrated faunas, then the swamps denied him the easy run with an ear at the ground, with the bog waters promising a fast burn through his muscles. Thick, musky water looking to challenge anyone's sense of stamina...save for the creatures that dwell at their depth, snatching the more passive critters mistaking them for lifeless waters.

Some locations went further into acrid settings, cooking them man under a truly scorching sun, battling his sense of direction and awareness as a bright, blue blur with no corner to hide. No shade to rest. And plenty of desperate beasts drooling behind him, starved for the food resting on his shoulder, or the meat aromatized, steaming under his courier's armor.

These creatures, unwilling to abandon and burning any bridge of escape in a vast, open surrounding, were fed knives serrated with his brand of life force. Super vibrating daggers feeding on his perpetual motion, hurled at supersonic speed, aimed at deadly accuracy. Their flight makes the bestial hunters' hides seem worthless, bitten deep by his throws, falling on the burning sand or barren soils.

The furthest reaches sent exotic hunters after him. Seamless hybrids between beasts and women, tuned to a huntress, not for the flesh that composes the man, nor the cargo the lone man ran with. But intimacy made rare for them.

With them, Murcyre was more lenient, merely content on out-maneuvering and out-running them with his supersonic sprint. Who could truly blame their overbearing desires in a place where the ratio of men and monsters was skewered thanks to the fools that thought this place a playground, only to end up in the stomach of a more bestial denizen?

Still, he ran, a cargo of home-cooked, home-baked in need to be delivered. Bountiful cargo brightening faces. Workers, guards, the people of the ground, they welcome their pantries bloated with fresh supplies, all magically sealed as to bear more than meets the eye.

Catching a glimpse of relief from the many prompts him to sprint at distances in a period putting established lines and size of more 'official' deliveries at a shame. To him, easy deliveries were always boring sort. Jewels, gold bars, items of vanity, all in the same category of a waste of time to the man who has more than his fill of essentials to bring to places where farming was outright impossible.

His grin under his mask. Seeing the surprise of people not expecting their valuables until weeks...or even months was pay in itself for the man putting his head out for display. Families, distant posts, isolated corners, none could escape his reach. However far, however long Samilone had a request for, he went, without bragging, without complaints. Without anything other than a 'Be back in five minutes'.

"I will not take a 'no', this time!" Enough that the man simply ran through his fatigue and hunger, brought about by lack of proper breakfast, as anyone should call a piece of salami, lettuce, and bread.

"Drop the barrel this instant, mister!" His fellow couriers did, noticing too often his soring muscles at days.

"Hold on, now...let's not get carried away...I can--" So did their mates, noting how the shallow stomach of a runner was the quickest gateway to death in a place like this.

"I said, now!" And Samilone, the biggest complainer, far too acute to the man's sheer neglect. Her gentle demeanor masked the scooping she did over the weeks of re-hiring Murcyre for his services. Friends and associates. A demeanor held back in favor of a stern supervisor reigning in one of her employees.

"It's fine, it's fine...I can still--h-hey!" The weeks passing made Samilone very observant of the man. Mostly his disposition. Often tired, more than usual. He bartered his extensive runs as the faultless excuse. But his buddies said otherwise, more open to the locals with the whispers of their tender, bestial halves encouraging them.

"You are most certainly not! People do not fall half-asleep when coming back to make another run!" The woman wanted nothing to hear from the man, clutching his armored arms to drag him far from the shed where many deliveries were left "As such, you, mister, are coming with me this second!"

"W-wait! Your stuff, it's still--" Murcyre brings a hand back to the direction of his work, half-finished at the apex of day.

"DO not make me repeat myself! I would prefer a day late over a dead courier any day of the year!" She pulls, a surprising strength dragging the man still away from the golden fields that surround the now distinct house.

Carved from wood and dark crimson bricks, it stands at the very heart of this place of serenity. His eyes spot a smaller, more elegant field of flowers surrounding the house itself, the bulbs themselves held in a distance of the wheatland by a circling dam swimming in water.

As the man is dragged closer and closer to what looked like a table and a few chairs on the porch, a medium, shallow hole. Perfectly dug. The little time he was given to observe it denoted the hole as without any flaw. It was beautifully rounded, looking hot even from the distance he was being pulled from.

To the closest chair on the porch, seemingly waiting on an occupant. "Here, sit there", she asks, setting the man down on the polished dark wood sitter, hands on his shoulders.

The strength she does so is less invasive as dagging the runner, more akin to a strong invitation. The seat, as simplistic as it looked, is mighty comfortable to Murcyre. Most of it, undeniably, due to the woman's sultry walk into his sight, leaning, her eyes hidden behind this blond hair.

A faint smile etches on her lips "I'll be back with refreshments". She turns and walks into the innards of her domain, still balancing her hips to his sight, ostensibly deliberate.

The serenity sits by his side, a quiet to the tumultuous outside, a peaceful view, and hearing of the winds breathing within and without. A small corner ripe for an idyllic life in a sedentary style.

It is a feeling that attracts Murcyre. A lull in the jungle storm. Some time to take in the view of a magnificent stretch of land going for a nearby river, pooling its lustrous blue in the distance "Actually...I could sit here all day..."

His voice trails from a soft jubilance to a reserved manner. Offers like this were given to him. Tempting him to a luxury of life and time. Far from the rabble. Far from the fangs. Far from the claws...and yet, he loathed their offers, be it gifts, coins, or even a corner like this, all in exchange for his services as their courier.

Here, somehow it was...more splendid. Here, he could already feel his body settling in despite the very time spent sitting, a few minutes at most. There was something in this more simple, more rustic plain that felt more than what wealthy merchants offered him.

"Sorry for taking so long!" Samilone's cheerful voice bounces from the door, a tray full of silvery utensils. A surprise awaited him in this tray of plastic and adorned metal in the form of a steak and a salad dish.

Putting it in on the table, Murcyre spots what also looked like a grouping of pink shades smeared in sweet dough. Cookies and chocolate chips steaming from the plates.

"Woah..." All of this blended, their aromas presenting themselves to the man one by one, eager to greet his nostrils. They do so, tickling his famished stomach awake "Sorry but...this looks like what you were planning to eat. Loafing off a client's food is too weird for me..."

"But, you work so hard for me throughout the weeks, bringing my goods to distant clients...in dangerous roads, no less". Samilone places two shiny utensils on his palms whilst walking behind the man, a faint, familiar scent washed over his nose "I do not mind cooking for you, fair courier. It's the least I can offer for what you have returned".

"Well...I mean...if you're going to tout it like that..." Feeling a weighty duo in his hands, Murcyre looks to the dish of meat and greens and the desserts that waited on him. It was long since he ate anything close to this. Again, the wealthy and affluent offered him meals like this before.

Here, it was different from them. It felt...more. Murcyre, without any hint of hesitation, plunges a knife into the steaming beef, gushing faint sauce as a result. With his first bite, the second comes, blind to the woman's hidden eyes looking with pride under her bang of hair.

Her cowl is slightly lowered, her hands joined under a part of caramel lips, waiting, watching the man with abject interest. The field at the distance was since being worked on, half of it molded and prepared for fresh wheat seeds. Tools laid close, inert without the hands of their mistress, the latter, simply enjoying the quiet dining.

His hand glances away, reaching for a cup that wasn't here, prompting an immediate reaction from Samilone "Oh goodness! I forgot about the drinks! I'll be back!"

Before long, the feeling of her scrutinizing eyes, as hidden as they are behind her blond hair, returns with a pitcher full of glimmering, purple fluids cooling inside...

...and a cup.

"Some grape juice to complement my humble cooking". She pous a frigid glass full of the sweet aroma before setting it close to Murcyre. Her expression, half hindered, is surprisingly chipper-looking. Although...

"?!" Thank goodness the man was ever masked and goggled, for the glimpse he caught from the exotic farmer in the middle of her offering...

He shakes his head, trying to pretend a piece of grub got stuck in his teeth. But his eyes had already captured the vibrant, bountiful image of the woman's cleavage as she leaned. A fair close-up, with quite a bit of stall, feeling...intentional. They looked heavy, perked up, teasing him in their emerald silk.

Murcyre's heat was rising again, as this view trigged his 'jungle fever'. "Not this again..." A whisper accompanies the scent now licking his nostrils, calling them to the woman slightly leaning sideways, a faint smile peering. Bronze, chocolate lips glistening in the sunbath. Slightly parted, whispering. He wondered...how would--

"Welp, that was good, but I think I'm going a bit ill. I think I'll..." With a sudden burst of speed, Murcyre stood, eyes mapped on the closest exit, ready to get himself out of her hair, ready to--slump on an elongated chair prompted out of...seemingly nowhere.

"...lay down...wait, wait, wait--" Samilone's dexterity was nothing to write off, having managed an armored man down on a cushioned chair.

Once again, the exotic woman's tone turned back to the insurmountable authoritarian, pressing her hands down the man's torso as much as her words "No. You are not. Not with this illness rampaging about".

"No, no, don't worry, running will make it pass. Besides..." He tries his best to set himself up, this feeling slowly flaring up. He tries...and is immediately put back on the cushioning chair, swinging slightly.

"They can wait", she cuts off. Softly. With a hand on his armored forehead. The sweetened expression she constantly welcomed with returned in force "I would prefer not having my diligent mailman come harmed...or not come back at all".

He felt smoothened. The desire to leave left him alone with this woman. Left him to peer at the landscape worthy of a painting.

The golden background of wheat dancing in the scattering wind...

The foreground of bulbs, a legion of colors separated in groups, fed by the guardian water...

The close-up of the woman, a breath-taking sight from his seat. Seemingly with no fault on her pores, her hair, her cloth, anything. Tickling his illness while also soothing it, presenting him with a stronger scent.

Tearing himself from this picture was a monumental effort for the courier, slowly, steadily making him way back home as the evening's omen.

A hand directed his way, Samilone asks "Would you not prefer resting this night? I have rooms for visitors and wouldn't mind renting one of them for you".

The weekend was coming. Two days off where leisure was his as few mailmen and couriers bothered with any delivery, save for the more urgent ones...likely more assigned to organized escorts.

It was an opportunity for Murcyre, invited as he was. Two days besides this gentlewoman. Two days to feel her soothing voice, her warming touch. Someone to stand by.

"I can come by this weekend if you want, but I think I'll give a pass to this offer". Her smile, bright throughout this day among many, waned somewhat with his answer. Not enough to turn to a frown, but enough for a part of him to notice, charting it as maybe a missed chance to hear about his adventures.

Frankly speaking, he wanted it as badly she did, but his body flared up, seemingly intent on acting throughout the weekend. To see her having to care for him, speaking nothing about how she already was, insulted him. He didn't want to be a liability for a host, let alone her.

"Well, alright". Her smile does not deter, persisting with a hopeful tone "I usually plant fresh seeds the weekend, but I can make time if you pass by".

"Yea, of course, I'd be fine with it, yea". Only if this fever allowed him. Surely, it will, a thought playing in his cranium as he ran off, leaving the woman waving in his direction, coming back tired and brittle, his run, fielded by evening shadows, concealed by his mind's exhaustion. Jagged teeth and hushed snares. Hunched projections and waiting creatures among the cacophony of the faunas... --- He did come back, this weekend. His illness giving him its grace to let him return to Samilone. A usual excitement pumped his heart, eager to share his ventures.

She welcomed him in this lonely time of the week, its end. Her hands and feet were gunked, slick in the grimes of the soil. Withered earthen branches and tiny rocks clung to them, seamlessly sliding off her limbs as to give her the window to embrace the man.

"You don't need to--" Formal greetings were no longer enough for her. She trusted him enough for a more personal welcome. Warmth fills his body as she joins him in a hug...alongside with a tickling scent setting his nostrils aflame. Something pleasurable and goading mixed in.

Regardless, he couldn't bring himself to put his hands in return, feeling it as an overstep. Even as the hug persisted until awkwardness was coming too close.

Seconds saw her standing before him, hands joined in waiting, perking up as he spoke "Hard at work so early, I see".

"Yes. With most of my goods delivered thanks to a gracious courier..." A small bow in his direction sends blood cells in Murcyre's cheeks, prompting him to act slightly embarrassed as the submerged compliment "...I wanted to get an early start at sowing seeds to see my crops grow".

"I can see that, though there are lots to be done". Indeed the golden field he was used to in the weeks was harvested, leaving nothing but worked up soil waiting to nurture the next family of bread.

"Yes. It usually takes half a day to--

"Ok, cool, let me roll my sleeves up". His resolution is immediate, sporting a chance to again, murder two metaphorical birds with one well-hurled dagger. A chance to work his muscles and to aid another who gave him much. The plates he came in with this morning were dropping. Protection for agility in a place safe from danger.

Samilone blinks a few times, seeing how quickly he was offering his help "Are you sure? You've worked for me all this time, I wouldn't mind if you came here to rest--

"No, no, it's cool. I can take a load off later". Hopping in place, now in a plain top and bottom, Murcyre moves around, jabbing, kicking, overall, stretching his limbs without the weight of his sprinting armor. Times where he could feel his body free of protection were far and between.

Once again, a heart-melting smile adorns the tanned woman's lips as she spoke "I truly am grateful for your help. Thank you".

Her smile steals a beat from Murcyre's heart, once again rising from the painting-like imagery. Staring at her, much more blatantly, his knowledge of his gaze, partially eroded. She was magnificent.

Seeing her turn slightly made him realize how lost in her body he was.

Shaking his head, he looked to the grains, all bundled up in a small pouch. With his formidable speed, he runs to them, snatching them alongside his pace. While she worked the ground, he ran and planted the seeds over the massive farming land.

The weekend was often used in the object of laboring and seeding the earth. With the running man speeding through her second step, one and a half of the two days were given back to them as all was left to do was to let nature take its course. A course she uttered a prayer to, digging holes here and here. Points.

Being done so early, Samilone rushed to her kitchen, eager to hear of Murcyre's exploits. She came back with a sound tray of a meal and snacks, looking to share it with her constant helper. Someone, this willing to lend a hand outside his work, definitively had interesting tales to tell.

"Well, if you're looking for my most ludicrous run, it all started with a blessed sword...so that guy said..."

And so, he came back. The week and the weekend. Working for her and helping her, ever with a sense of vigor. And her gratitude deepened into a trust.

She trusted him as the weeks passed by. Weeks to months. Weeks and months spent sharing the tales of his surprisingly riveting tales of the oddest deliveries he did before. Shining swords of legends and oddly shaped mushrooms from beyond the land, as strange as the folk who ordered them.

His 'fever', whatever he came to name it, once again came from the depth of his mind, the dark purple that wrenched his consciousness from his hands.

Murcyre knew what it wanted. What it came to want. And, despite his efforts, his ongoing wrestling of thought, it was becoming stronger, more tenacious. It refused to be denied, to be ignored. No more. His struggle, over the weeks, the months, a failure bearing monumental consequences.

As she turned from him, a tray empty, his stomach filled, he looked to her, this feeling beating strongly. The day growled equally to the creatures that fought and screamed into the sky, tumbling grey clouds and spitting lightning.

The winds carried the scent that encroached on his mind, fixating his eyes, his nose, his entire being unto the woman who served him, a faint smile and a flirtatious lean on picking up his empty plates...or so he thought it was. More than enough for his stolen senses, moving him despite his quiet protests.

He was consumed by the scent. Enthralled by it. The emerald vision of his dreams was shaped around this woman, pointing to her as the culprit of this recurrent fantasy.

The images she flooded him with consumed him. Her kind demeanor. Her soft voice. Her appearance. Burning with the aroma of her fragrance, he wanted her, her body, her touch, her embrace, her...taste.

As soon as she entered her house, he followed, quietly with strong cups of breath unfiltered by his smooth, rounded metallic mask. Quietly, he lounged the kitchen, the first room welcoming him. His steps went for the woman, busy as she was tending to the dishes.

Stopping. Breathing strongly still. Eyes fixated on her body, a marriage of muscles and curves. Perfectly aligned. Seamlessly blending into one another, they furthered his aching senses, compelling him closer, hands clenching.

They would carve the silk that clothed her, see what laid underneath, exposing it to his increasingly ravenous hunger. It would be easy with how unaware she seemed of the man. Alone in the fields, in this house, far away from anyone. It would be easy, with her body so relaxed, unexpecting a man looking for more than food. Something bestial, primal.

His eyes twitch. His senses eagerly anticipate the scene in his mind, discarding the pleads, the resistance, the tears, the...

He couldn't wait anymore, and lunged a pair of fingers, looking to--

"!!" A wound came unwelcomed, pouring from his shoulder, as a large piece of metal came stuck through his shoulder protection. Her floor had tiny red stains dripping.

The sound of wetness prompted an instinctual turn, expecting anything...but the sight of her guest bleeding from a no longer clenched hand.

"W...w-w-wha...did you...?"

This insanity that pushed him forward died inside him, replaced by shame. Total and utter shame. Revulsion. Hate. All towards himself. He didn't know how much clarity the pain purchased him. All he knew is that...

"!!" The shock came instantly, compelling her hands forward, lips babbling incomprehensible words of confusion. Her medical case, it wasn't far from here, a trip to the basement and--where is he--

"Wh--wha--ww--where are you going?!" Panic forces words out of her, taking a longing reach as her view filled with the sight of the runner, unmasked, uncovered, crippled with shame. Twisted with regrets. Eyes looking elsewhere with a hint of glints within. Intense remorse for an act he almost couldn't help.

Unable to bear making eye contact with a woman he was close to defile on the spot through a surge of invasive feelings, Murcyre turned and ran. Ran with the dagger still embedded in his shoulder. Far away faster than her pleas could hope to catch, pooling in his high sprint.

The field let him pass with a glimmer of hardening. If he dared to look behind, then he would have seen a solidifying green dome coming to life in a fever of earth dust, a woman still reaching out...different. His shame held his face forward, forbidding him even a glance back. He could not. Nevermore.

He could never go back. She would soon figure out his intention, the reason for his quiet entry...and hate him. Fear him. Tremble at his presence. Shame poured from his expression. The dagger continued biting his shoulder, left here by the man back home.

The roars, the screeches, the battles, they were all white noise to him...unimportant...even the shadows that seemed to encroach on him, surrounding his lone shade were ignored.

He ran all the way home, to his corner, passing by a few good friends. They were all rearing back from their travels, waving at the man for a second before their faces drained of their color "Holy sh--! Murcyre?! Dude, what happened--

The door clamped close faster than the firing of questions from the gang, more distraught than tired right now. Their hands pounded the door behind him, questions and worry rejected. The man stumbles through his place to the restroom, his stomach turning outward, threatening to spill over.

"?!" It churned and buckled, torturing him from the inside, gorging out from his throat over the toilet. The pale night came to an unsleeping courier, tortured in this state of limbo between sickness and self-loathing. The uncontrollable shaking of his body...the inability to speak a word...the shock, his unwanted companion, they copied the symptoms of someone with the very first case of a dead by their hands.

Stuck in his cabinet, Murcyre retched however long, this poison of incomprehensible sensation festering in his belly. Spilling bile pouring from his mouth in the shape of vomit as a burst of remorse churned and turned his stomach.

Only at the apex of the night, his stomach's contents empty, he was given the right to speak. His only words..."What did I do? What did I try doing?! Why did I want to...?! Why? Why...Why!!"

He repeated them like a maddening mantra, his eyes coiling backward, time torturingly stalling by as the guilt and the nightmare rolled by as well. This night and the next ones were nothing but nightmares. Nightmares of his making, dragging him up in a sweat. Images of him at a monster rolled constantly, refusing to levy their mental beatings. Again...and again.

The morning...hallucinations. His body in war, between alien instincts, craving the delight he denied it, and his sense of guilt.

On and on, the remorse, slowly overtaking him at noon...

...to overwhelm even the strong desires that saw him almost lash at Samilone, burning his proverbial psyche with vitriolic self-loathing in the evening, the coming of twilight.

Again...

...and again...

...and again.

Day...

...after day...

...after day.

Until he believed it. Believed in the twisted image his nightmares forced on him. with the waking days, he believed he was no better than the creatures that casually gorged themselves in people for food...for fun...for territory.

Nor the people who lived within, the bad ones. Manipulators, abusers, thieves, killers, and the sort. He was no better than them. He didn't deserve the joy that his runs carried to the most distant of folks. No right to this selfish sense of gratification.

"No better..." Murcyre began taking in metals and colors. Set them around his runner's uniform, a standard combination of plates and leather. Twisted them to de-humanizing forms. Corrupted their practicality.

The day he stepped out was a day he no longer was recognizable. No longer a vibrant, perked up sprinter balancing a sense of bright outlook with the awareness of dangers in this realm merging the two.

He became an automaton, killing his humanity with the cold dagger of the metal entombing his entire being. Joints and limbs bolted and reinforced. Glaucous colors scorned him further. The appearance of a metallic, hollow entity became his demeanor, supported with inhuman stuttering and shambling.

This became the runner, forever removed from the outside world via the isolation of his new armor. A mute runner of iron, an emotionless golem searching and sprinting the most desolate and harrowing of places for the most innocuous of deliveries. The sort where none came back in one piece. Injuries became close companions to the thoughtless man. In...and out. Bites. Projectiles. Sometimes, magic. None of them mattered. None of them deserved concern... --- "Hey, Murcyre..." A familiar voice calls out to the man. One of the many who had gone and got caught by a more sentient denizen of the faunas. The last time he saw him, Marvin was running a warm-up track with his explosive wife.

His usual greeting turned away, letting silence face the man along his walk. This morning finally saw him step away from his place after many more spent inside, spitting himself as he still does. His face still weeps with the scars of a teardown, concealed by a mask of anonymity.

"It's been a while, has it?" The man tempts a step closer, a hand filled with a bundle of letters that he brings to Murcyre's attention. None of them had any golden braids. Nothing close to any wealthy merchant looking to score his services.

"You've been going...places". He places them in Murcyre's hand while commenting on his changed disposition "Someone has been worried. Are you ok?"

"...yes". Murcyre cycles through the wraps, all cited with a name. One burning through his mind with an agonizing headache, hushed under the battered suit.

"You don't sound fine, mate. You look like you came back from a laundry beating". Marvin looked at his coarse voice filtered through a mortuary mask, the epitome of an expressionless complex, finding a stark contrast to his pumped up demeanor. Where folded plates used to ease the man in his sprint, this one was the absolute opposite. That he was able to run in this, let alone move with any semblance of coherence was a twisted miracle.

"Man...what happened?"

Murcyre takes a slow, crawling gander at him, hushed in his mortuary mask. The faceless expression it sports is the only response offered, one of silence. A deafening silence only stamped out by his walking. His ragged, staggering, stunted walking. Rattling and shaking, revealing the taxing cost in stamina from wearing the set of plates in a place as warm as a beach.

"Hey! I'm serious..." A hand hesitantly placed itself on the iron golem man's shoulder, prompting him to stop. And only stop.

"What...happened...to you, man?" His voice presses deeply on the 'happened', carried by his worry "I mean, look at you. Really. Look at you, wearing this clunky suit".

It was frightening how twisted the perked up runner is. No reflection to carry the eyes of his soul. No skin to feel the weight of work pouring on him like burning sweat. No movement to further his personality. Only metal. Only a glaucous grey.

His silence only facilitates this anguished shift "Seriously! The others tell me that you constantly come back worse off than you go with busted metal and gashing wounds. How do you do that when nimble predators couldn't even eat your dust before?"

Marvin takes a step further, circling to the front of Murcyre with it. With his face interred in a concealing guard, his eyes went twice the mile as to convey his appalling expression. He brings his hands to the man's shoulders, adding his second to the first "Tell me. What happened? I'm sure it had something to do with that time you stormed back home with that dreadful look in your eyes. Tell me...I'm sure we can--

"Ohh, simple..." His monotone voice breathes through his mortuary mask, once again forcing Marvin to acknowledge how turned the fellow man was. The way he had with words, no longer content at expressing his demeanor.

"I'm no...better..."

"Not better? Mate, what do you--

What came next appalled him. Like a voice from another, a death knell of indifference, his words came from a man on a death race. A man fractured by guilt.

"No...no better than the rest...The robbers that care nothing for those they leave stranded...Killers that found the same prey as that of the creatures' collective maw...Pilferers, scavengers with no wit about who's blood and sweat they eat from...Profiteers...Abusers...Crusaders...All with the taste for blood and the misery of the weak, the defenseless...like animals. Nothing but animals. A taste I thought myself above, only to be proven...deathly wrong...oh, so wrong...very wrong...I'm...no better than them...no better than them...no better...no better...no...better...dead..."

The man listened to this repetition. A mantra prone to gut anyone with its frigid loop "...better left dead...better dead...better, dead...better...dead..."

"What the fu--" Marvin couldn't bring himself to hear the man's maddening mantra. A thought that resonated endlessly...knelling perpetually since this time, birthed from the incessant nightmares of that day. The only loop he ever spoke. Every bite suffered. Ever claw inflicted. Every wound, every puncture, every bit of stressed muscle, this loop played in his entrapped mask, reminding him--

"--What is wrong with you, man?!" The heavy nature of his contraption makes it hard for him to be shaken. Still, Marvin tries, putting every ounce of strength in his arms, trying to lose this string from the man "I don't know what the hell got in your head you make you spew garbage like this, but--

"Hah...the day...it's the morning..." Something seemed to click suddenly in Murcyre. Beginning of the day. Creeping shadows. A perfect time to start. Delivering, that is, now and no later.

"Hey--" A vibrating push sets Marvin away, shoved apart by a blue hue of his mana trace. A brief, sickly blue hue glimmered in the hollow sockets of his mask, dead as he ran, giving his recovering friend no time to prompt himself up "Wait--Mur--

He runs. Run far in the fauna, ignoring the weakened man he left, still struggling with vibration wobbling him across his body. He runs, drifting in the vague direction of the notice board. His mind, singularly driven to fulfill the most dangerous runs. His jagged armor points to the one he endured before.

Behind him, shadows. Sharp shadows clinging closely. They persist near him, drawing closer. Shadows of a past he might have anticipated.

As he was, narrowly driven forward, Murcyre could only notice them as they stepped out of the leaves and grass. Behind trees, over branches. Screeching, roaring, threatening. Raptors. A pack of them, many riddled with scars.

They waited in the corners of the faunas. Waited as creeping shadows stalking an unaware prey. Waited to see a lapse in his attention, tiredness in his limbs.

Seeing him over the weeks, shifting, entombing himself in this suit of armor, dulling his sense of self that allowed him a constant step ahead of any predator gave them this lapse.

So they ran, trailing behind him. Close, they run, screeching, announcing their oath of vengeance to the man who once eluded them. Their grudge seared through them like the radiative hotness of their surrounding, confusing the atmosphere as to whether the heat was their jubilation as revenge or the fauna itself.

Closer, they run, one of them, too impatient, too eager to wait for the further, deeper territory he was encroaching. He snarled and lunged, teeth armed for an immediate kill.

...not realizing that Murcyre expected danger, its bite, locking at his armored arm instead of the gap between his head and shoulders.

A trickle of blood faintly adorned the fangs of its aim, briefly spurning it in joy as it wrangled the man out of his sprinting pace. Its companions follow and scar the soil in a circling manner, surrounding their mate and the one man they sought out.

"Ohh...more of you...than expected..." His lifeless voice pours in, his reaction, enough to make the creatures pause. They had his scent clear as water. Height and voice were the same. Yet, he felt different enough. Changed...to the point of confusing creatures who's senses of smell was acute enough to single out a wounded prey from a pack of dozens.

This lull cost their mate its life, pierced by a vibrating dagger. By the injured hand, no less, still freshly bitten. It falls to the everlasting outrage of the pack that had swelled in numbers, another coming in to avenge its mate.

Rows of teeth and claws and hisses come deafening the man. Many of them end up falling to the mana vibration of the courier as he retaliated every time one of them sank their natural weapons into parts of his armor, tearing the metal away or scoring a wound deeper.

Each time, Murcyre's strength was losing ground against the onslaught of seemingly unending picking, injuries plastered on his body underneath the fallacy of protection. Injuries so easily dodged. Bites so easily maneuvered around.

Biting. Clawing. Scratching. Kicking and impacts. This array of suffering invites itself to the withering runner, the latter, forcing silence down his throat. No amount could hope to make him spill his voice in anguish, no matter how deep they cut. No matter how far they bit. Always this silence, this...resignation from the haunting visage of metal "..."

Their anger pushes them to greater heights of violence, looking to hear their prey's moan of agony. Yet, for all the wound and bleeding they continually inflict on the man, slowly turning into a wreck, his only response was a stab, either injuring or taking the life of one of them. Not enough to prompt them to withdraw, not with how long they have stalked him, counting the days for revenge.

Their numbers were seemingly unending, unlike Murcyre's stamina, pouring away with sweat and blood. Bites twisted the already suffering metal, cutting away more of his resilience. Until he could stand no more.

"..." Too much. Their relentless parade became too much for him. Too much to wield his withered blades. Too much to infuse them with his signature power. Too much to stand.

A kick sends him further damage and forcefully slumping against the curving bulk of a tree where he remains. Weapons dropped, head slumped down to a ravenous panting of triumph from the leering raptors, eyes taking on a shine in the advent of the evening.

Once again, however, their victorious nectar was spoiled by his persistent silence, which, looking by the state of the surroundings littered with more of his victims, their mates, only boiled their ire.

One of them screeches, at the end of its patience. The sight did not bring it joy, not with the voice of their prey snuffed out. He hadn't bellowed out his pain in payment for the mates he stole from them. No simmer of regret, no plea in a tongue they would likely not understand. None of it. Only silence.

More of them join in its attempt. Terrify him. Make him simmer. Make him quake. Make him fear. Taste this anguish he inflicted on them time and time over through humiliating escapes and fatal retaliation. But, nothing.

Nothing but the deathly silence. Save for the words coughed up from a bettered man, still as a morgue "...better...dead...better...dead...soon...death...soon...absolution..."

One of them takes a step forward, branding its jaw close. It wanted his head. Approaching, drooling as the maw slowly lurked forward, already tasting the supple flesh underneath the twisted metal barely hanging on to the man's head.

With a twist of the jaw and an anguished screech, it would never taste it. Nor it would taste anything warm. Nothing but the cold dirt and a quiet fall.

One noticed by its mates, eyes glaring to where it leaped from. A boulder cobbled from mundane stone, coerced into a form by a dull, green tide, giving a force beyond an ordinary rock toss.

Perfectly hurled, it briefly brittles at the contact area, slightly concaving as opposed to its victim's head structure, fractured inside and beyond saving.

Their clicking tongues, looking to identify the perpetrator responsible and potential extra meal. A slithering figure clinging to the bulk of a distant tree met their gazes. Still. Almost petrified, seemingly covered in stone. A hushed, quiet individual, flanked by two hovering boulders the size of a man's head.

Before any of their bellowing declaration, this entity already waved in their direction, downward motion of a pole-like weapon. The glint of its curved blade at the downing top signals the movement of the previously inert boulders floating near it.

They rush with enough speed to disallow the pack any time to notice how different these were to the initial one that took their comrade's life. Bloated with what looked like earthen spikes, these fled not to the panicking pack...

...but the trees behind them, exploding as violently as bundles of powder forcibly sealed in ceramic. They splatter their earth, doused in emerald magic parched from the soil.

The projectiles seemingly alive with malign intention, spreading a trail of jade light behind their tiny projectiles as they seek and bury themselves in the confused raptors. The earth bit deeply, gravely wounding the majority of them in this twice detonation, yet, harmlessly bouncing off the slumped man long immobilized by exhaustion.

None of the beasts come unscathed from this shower of emerald and brown, all bruised and wounded. Some, more grievously than others. All with a desire to retaliate against the individual that dared attack them in their moment of triumph.

An individual that no longer was here. Not where it once stood, next to the tree they saw it. No, they turned away, spreading their heads outward, scanning the surroundings. They caught its smell of...gentle grain. Grain? And so close, too...

Too close...

One of them thought to, at least. Until it was too late when it saw the creature that soaked them in clay. Silent still, unmasked, standing hushed around a burrow underneath her slithering bottom. The clay that clung to its form no longer had its place to her skin.

Her. A sight familiar to the downed courier, his eyes blinking between consciousness and not.

An emerald woman, beautifully in an executioner stance. A body merging feminity and reptilian forms, married into that of a snake. Where the scales started and her hips ended could only be guessed at with the velvet skirt adorning her most private spot.

Her face is hidden behind a veil of silk, radiating in a docile, obedient resilience of earth occult, betrayer the protection her unseemingly outfit provided. Long sleeves and exposed shoulders. A cowl over the head, a veil before the face. A top reaching down to her navel, a skirt downed to where knees would have been. An exotic woman, tanned in a bronze coat.

An oasis for any male to discover, human or not. A venerable painting capable of quenching the visual thirst of anyone fortunate enough to drink in her appearance. Alas, the raptor that spotted her had no chance at bathing in her concealed feminity, for the glinting blade that she held was, as mentioned, armed.

Its screams of fright came too late as the blade came swinging in the range of three credulous raptors, backed to each other. They fell in sync under the blade's traveling, cutting their pack from three more. Dead before they slumped on the soil.

Only then, did the rest spotted her, screeching in confused, outraged tones. They leap, not understanding how she managed to get behind them. Their fuming instincts blinded them from the burrow their most distant mate spotted.

The leaped...and for a moment, saw a flight of fractures crevassing from under the poking of her polearm's pole. A flight of rumbling, impatient earth struggling to hold the magnetic power in its grasp.

They leaped...and no longer than a second, were suspended. They could only feel the rapid, almost instant expansion of a magnetic pulse spreading from her weapon, catching them, catching the debris around them, catching insufficiently grown trees, catching them all in suspense midair. Space now coated itself in a dim, rumbling green, withholding control of animation or falling to Samilone.

Their angered snarling turned to panicked ones, slowly realizing the reality of their shifting bodies, heads changing position with feet. Intentional inertia lifting their most dangerous weapons as far as their bodies allow. Aimlessly anchored in the air between heaven and earth, they were cattle to the woman who, in a haunting, predatory gaze, slowly slithered to every single one of them...

...her inhuman eye, an alien amalgamation between woman and monster. Her eye, honed in the way a starving hunter observed a helpless prey, watching it squirm as they once roared at Murcyre's silent agony. A pale reflection of the perpetrator turned to the victim. And with her lifting polearm...

...executed them. With a blade against their throat and its sharpness doing the rest. Their anguished screeches gave her no pause, no more than they did the man they reduced to a wounded wreck.

Soon enough, the dead littered the ground, snapped back to its embrace with the augur of her spell's end. A chaotic, noisy embrace, their soft bodies drowned in the cacophony of stones, trees, and anything in between falling around them.

Dust coated the surrounding, immediately blown over away by the bread maiden, her glimmering predatory atmosphere dissipated as quickly as the silk veil hanged from her cheeks and nostrils.

"Sir..." Her voice breaks free from the cloth's hold, leaving to hang to the side of her head, threading from her delicate knife ear as it and its twin further set her as a monster in disguise. A garden concealing its heart, so to say. They join the tender, worried eyes unmasked by the veil, slit and, sharp.

Their yellow colors see her hand reaching out for the wreck that was Murcyre. His slow, monotonous perk up. His head finally rising, it only to meet her gaze for a second and the hand keeping its march to his.

"Come..." A low, simple, and firm tone clothes her movement, such as pulling the man over into an unintentional joining. Her expression is of a vigil taking hold of someone long overdue for a rest...

"....this is no place to die". With that, she pulls him up while rolling another arm underneath his knees. His head swings freely, still masked by his ruined helmet, as his swaying arm. Absent.

With the drifting courier now within her arms, Samilone pulls inward. A bundle of earth floats close by, fizzling in. It draws in earth particles, seemingly bristling itself in a crumbling decay, revealing what looks like a swirling vortex. One just big enough to welcome its caster and another.

Soon enough, Samilone and Murcyre are slowly drafted into the magnetic core absorbing its surroundings. Nothing more than a glorified teleportation spell intended on returning them to her farm, one that does just this, leaving the screams and battles of the faunas to themselves... --- The fields surrounding the house were empty. Empty with the advent of this unfortunate day, their harvest and process, done with no seeds planted in their stead.

Samilone has no care for the golden farm she was locally known for. The many who came with inquiries were met with a simple, constant response "I'm sorry. But, for the time being, I have taken someone in charge".

Her production stopped completely. She couldn't bear taking a day outside with the broken man slumbering on one of her many guest rooms. he was a wreck to behold with the multitude of cuts and gashes on his body. They were out of mind for the man, who constantly held more plates to hide them after a pathetic attempt at mending them.

She wandered to his room, preparing her eyes for the altered man that was Murcyre. A basket of hot water, a few towels, and a pouch of medicine, she steps in, beholding a sorry sight. A smile, gone. Bright blue eyes, now dull, with no light to host. His body atrophied from a general lack of everything, sickeningly emancipated.

By his side, a twisted carnival of metal laying close to the bed. Horror clawed at her tender heart, with each steel flesh she peeled away uncovered a cut left to fester.

She did so quietly, a faint sigh flowing out of her caramel lips daily when seeing his hollow demeanor. His lack of reaction. His total shift in behavior and appearance. A hated surprise she couldn't quite wholly ready herself for.

Every day, Samilone sat by his side, carefully wrapping and cleaning his wounds. To then sit by his side, hands joined, waiting for the slightest twitch, for most subtle of movement. Waiting...like on this day.

"Some people have been asking about you, you know?" The drapes of the windows offered a shadowed shining, putting much of the room in a slightly dark ambiance. The reptilian woman sought to offer a few words to cut away the monotony.

"They did. I think they got used to this odd duo we made. A delivery man and a humble farmer. It was enjoyable to hear about their gratitude, in the mails". The woman simpers a bit, reminded of her surprise at a prolific runner developing a taste for her humble corner. The sort far away from any chance at stardom "If I recall, I thought the same thing. before".

Her hand, freed from its twin, looks to reach up to the man's hand "Perhaps, I can--

Her voice freezes in dismay, catching the full glimpse of his reaction. His head swiftly turned to her side, an expression full of horror wrapped in disgust.

"No...no, it doesn't deserve..." With his hand, Murcyre shoves her intended target away, violently pushing his feeble palm away...or, he would have in a better condition. As he was, his attempt to force his limb out of her way was appalling to Samilone, who immediately clutches it.

"...no...no...it's dirty...it'll...if you keep it, it'll--" His weak struggle to remove his atrophied hand only furthers Samilone stroke of fervor. In one fell swoop, it was now drinking in the warmth of the snake woman's bosom as it welcomes the caramel touch of her chest.

"You'll what..." Her voice is quiet, slumped with a lowered head forward. A faint glimmer drips from the covenant of hair, dropping on the man's harrowed arm. It was perfectly oval for the little time the man was allowed to see it, down to its fall and quiet heat splashing on his limb.

"You'll what?" she asks again, stiffening a whimper. The weeks rolled by since the day he left in shame and torn regret. The very last sight she had of the man for who her heart drummed strongly. Days after days waiting for his return, unlikely as it was. Thoughts of his probable death, grievous injuries. Letters and messages sent outward to others like him, asking about him. Only to finally find him after days of tracking, at death's gate.

"Hurt me...you thought you would hurt me...when you crept in my house while I wasn't looking..." Her hand squeezes his, firmly entrenched on her bosom under a voice conveying an unconvinced tone. Another wet drip plops on his arm, equally as radiant as the former.

Her other hand joins it, now seeing a third drop falter from her cowl, tracing its journey across her cheeks, risen to meet the man eye-to-eye. Her squeezing burns her thoughts through his arm. That day, that time. The supposed fever of a mad man compelling him to ravage her in this isolated domain.

And that scent, the smell...

The miasma that toiled in the hollow man was consumed by a vortex of intentions. Somehow, the way she held his arm close to her heart, the trust she continually placed on him dispelled the illusion. Hurt her? Ravish her in this time of 'weakness'?

She knew him from his stories, his demeanor. Too often, her listening sessions mentioned him never really attacking or dispatching any creature unless it aimed for his life first. She knew he could never put himself through this illicit act. Even as he stared down at her, wandering close, she knew it was nothing more than a show of desire. The extreme of a nurtured desire blossomed into affection.

Had he persisted instead of planting the knife on his arm...Had he remained in place as she turned around...she knew he would have stopped, a miasma of confusion as to what passed through his head.

He can see it, the image filtering through her disenchanted tears falling irregularly. Images of her slowly approaching him, the scent, design of her species, whispering the same feelings back, a token of her inclination. Her body, close enough to be touched, to be hugged. Vulnerable to an embrace.

Lips waiting to be taken, to offer their first kiss as she stood, ever open to his grabbing. Breaths to commune, trading a formless confession. Caresses to bond them. A promise to make to each other. He saw it through her crystal clear tears washed in a dim emerald coat. He would never have gone as he thought he did.

All of this, instead of his descent into self-flagellation. A lifeless, motionless husk as shallow as the item he avoided at every opportunity. Encounters leading to near-death experiences that would never have touched him...unless the predators were born with an extra cunning or desperation. A pitiful state that wounded him more than ever, not for the twisted perversion of what he had become, but for the gentlewoman quietly, silently sobbing. The one thing he tried dearly to prevent inflicting was an abject failure

"Right...right...and I just...ph, my g..." The day felt like a standstill, drifting in time as he drank it in. He almost died for no cause. His 'victim' knew him better at that time, and he refused to return, spreading this haze of distance.

His teeth grit, regret foaming in his mind and his free hand slowly reaching for his forehead to a pair of heavy eyes. Once again, Murcyre wanted a gateway to self-resentment with a slap to the head, his palm, twitching, and creeping.

"No...it's alright..." Instead, the warmth of Samilone's chest welcomes his cheek. Alongside with the rest of her. The woman and the snake. There was no need for this man to lash at himself. As expected of a lamia, she hugs him, sharing her delicate touch with him, making it irresistible.

The day falls to the night with the two still in this embrace. Murcyre's lifeless glare turned remorseful was asleep, oddly at peace under Samilone's warmth. She also was at peace, at last, given the chance of holding the man she learned to cherish close, to cuddle him in times of triumph and times of anguish.

This long shroud of anxiety was torn to shreds, leaving but the man to recover from this torrent of self-neglect. And the woman of wheat would be here, by his side, tending to his every need for however long it would take and beyond... --- The faunas, ever hostile and welcoming in strides, once again found a steady flow of a common, yet, often unappreciated bread darting around the close and most remote places. Those who did were overjoyed to meet a vibrant, goggle-eyed man withhold the precious cargo firing a crystalline flare in crimson dye close by.

Returned to the delivery man front, Murcyre found himself a target among many, either for the stack of food hinged on his back or the meat on his bones. Regardless of which came to assail him, they ended in abject failure, some with their life roughened, but fairly unscathed. Those who persisted a little too much often didn't. Such was their right to see the man as the means of a meal, such as his right to brand his vibrating daggers in defiance, now with a very vile earthen bite.

Those witnessing the man run about speak of emerald auras condensed in his brawling long daggers rattled into increased fatality with the vibration that allowed him fast paces. He was less like a man and more like a mist of grounded magic, his cold steel bites finding the added strength of the earth heeding his call. Of course, only in the circumstances calling for it, such as impromptu rescue meetings.

As expected, his relentless demeanor placed him alongside many other figures as mythic sights. People of urban legends with a closer tie to the truth than the fantastic side of the coin. Not unlike the man who calls upon the sun's breath into incandescent constructs and meta-knowledge of exotic machinery. Not unlike the shaman sporting his ghastly ram skull, ever surrounded by a coven of moths.

"If it helps them sleep at night, I'm not against it". Murcyre was very aware of what people whispered about him, placing him with others that he slowly learned about.

It was quite a surprise to be revered by the common folk for essentially nothing more than delivering freshly baked bread, often forgetful of the true danger of creatures wandering in his way. Acclimated as he was, their only chance of snatching a meal this evasive was through a group effort, far too obvious for someone shrewd like him.

Yet, every time he returned to his new home, the wheat maiden in emerald colors awaited, a soft, sweet smile and gossip of his track record.

As she did today, wandering the golden field of wheat, her peerless skin, slightly blemished by dirt just like her outfit. The only difference in this day was that Murcyre had a bit of time.

Well, maybe more than a 'bit of time'. This excess, he used to take a gander at the so-called hunting guilds. Amidst a few on-the-spot contracts or simple bounties, there was a small post among many more. With a familiar figure. Him. Zipping across a forest section. With a barrel on his back and two on his hands.

"Ok, that's adorable", he comments, taking a long, hard look into it with a bit of trivial. It was a bit of a shock to be this thoroughly recognized as a local myth. The 'Emerald Dash', they called him "Dang, even got a quirky name, too".

He left minutes later, taking a quick breather before going back to his tender half. The woman who, by his time of arrival, had stepped through her handmade field, a heart-melting smile shining on her.

"Welcome back, my kind man~. Her polymorphed feet are immediately lifted, eagerly snatched off the ground as her 'guest' promptly accepted her embrace, making light of her weight in a benign hug.

"Hehe, glad to be back. The place is searing", he speaks back, drinking in her broad, lamia smile flanked by two extended fangs. The band of hair that hid her eyes did nothing to conceal the adoring slit mirroring his eyes. He was happy, as happy as he was ever since his recovery--

"...another one? Really?" Their intimate accolade is but slightly bumped by the remains of an unchanged reptile. Another sharp-toothed predator looking to stalk the unassuming field of golden wheat. It lies deceased close to an asymmetrical boulder still humming with very faint vestiges of magnetic current. In the incoming night, the magic was more visible to the man, identifying it as her handiwork.

Samilone sights as her head gently rest on the man's torse, a total shift in her expression "Yes. They lack the self-preservation to know that they are not wanted here".

Ever since his first arrival, the man noted so many deceased raptors and predatory beasts cropping up next to her magnetic dome, close to the stones enchanted by her hand. Knowing that they wanted the elevated wheat to hide within and wait for any unsuspecting prey to hop along simply made the man as annoyed as his serpent companion. Mostly because he's the one hurling them away from the farm. While he volunteered for it, it was still a hindrance for obvious reasons.

"Later". Samilone's arms squeeze his waist just slightly enough to dispel the idea of tending to it now. Her voice returns to that of a spouse impatient to settle her half inside "You'll have time later. For now, supper awaits".

Gently cupping his hands, Samilone turns away with the man in tow, walking back to a brightly lit window of her distant home. Their home.

The moonlight shines on the idling wheat field, giving away the gilded insignia inserted on Murcyre's left shoulder pauldron. Just like the woman he followed, he was captivated by her diligence and brand of cargo to deliver.

"By the way..." she speaks, taking a side glance to the work still growing around them "... there are letters with offers I received on your behalf. I am aware that you don't stomach the prospect of delivering vanity items and the idea of sending my devoted delivery man on said goose hunts did not sit too well with me, so..."

It became a common thing with the two of them. Even with his official staying here to work mostly for Samilone and her local farm as its delivery man, Murcyre still had deals coming from the less scrupulous asking for the Emerald Dash. Fortunately, he no longer had to tear the papers to shred himself.

"Cool. I don't bother reading them anymore. What about the mates from my old place?"

Ohh, that man, Marvin...he came around noon, wanted to see how you were doing. He was glad to hear about your recovery. A bit sad to hear that you would mostly tend to my farm's needs".

"Yea, it was a bit impromptu. Kinda hard to say no to someone offering you a place and some more than a steady flow of deliveries. Still visiting the boys regularly when they need an extra hand".

Samilone giggles a bit "As long as it doesn't cut too much in 'us' time". The smell of poultry wiggles its way out of the lit window, giving Murcyre a preview of what waited for him inside. Once again, it gives a testament to her delectable cooking.

Even then, this smell is overridden by her scent. The scent of warmth and assent. A formless invitation since long exclusive to the courier. It was luring him, stoking the flame of a taste he craves. Long ago, such thought would have driven him to ill-visited places, riddled with shame.

This was long ago...and now was different. "I've prepared everything as usual. You need only to unclothe and--Ah?" The first thing the runner does is to remove his gloves, stained in crate dirt and dust, leaving them free of stains.

Samilone's ears, long gone from hiding into human fashion, twitch in their monstrous points. She heard the gloves flopping off to the mini table close to the door. Her instincts prompt her to turn, her modest attire concealing the desire of a true 'welcome home' she wants to offer.

Like a timid maiden, she takes a few steps back to her delivery man, her dearest husband, breathing surprisingly heavily with the knowledge of what was imminent.

"I seem to have...forgotten the proper 'welcome'..." she says in a raspy breath, betraying the excitement that she tried holding under a calm demeanor. Her hands lay down before her, joined in a reverse prayer stance, wholly exposed to her half. Ripe for the taking as she was the first time.

All the excitement, anticipation, and eagerness return to the atmosphere as it did hundreds of times. Every movement, from his subtle, considerate reach is captured as peerlessly as when he firstly give in to this odorous invitation.

Slowly, blatantly reaching for the waist of his wife to lure her close. His eyes lay near her yellow, serpentine irises, giving constant consent for him to move forward.

They lower to her lips made smoother by their proximity. Faintly open, softly breathing with charged exhalations, they quietly pant, waiting to offer their boon.

All the while their bodies join, her hands now laid on his torso, her chest hugging his, breathing their feminity on him. Hands-on her hips, long aching to be held.

Her breathing beckons still, whispering the conquest of her lips, begging to be touched, tasted. Tended to as the rest of her. So he does, approaching the woman of wheat, snuffing out the faint breathing in a lock of lips.

Her first kiss was a surprise, having briefly widened her eyes before welcoming its offering. Now, it was a warm welcome, a famine that he satiated every time.

~Hmm...~ Her eyes close, leaving her touch and taste to take control, abandoning her body to the voiceless joy of intimacy. This spot in the day, like many others, became a fervent routine between the two, further strengthening their bond the more they exchanged in soft endearments.

The moment is irresistible to the two, minutes passing like seconds. Quivering gasps from the woman's lips, serving only to give seconds to her spouse, who voicelessly asks for more. They were close, tightly squeezed against one another, more so than usual. Tonight, Samilone would offer more than a meal for her tender half. Tonight, she would commit more than the exterior sensation of her sensitive body...