Sense, Speedbonding

Sight, smell, sound, taste, touch.

Even in sleep, the senses of the humanoids could still be felt, were perhaps even, amplified in dream. Four spirits reached out to the lulled forms of those that were asleep. First there would be darkness, black, then four lights would swirl in the sky only to spiral amongst one another and stretch down to touch the level black plain on which you stood. The purple light shifted into a dark colored outline, the slight and thin form of a Flamma. The cyan colored light didn’t touch down as low as the others, lighting up into the ugly form of a Requiae. The green light, duller than the rest, looped around you once, before transforming into the form of an Ailoa. Finally, a yellow light, slower than the rest, landed amongst the other four and took on the form of a many-tailed toku.

Relax, we only want to sense what you can. There was a pause, and while the fourth voice did not speak, its lit up eyes are also trained on you. The colors began to fade into the blackness, the blackness began to warp and soon all of your senses were deadened. The voices that continued were only in your head.

Tell us what do you taste?

Ailoa Ainu Female WILD -- WILD
Flamma Umbra Female WILD -- WILD
Requiae Legacy Procellor -- Enke
Toku Omega Male Pluve -- Enke

Welcome to my speedbonding!
The setting is, basically your character is sleeping and they are visited by these four shinies in their dream. Each round they are going to ask you about a specific sense and I want you to, in as long or short of a post as you’d like, describe that sense for your character using as little description with any other sense possible. So if the sense is taste (as the first one is) I’d like to see in your posts how spicy or creamy the food was, not how orange it was or how delightful it smelled. Try your very best to limit it! There will also be five categories that you can use for your specific senses (and only use once!) but you don’t have to if you don’t want to! Try to stick to one specific instance/image/smell/whatever. If you go into too many it might get complicated!
*Note: For taste, I'll allow for some sense of touch, for the textures of foods. The textures of food has always been super important to me personally, so if it's important to your character as well, feel free to include it! Just make sure you talk about how slippery the peach's insides feel not how soft the skin is on your fingers!

-No shinies. Your character’s asleep, and they’re brought to this world by the four so that the four can experience their humanoid senses.
-The shinies will pick based on their specific sense (obviously taste, though the first one, is omitted because there are five senses while there are only four shinies).
-I’ll leave it open for two days, then post daily afterwards. Perhaps I’ll post more often if you guys do, as I will have more free time now.
-There is no end to joining. If you’ve missed passed rounds and would like to attempt the sense, then feel free to get in a post even after the round has ended. Please separate rounds in different posts.
-Post once, post for every round, it's up to you! The more you post, the higher chance you have, though, of course. xD
-I will be taking prefs, because yeah, I don’t mind. Descs will be coming up sometime in the next two days provided my internet is kind to me.
-That’s all I can think of for now, I hope you all have fun!
-*I may change the Toku's fade/font color since it's impossible to see. But my laptop's about to die and I forgot my charger at a friend's so I will while I desc, so don't be surprised if/when you see a change!

List
First
Most Recent
Favorite
Least Favorite
Most desired

4 Total
All I Can Hear Ainu Female Ailoa
#A5BFA9
This Ainu is scrawny, narrow and petite. Her body is not full, looking near unhealthy, but with some love and care and after some time of growth she may thicken out to look a bit prettier. Her body is short, her fur is almost entirely a dull and ugly green. Her body is littered with grey spots, spots that almost resemble the patterning of a Fisi, though her spots are probably a bit larger and more similar to the rest of her fur’s color. Her eyes are an uninteresting and typical brown, trailing and moving slowly from person to person and her mane is long, covering her left eye, tangled with stuff in it on occasion. You may want to cut it or help her manage it because this Ainu doesn’t exactly have the high sense of fashion to do it herself. In Ailoa society’s totem pole, this gal is likely on the lowest end, and while she pretends not to mind, she cannot completely erase the dark feelings of bitterness that have been left to her from her past. You will find that the tips of both of her ears are chewed, on stunted almost half way.

There is a cynicism within this female that appears even before herself and drags behind after. She’s heard so much criticism about herself, for areas that she can’t control. This has left her heart calloused, she no longer cares for the opinions of others and has developed a sort of harsh outlook and tongue in response. She takes criticism well and easily these days, and gives it back twice over with her quick words. She appears to not be the most friendly, acting even grouchy at times, and others may be wary of her and stay away. She is an excellent story teller when it comes down to it and if you are persistent and friendly she will tolerate you and perhaps, you may be able to come to tolerate her. She’s aloof, but if you really take time to befriend her, she can be quite caring. Her bane is words, any sort of harshness any making fun of will bring out the worst in her, and you will face her wrath. Judgment based on appearance will not be passed, not when she is around, not where she can here.

All I Can Feel Umbra Female Flamma
#450D77
The pattern of this female’s are clearly reminiscent of that of a Sanguis, her delicate purple body is licked by dark orange flames, burnt marks that start at her rump and lick at her flanks. Despite her rank as an Umbra, this female’s coat is fairly light in color. Cursed with slightly darkened colors as well as siblings with much lighter ones, this girl is marked with stamps of paled hoof prints like little butterflies scarred throughout her body as well as along slash that curls beneath her left eye and over her right thigh. The beatings that occurred during her youth have left her stunted, she’ll never be a very big Flamma and she will forever walk with the slightest limp.

This Flamma is smart, perhaps almost, too smart for her own good. She is neither bitter nor vengeful, pulling neither of those traits from her troubling past. Instead she is thoroughly cunning, almost scarily so. Because she barely made it through her earlier life, self-preservation has become the name of the game. She cares little to nothing of others, and will always put herself first. Have a use for her and all maybe well, she will do whatever she can in her power, which is barely anything beyond intelligence, to keep you alive and useful. Have none, and she can care less if you burn in Her Lady’s lowest level of hell. Speaking of Her Lady, this Umbra is surprisingly believing and keeps her religion close to her as a Flamma might. Despite her beatings, she was kept alive, and hell, that could only mean that Her Lady wished her alive at all costs. What more can she do for her deity but keep her wish and stay alive whatever it takes? Her relationships are built on the shaky grounds of need instead of want and she is surprisingly diplomatic, almost even wickedly so.

All I Can See Legacy Requiae
A runt. This Legacy will never live to be as big as even a medium sized of his rank. This Legacy is a light grey color with his wing-blades all a light blue that borders on ivory. His wings are crooked, his feathers are often out of place and he has a few bald spots on both of his wings and on his body. His eyes are a beady black, his beak a dulled grey, his body frail and thin. He’s weak and his wings may seem dull and rusty but he’ll still have all of the fury of a Requiae. He’s been abandoned by his blood but his blood still flows strongly through his veins. What he lacks in strength he makes up with force.

Vocal. That’s one way to describe this Requiae, who’s all screechy and clicky and whiny if something disturbs him. When he’s hungry he wails, when he’s bored he squawks, letting you know when and where he would like your attention. He isn’t terribly bright but he knows his place in the Requiae world. He’ll back off from higher ranks or bigger beings, but to smaller ones he’ll bully and use because what else does he have? He’s not a strong flyer, having endured storms and pains and what has been broken only heals stronger than it already was. Well he’s not terribly strong but he’s resilient and fiercely loyal. He knows his food and guards it as his. He’s not stupid but he’ll certainly do whatever power he has to keep what’s his own to himself even if that means risking himself. Otherwise feel free to use him as best as you wish.

All I Can Smell Omega Male Toku
#D3C97C
With nine tails flickering out from behind him, this Omega Male is the lowest of the low. With two tufted ears that are often folded on top of his skull. A majority of his body is a faint, pale yellow with faint prickles of light coffee brown scattered throughout his form. His wings are large, shaped like the limbs of a swan, white aside a band of faint brown around just above the flight feathers. His belly is white, stretching up to his pink nose and ending just before his tail. The tip of his tail is dipped in white, as is each paw. Right above the white is a wristlet of light brown above each of his paws at the base of his legs. His ears are also dipped in light brown. His eyes are a coffee brown matching each of his brown markings. He’s got a scar behind his ear and near his throat were fur doesn’t grow. Two of his nine tails are clipped, leaving only bits of white at the end, and he’s got a gash in the inside of his left thigh.

This Toku, despite his hardships, is definitely hopeful. He’s timid, lowly, an Omega with the max number of tails growing from. He knows his place, he’s very docile and afraid, fearing what those that are larger than him, stronger than him can do. He’s quick on his paws, though the streaming of nine tails slows him some, and though he’s not the best of flyers, he can easily carry his own. He’s helpful, he always wants to help out at any time possible but he’s completely pacifistic, he will bare a fang but never clench it around flesh that is not for feeding. He desperately wants a friend, a pack to call his own and seeks acceptance. He attempts to do things to impress but once attention really falls on him he panics and crumbles. He needs someone to lean on, a true friend that will love him, for he’s got a lot of love to give anyone in return.

Everything went black.

Frankly it was relief.

Pain faded, the shaking stopped, her pounding heart slowed down, she was on her knees in the cool blackness staring at her fingers splayed against an invisible floor. Gasping for air and trying to calm a heart that felt like it would burst. She barely had herself calmed before the first light showed up, and T'Rae watched them all warily. What fresh nightmare was this, then?

Taste? Her senses? She was Vulcan she didn't generally taste a whole lot, unless it was something overwhelming to other species, she frankly wouldn't be surprised if each of them had a better sense of taste than her.

T'Rae wouldn't be given the chance to answer however. Her nightmares were surging up again to take her from the black reprieve into a fresh hell. Literally, even judging from the heat, and judging from the sand coating her tongue, what little moisture was left in her mouth was tainted by the dirt, the dirt and a frustrating unbreakable film of bile coating the back of her throat to create nauseating concoction. Not that her stomach needed any more help being nauseated, between the dehydration and the poison. Vulcans may have a stronger immunity to sapotoxins, but that didn't mean the desert couldn't still kill them, it didn't mean that they still didn't need to be careful.

The young Vulcan woman whimpered as her stomach lurched again and her mouth flooded with the painfully acidic bile and the sickly sweet flowers she had located as her breakfast, disappearing into the sand and reviving the burning aftertaste like fire blooming through her mouth and down her throat. Stupid mistakes, stupid blind mistakes, blurred in her desperation for food and now she had poisoned herself, to die out here in the desert with none but herself to blame.

Who would have guessed that death could taste so disturbingly sweet? Could wash down her throat with such ease as a hope for her continued survival? If she had the strength she would have snorted, such an obvious and blatant trick of nature as she lay here looking back on it.

Who would have thought that the last thing she would have in her life was the taste of her bodies destruction.

It wasn't often that Saiph had dreams -- usually, the Requiae were to blame, or sometimes the Familiars. His subconscious wasn't actually very subconscious, and the problems his brain had to work through were usually dealt with more through meditation than dreams. What dreams he had has vastly different forms; of the Requiae usually a nightmare, of the Familiars usually uplifting. Occasionally Asheth or Veroneth would get caught up in fanciful dreams of flight and midnight tickles (or, memorably, he and Veroneth had both walked off of the roof once, thinking they were taking a grand stroll across a field of cotton candy) and he would be taken along for the ride because their connection to his mind wasn't as easy to shut down at night, when he desired sleep rather than dreams of balls of yarn or grand Celeste Cat adventures.

Then there were the premonitions; Thyrais had gotten stranger and stranger after her jump through the bonfire, and she would visit him in his dreams with strange predictions that would somehow come true. Saiph chose not to think too far into this; he was well-versed in the Spirit People of various cultures, and while he didn't think that the closest of his wolves would mind the intrusion, it felt wrong. So he took her declarations at face value, and did as he was told.

Tonight had been one of the many nights of blissful, dreamless sleep. No visions of his family mangled or lost, no odd visions on Alicja or Thyrais' part, no curious sensations of phantom tickles from either dragon. He had been several hours into a pleasantly light sleep, and he wasn't horribly surprised when several shinies materialized in his dreamless state. Were they real? Well, that he wasn't sure of, but they were present, and they didn't seem to mean him any harm, so he just listened curiously to their curiosity. It made sense -- strange, of course, that they would chose this avenue for their curiosity, but hey. This was a strange place.

Conjuring up his strongest memory of taste was not at all difficult. Sure, he had childhood memories; alien foods and the foods of either of his parents' cultures -- the subtle spice of his paternal grandmother's plomeek soup, the vividly pungent curries his mother used to feed them when they had barely sprouted teeth. The first real, strong, lasting memory that came to mind, though, was none of those.

It was of simple macaroni and cheese. There was, of course, a story behind it; but the story didn't come to mind as quickly as the taste. The rich cheese sauce, tart and rich and warm. It had been spiced with a terran spice that he still could not place -- fragrant and light, it had cut through the heavy sauce. The noodles had stood up to several gnashes of his beleaguered teeth, lightly salty and still as unctuous as the rest had been.

He remembered how he had eaten himself sick -- spoonful after spoonful of plain, sturdy noodle and cheese-filled sauce that tasted better than anything he'd ever eaten before. There had been strange variations in the cheese sauce; smoky, rich, sharp, gooey, it had utterly confused and amazed him in the best way possible. That was what he could conjure up immediately for the ragtag group of brain-invaders, that was the strongest sensation of taste that he could recall: the very first food he had eaten on Earth, given to him by a kind kitchen worker at the boarding school he'd been left at. Maybe Saiph was an optimist, since it was both first and best taste-sensation he could come up with, but hey...they hadn't done him any harm, not yet. So why not?

[I, uh, really hope I got that right. Dx </paranoidliekwaoh>]

Oh, he was awake.

Oh, maybe he wasn't. Geoffrey frowned. And if it was a proper nightmare, Trouble would have been there, somewhere, or Zhiema's disturbing messages meant to reassure him, or perhaps unsettle him, he was never sure which. Either way, they were lacking here, which meant something was controlling his mind.

Not one to dream much ever, end of story, and only in the last few months familiar with the concept again via night terrors he never remembered upon waking up, he was not at all pleased by the voices in his head attempting to force lucid dreaming out of him. Why did they keep thinking it was okay to do that? Seriously. Relax, we're just going to invade the personal recesses of your mind without so much as a mother-may-I. Gee, why wasn't he feeling relaxed at all with that kind of introduction.

"Piss off," he shot back at the group, disdain and annoyance beyond evident. Flamma? His core group believed in satanism and pagan gods. Ailoa? Oh yes, fun times with Maeko, his favouritist vampire ever. Toku? Again with the unsettling 'let me just rip you out of your mind and shove you into my delusional memories without permission' thing. Requiae? Haha, like anyone needed an awkward dislike-slash-dependency on those things explained.

Nevertheless, if they asked, they would be provided, if only to bide time until Trouble could come kill them all for placing him in a dead zone. You really don't want to do that to Geoffrey. Or anyone, really, total sensory deprivation is an extremely cruel and unusual punishment. "Antifreeze." Antifreeze and gasoline, technically, the first two things down his throat when he arrived on planet, but the antifreeze was much more poetic when addressing animals, two of which were vaguely canid. "Saccharine and thick and poison to anyone else. Why, do you want a cup?" he asked, sarcasm sickeningly sweet in its own right.

No, this wasn't right. He'd already been here; he'd already done this! It was over. Yet now the moment stretched interminably, empty and encompassing all at once. The desolation around him was of his own making, yet it filled him with a dread like no other. He watched from above himself, and he cringed at the sight of the broken heap in the center of the plain of destruction. Pity swelled, warring with contempt. War had raged here, a war that never should have been and that he had caused. He railed against the truth of it, but even in this dream world, he could not alter the past. He could only wait for it to unfold again around him. This was almost a nightly torture now.

He called out to that below, but here he had no voice, no true existence. He could only remember and regret as the figure beneath struggled to rise under a burden of chains and guilt and fear. The surge of fury was weaker only than the surge of pain, and echoes of both stirred within the incorporeal form of Enke. He drifted down, tethered to his other self, and just as he melded with that battered body, he caught a glimpse of the sky.

Where there had been only darkness, now there were lights. He watched them come, utterly numb. As they surrounded him, they dissolved into separate forms. Still, Enke felt nothing. There was no curiosity, no doubt, no spark of emotion. Sense? He could sense nothing, not anymore, not with everything being rent asunder, torn and battered into nothing. He was nothing.

...Or was he? No. As the sibilant whispers of his watchers faded, he realized that he could taste. It was the most recent thing to fill his mouth, the dream taste.

Thick, cloying ash. It thickened with his saliva, coating his tongue and making him retch, but the taste of decay was inescapable. There was always more, more. Instead of the raw, coppery bite of Free Magic--sharp like blood--he tasted the bitterness of death. Even the sweet, hot, heady juice of peppery Charter Magic was lost to dust. It seemed that he had never tasted anything but the dry and pallid disgust of grit. It ground against his teeth. No amount of spitting could dispel the lingering flavor, for every tastebud had been deadened with its powdery offense.

Taste? All he could taste was ruin.

((Summer days - hot; 407))

Minds were black save the tastes, the memories. What was not readily provided was not taken, and what was not readily received not received.

For this sense in particular, all would share.

The first bold enough to reveal true inner thoughts began with the splendid, iron taste of meat. Freshly cut down meat killed, defeated in triumph. Liquid caressed the tongue, soaked soothing and warm down the throat, the meat was chewed repeatedly before swallowed, bone crunched between teeth, and though respect was passed with each bite, tenderness and heat with every bite. Suddenly the warmth became cold, the meat rotten. Something crawled, maggots? Or some kind of insect or creature and fell off the tongue only when spat out. A bitter and foul taste so overwhelming and thick that the very scent could be inhaled and tasted on the gums.

Cut. There was no other sense, this time the taste started dull. Instead it was replaced by the cool rush of water down the throat from a stream perhaps, until the water was suddenly mixed with the thick taste of mud, tasteless but disgusting, until that mud turned into the grains of sand, crunching against the teeth, crusty against the tongue.

The crustiness of soil suddenly turned into a dry rub of salt, saltiness that swirled and mingled with sand and mud and the strangely familiar taste of blood and iron, perhaps the own blood of the feeler? The It isn’t the freezing cold water that drowns the taste but the saltiness, oh the saltiness, and after the taste thrashing the mouth for so long, it seems to burn. And the taste of nothing would be better. But was then there was the refreshing and cool feel of the dew of grass suddenly, touching the tip of the lips.

And finally a cold air, cold rain rips through the air and forces its way down your neck. There is no taste, only texture, only cold. Cold wind and weather and it rushes so fast it’s hard to breath. And then nothing.

[I typed this and I realized I don’t even know for sure if Tokus eat meat…Please correct me if I’m wrong 8D I also want to say that the next posts will be shorter as the shinies will be only showing the sense based on their own individual one, and I’m going to post more often and descs will be up shortly. Thanks for joining! Prefs can come any time the descs are done, or when they're not yet done whatever!]

Raw muscle tissue. Rotten flesh. Water. Mud. Sand. Salt. Blood again like the meat. Water again in the smaller quantities of dew. Cold — nope, never mind, no cold storm at all. Geoffrey waited. The arms over his chest tensed, fingertips gripping into his shirtsleeves tightly, no lab coat here.

"And?" It was spit out much more sour than the flesh tainted by the virus, much harsher than the tiny grains of earth, and much colder than anything on his skin. Geoffrey did not like stupid wastes of time. He didn't care one iota about blut und boden unless it was his country's. Congratulations, they knew how tongues worked. What was their point get to the POINT.

One appeared before Geoffrey. The purple light of the Umbra’s eyes stared directly at the man, narrowed. We’ve come to request from your mind and in return we’ve given you a part of ours. A fair trade, no? she paused for a long while, with silence, blackness warped behind her. If you think you are too good for us, then return to sleep.

Meanwhile, two other voices spoke out to the others that were still entranced. What do you hear? one whispered. What do you see?

[Short post, but I was a derp and completely forgot to give you a new sense and then my internet didn’t work and so many problems. But here it is, sorry guys, bear with me. My internet’s being the biggest dick to me these days. e_e]

"No," Geoffrey started in immediately to contradict the Flamma the second she had shut up, "You stole control of my mind without consent and then without asking also shoved your own mind on top of mine. That's not requesting and sharing in a fair trade. That's being a jackass, and then being even more of a one," he explained in a notably condescending voice.

He didn't say anything about going to sleep though. They woke him up, they were the ones who were going to put up with him now. Be mindful who you try to harass during their dreamless sleep, foolish specimens. Besides, if he ignored everybody he was too good for he'd have infinitely fewer specimens around his house, and that made for very boring research studies. He wasn't vain, exactly, but he was extremely self-confident and full of self-esteem in conjunction with extremely critical pessimism about everyone else.

ooc| The way I'm reading it, the other voices didn't talk to Geoffrey...? If he did hear them make their requests, just give me a heads up and I'll add that in.

What did he hear? He felt the ash in his mouth dissolve as if it had never been, and what came next was as expected as his next breath. Moreso, perhaps. The symphony began low and throbbing, bass notes pounding deep in the marrow of his bones. Enke knew that this was Free Magic, staccato and percussive touched with the sibilant hiss of a fading cymbal every few beats. It was almost a constant stream of groans to march to, dark and ominous.

And then came the lightness, the high and melodic music of the Charter. The softly fluttering trill of flutes vibrated along with the glimmer of strings. A sweet, reedy clarinet's pulse tethered the ascending notes to earth (or lack thereof, in this dream-place).

It was the first sound he'd ever heard, the song of birth and mingling that so few would remember. Of course, it would not be complete without the bells. First chimed Ranna, sweet and light and twinkling. Her brother Mosrael was next to sound, harsh and ragged against the smoothness of her serenade. The friendly, jaunty march of Kibeth came next, but beneath the lively jig was a thread of purposefulness that carried into the plodding, low peal of Belgaer. The next to rise was perhaps the most familiar. Strident Saraneth sounded his shackling call, sharp and unmistakable even amidst the blending of the five. Beneath his boisterous voice came the final bell, the quietest and yet the most striking. The low, devastating roll of Astarael, so clear and final, effervesced from the bottom of the medley until her piercing cry drowned out all the rest.

The sound grew and grew, battering his ear drums as well as his mind until nothing but unintelligible noise remained. All the intricacies of the gripping song faded to be replaced by agonized static, chaos. Ah, yes, he remembered well the plunge from blissful ballad into white noise and then, finally, silence.

((I'm a bit confused here. Is Sight a separate round or not, since it's in the same post? I'm gonna go ahead and separate though two, so I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to.))

[Noo internet. This is late but it’ll end here.]

A jackass? And you would know how such a being would behave best, wouldn’t you. the Umbra’s voice was amused as a crooked smile shifted over her. She took a step closer, purple eyes the same color as the rest of the purple light of her body staring at the man. If you hate your mind being called for without consent, then I’m sure you would especially hate this. the light that made up her current form collapsed over Geoffrey like smoke, the bond she formed with the man was weak, barely noticeable unless you really thought of it. She then released his mind, almost forcing him back into slumber. When he woke he would find an extra Umbra Flamma occasionally. She would not greet him, not pay him much mind. If that was the way he wanted it, then she’d give that to him, unless of course he was ever needed.

Enke on the other hand would still be in the presence of the three but it would only be two that reached out and took hold of him. The green light faded into smoke and disappeared, staying wild, free, away from any sort of society that could only further reject her.

The Legacy showed the man his sight, the area around him was a thick grey, pelts of silvery wind thundering around him. Cracks of white lightning speared through the sky, the black ocean roiled below creating froth and waves and thrashing. There were no sounds, no smells, you couldn’t even feel the rain and the storms at all. All you could do was see, see where the he had been abandoned, see what he had to live and survive through before he could tangle the pale blue light around Enke’s body. His grip was strong, desperate, but surprisingly cold and needy. A runt he had hatched, a runt he would remain, and whether Enke was ready or not he took a bit of residence within the man’s mind, as a tight bond.

The Toku on the other hand, perhaps the gentlest of the four, reached out and touched Enke with no senses besides smell. No matter how weak any humanoid’s sense of smell could be, the Toku’s was strong. The faint scent of lilacs, other pretty flowers, were blurred out with the thick scent of rotting meat. There was the bare smell of maggots, of dirt and fecal matter and urine. But soon the scent turned around, turned to the scent of fresh grass, cold waters, the humid and dewy scent of rain. And the light yellow light that made up his body reached for and grabbed Enke, hopeful, light. When the man woke, he would find both Requiae and Toku nearby, nameless, waiting, looking for a better life, out of the wild and out of their lowly ranks in their respective societies.

[Well this didn’t at all turn out the way I planned, but I did enjoy writing up these four and creating stories for them. Anyone’s welcome to buy the Ainu if they wish, just let me know first, and I hope you enjoy your shinies at the very least! The last two descs will be up in ASAP as long as my internet doesn’t collapse on me. If you don't want the shinies then have your character reject the bond after they wake.]

It was disturbing, having all his senses torn away and replaced by foreign ones. Disturbing, so that he couldn't help but thrash against the wrongness of it, but it was intriguing all the same. He'd experienced the vile and shocking tastes, but they had faded swiftly into the dance of the music. These lingered, twining into his own, melding until he was not sure whether they were introduced or remembered.

He saw the storm, the splendor. But nothing last against his skin, pounded in his ears, sparked in his mouth and nose. The stark fury of the storm was naked, for it had no texture other than vivid sight. Enke watched the world wind around the being, full of no one and nothing but profound emptiness. And then the light was winding around him, reaching, pulling, taking without the merest hint of askance. He struggled, briefly, but the desperation was not to be ignored. His mind was stolen, secured. Procellor would not be moved. A frail body of necessity produced a tenacious spirit.

The shock of the unexpected, uninvited bond nearly woke him, but a sharp scent pulled him under. Rotten, dead. Hands, here? No. The decay had no form, no malevolence. It was empty of everything but the acrid smell, the smell Enke should've gagged on. The death subsided, to be replaced by the most animalistic scents of life, the desperate and the necessary.

Rain came to wash the stench away, rain that he could neither see nor hear nor feel. But the scent of it was unmistakable, welcome. It had none of the zing of the previous storm, just the earthiness of grass and clarity of morning. It calmed him, allowed the light to slip subtly in. There was no struggle, no surge of force. The melding was easy, fresh as a rain-scented breeze. Pluve nestled himself into the crevices of Enke's consciousness, drenching dream and reality with his presence.

Enke woke to riot of light and sound, though after the dynamic displays of the dream, even the intensity of the magic lost its edge. The reaction of his chains and bells to the double bonding seemed watered-down, hardly real. He quested, briefly, with his mind. Two more beings sparkled into definition behind his closed lids. He brushed against them, still too much asleep to be surprised. Discovery would come tomorrow. The rest of the night, he would devote to much-needed, non-sensory-overloaded rest.

((This was fun! Thank you!))