Eshra's Stories - Tumblr Posts

THIS

THIS RIGHT HERE??

THIS IS PURE SKILL, AND I JUST HAVE TO SHARE IT

What's Your Favorite Flower?

A little thing I wrote after considering what Eshra's answer would be. Takes place during the Bad Future™.

Rating: G

It’s such a minuscule thing, really, and in a normal world, a sane world, he never would have noticed it. Why would he? But the world isn’t normal, and it isn’t sane, and it hasn’t been for years, and so in this hellscape of shattered shades of gray all overlaid with a hellish red sky, the tiny splash of yellow catches his eye.

On feet as quiet as a cat’s paws, the yokai dips and darts across the torn up, rubble-strewn asphalt of… Bleecker Street, he thinks, near 11th, his dancer’s steps carrying him towards that incongruous dot of color. Every sense is in overdrive, like they have been since the invasion, but nothing trips his internal alarm, and he allows himself this brief moment of curiosity.

It’s a dandelion, he realizes after a frankly embarrassing number of seconds. Miraculously, the little yellow blossom is still clinging to life in this broken world, stubbornly reaching for the demonic sky and spreading its leaves to catch what little true sunlight might still filter through the red haze.

Eshra’s breath catches in his throat, an unexpected upsurge of emotion he has to swallow down hard, lest he risk making a noise and giving away his position. He reaches out almost without realizing it, his fingers stopping a hair’s breadth from the sunny petals. Somehow, even here, at the epicenter of the apocalypse, life endures. It persists, in spite of death, in spite of ruin, in spite of the krang.

The urge to protect the tiny flower, to uproot it and carry it somewhere safe, out of the reach of careless hound claws and crushing droid feet, is almost overwhelming. The fear of some mindless krang zombie shambling across this particular patch of broken concrete and heedlessly snuffing out this tiny spark of life has Eshra reaching for the dandelion again, for a moment intent on digging it up and spiriting it to safety. He nearly has his claws in the dirt before he stops himself, something that might be his conscience nipping at the edge of his mind. What right has he to impose his will on this precious, stubborn little thing? Why does he think he knows better? He draws his hand back, clutching it against his chest and instead simply taking a few cherished moments to just… look. Look and breathe and have just a minute’s worth of peace.

He goes back every day after that, each time terrified he won’t remember where the dandelion is, or worse, that something has happened to it while he’s been away. Each time, though, his fears are unfounded, and he finds his flower right where he left it, still as bright as the sun they can no longer see and still as insistent that it is going to live.

The day he spots a puff of white instead of the usual splash of yellow, Eshra’s heart jumps in his chest. Almost without care he hurries the last few dozen yards and crouches down next to the dandelion, which has turned from a sunburst blossom to a tiny cloud, and he's smiling a smile he’s forgotten he has. The yokai cups his hands around the seeded flower, a scrap of cloth in his fingers as a shield between the dandelion and the rest of the world. Then carefully, so very carefully, he blows on the puff, which shivers and quivers and at last releases its grip on its scores of minuscule seeds, allowing them to float safely into Eshra’s makeshift net.

After folding the cloth into a secure little sachet and tucking it into one of his supply pouches, Eshra finally lets himself touch his flower, a single delicate fingertip resting on the now bare seed head.

“Thank you,” he whispers, soft as the dandelion’s seeds, “for reminding me.”

Ohhh the emotions-

IT'S SO GOOD??

To anyone who sees this reblog, CHECK OUT SO-CALLED-YOKAI! THEY'RE SKILLED ASF

“I want to know who hurt you.”

Protective Chief @ Eshra?? 👀👀👀

Remember when I said I wanted to eventually tell the story behind Eshra's nightmares? I guess "eventually" actually meant "now".

1600 words of hurt/comfort. I don't know how this happened.

Technically M/M, Rise OCs, rated G

And it had all been going so well before that moment…

Chief’s hands had been heavy on him, rough but never cruel, assertive but never demanding. They’d shared breath and hot, hungry kisses in between whispers of playful affection, soft laughter heard just as often as quiet moans and wanting sighs.

Then the slider’s fingers had moved up his left arm, gliding across his bicep and over the curve of his shoulder, and Eshra had recoiled so violently the entire bed banged against the wall. He’d lashed out without meaning to – no, without even thinking – and he could only be grateful his claws had scraped over tough keratin and not… not…

Eshra stares at Chief in horror, clutching his own offending hand against his chest and trying to stammer an explanation around the lead weight that was suddenly filling his lungs, suffocating him. “I– I didn’t– I’m sorry, I don’t–”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay, Перья,” Chief croons. Rather than looking angry or hurt or frightened, all things Eshra would have expected and was terrified of seeing, the turtle simply watches him with soft concern. He reaches out, although his fingers stop before actually making contact with the agitated so-called-yokai, and for that Eshra is grateful. As much as he craves the other’s touch, he still feels like he might fly out of his skin at any moment.

“Who hurt you?”

Eshra flinches hard, then can’t help but let out a brief, humorless laugh. Spirits, Chief always knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter, both literally and figuratively. He shoves both hands back through his crest, curling his fingers and tugging hard on the iridescent feathers, desperately needing the slight pain to ground himself.

“Fuck, am I that obvious?”

Chief just gives him a look, and Eshra’s bitter amusement fades. He looks away, out the window at the neon-lit Hidden City night, and the silence that stretches between them seems interminable, until it feels like it’s pressing down on Eshra just as his earlier panic did. He knows Chief won’t break it first; the slider is waiting for him, for whenever he’s ready, but spirits, how can Eshra ever be ready for a conversation like this?

The yokai– the anavri curls up, hugging his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. If he can just get small enough, maybe the memories won’t find him. Maybe they won’t find a place to dig their claws in and flay him open like they’ve been doing for weeks, months, years. It doesn’t work, of course, and Eshra shudders. This time he’s grateful when Chief moves up the bed and reaches to gather his little extraterrestrial into his arms whether Eshra likes it or not.

He does. It lets him hide his face against Chief’s plastron and spend a few moments simply listening to the steady thump of the slider’s heart, waiting and willing for his own to eventually match it. It refuses, and finally Eshra gives up, instead taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment as he tries to figure out where to start.

“My brother,” he eventually settles on. Okay, but where does he go from there? Where does he start? Way back when they were children, and his brother was his hero, his protector, and his best friend all rolled into one, indefatigable and irrepressible and larger than life? Or maybe later, after Ark had discovered the dark knowledge that ultimately consumed him, that ate away at his psyche and his soul until Eshra was sure his brother was gone and it was some ghoul simply wearing his skin? Or later even than that, when it all came to a final, horrible head and Eshra had finally realized only one of them could walk out of that room, and yet he’d still been unable to do what needed to be done and had instead fled his colony, his planet, his entire life, because that was still easier than facing the reality that the hero, the protector, the best friend he’d known was long dead.

No, he realizes after a long while. No, he has to go back even further, back into the hazy mists of time, before his species had even known themselves. He takes a deep breath.

“The krang.” Eshra feels Chief startle a little bit, but the turtle remains silent, and he’s grateful. “Ark – my brother – he was always fascinated by old stuff. History, ruins, ancient artifacts, all that kind of thing. So I guess I’m not surprised he was the one who found them first – found out about them first,” he quickly corrects, because he can feel Chief tensing up. He waits until the slider relaxes a bit again before continuing. “He never told me what exactly he found, whether they’d ever been to our world or if it was all secondhand from others they’d… visited. It didn’t matter, in the end. Whatever he learned about what they do – did, I guess… – it broke him.”

It’s hard. Spirits, it’s so hard. Eshra would have thought that with how eagerly the memories claw at his mind, it would be easy to coax them out into the open, but they’re cowardly little bastards, hooking their talons into his throat and fighting like hell to stay hidden behind his teeth. Without the strength of Chief’s arms around him and the warmth of the slider’s breath ruffling against his crest, Eshra never would have made it, he’s sure of it.

But somehow, slowly, haltingly, he gets it all out. Kihy’ark’s descent into madness, slow and subtle at first, and then terrifyingly fast, as though his brother had thrown himself bodily off the precipice of sanity. The unending paranoid ranting that had morphed into political rhetoric once it moved beyond the boundaries of their own pack and into the colony at large, and from there became all out anti-krang, anti-dissident, anti-thought propaganda. And finally, Eshra’s discovery of what Ark had been doing to himself, the forbidden technology he had been dabbling in, immersing himself in, entombing himself in.

“I confronted him, because of course I did.” Eshra’s voice is rough from so much raw emotion scraping over a mind still not truly able to process the horror of those last few years at home. “We fought about it, because of course we did. I… said some things. Stupid things. I should have known what kind of reaction they’d get.” He huffs out a dull, soundless laugh. “I asked him what his loyal followers would think if they found out what he’d been doing to himself. What he’d been doing with krang tech. He… he didn’t like that.”

Eshra’s arm and shoulder throb with phantom pain, and he rubs the former absentmindedly. The ache is familiar to him now. Then, after a few moments’ consideration, he gently takes Chief’s hand and guides it to his right bicep. He thinks the slider might be holding his breath as he presses those thick, callused fingers into his feathers so Chief can feel the divots hidden underneath. Chief growls, and Eshra can’t help but smile at the righteous, protective sound.

“He grabbed me,” the anavri explains, stroking Chief’s plastron soothingly. He can practically feel the turtle wanting to object to the mundane language, wanting to rage in his defense and seek out this monster who had dared to lay hands on Chief’s little bird. Eshra is a little sorry he’s about to make it worse.

He moves Chief’s hand over to his left shoulder, letting the slider feel out the shape of the scar underneath, and he can tell the moment Chief realizes what it is, when those intense green eyes flick towards Eshra’s mouth and the growling starts up again.

“He bit you?” Chief’s voice is low and dangerous. Eshra isn’t afraid, though. In fact, he feels something warm bloom in his chest; there’s nothing quite like knowing someone is ready to go to war on your behalf.

“Mm,” Eshra replies, deliberately apathetic. If he isn’t, if he doesn’t consciously divorce himself from his own psyche just for a moment, he knows the knife-sharp memories will seize hold of him again, as they’ve been trying to do this whole time. “That’s when it finally hit me that I wasn’t– that he wasn’t–” His breath catches on a suppressed sob, and he stops, swallowing hard. The memories almost got him that time.

Chief hugs him hard, and for a little while Eshra simply lets himself be held, face pressed against the slider’s shoulder while they both compose themselves. Then, in some vain attempt to lighten the mood, Eshra says, “Gave better than I got, though. Took the fucker’s eye to make him let me go.” He feels more than hears Chief’s huff of amused approval, and it eases the tightness in his chest a minuscule amount.

“And you pretty much know the rest,” the anavri finally finishes. “I knew I’d never be safe while Ark and I were on the same planet, so I ran. Ended up on this backwater, bummed around for a few years, and now here we are.”

They meet each other’s eyes for the first time in what feels like hours, and the warmth in Chief’s gaze nearly breaks Eshra. His eyes sting as the turtle presses a long kiss against the anavri’s brow, then his snout, then his mouth.

“Yeah,” Chief rumbles. “Here we are.”

And finally, in that moment, Eshra thinks that maybe everything is going to be alright after all.