Frigid

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Night falls darker in the Brume. What little lantern-light flickered overhead quickly melted into Fray's shadow. Clangouring sollerets betrayed her light footfalls, rumbling up from Liborette's bootheels to the base of her spine. Soon she found her back pressed to the wall. Its bitter chill seeped through her coat, through her shoulder blades, down into her belly.

Fray looked to her like dark clouds rolling in. Her voice fell like the first drops of rain before a downpour. "Is this just how it's going to be?"

Cold. Cold, and a bit crumbly, she found the mortar between the bricks behind her. In this thousand year-old city, with amber eyes lit by a lifetime of suffering, Fray leaned in and emptied her lungs. Armoured fingers brushed aside her hair and cupped her cheek, little metal clatters, so familiar, right by her ear.

Look down. Look away. Try to breathe. Don't be scared; it's only Fray.

But escape never came easily. She forced Liborette to look, tipped her head back until she met her mentor's eyes. At times it felt as if their shared gaze was her tether to this world, mooring that let her float in darkness but not drown. Each other was all they had. So really, there was no such thing as "only" Fray, and no task so simple as "don't be scared."

Certainly, she was frightened by the hold on her hip. When she flinched, Fray squeezed her tighter.

"Every time I touch you... Though I know you want me to... You freeze."

Fray's hand slipped between her thighs, accompanied by several soft sounds— gauntlets, heavy, rustling; lips parting, a single word fogged by a puff of anxious air; boots scuffing as Fray leaned closer, still, and her legs spread for her.

"Oh, Liborette..." She sighed in utter disappointment. "You're already soaked."

None of it registered through the heart pounding in her ears.

Up to the moment Fray pressed it back into her, she hadn't noticed the clinginess of her spats, the damp beneath, the ache inside. From one fingertip reverberated full-body sensations of pleasure and fear and more pleasure besides.

"It feels good," she whispered, like an echo from the back of her mind. "Even better if you'd rock into my hand. Go on, little one. I know you want to be good for me."

She shut her eyes and bit her lips, breathing hard. What she wanted, what she didn't... She could not voice any of it with this desperate feeling welling up in her throat. She shook her head within the boundaries Fray allowed until her chin was seized and, once again, they were forced to lock eyes.

"Tch." What Fray saw in her expression, she clearly did not like. "Is this his influence? Haurchefant won't allow it?"

Just the sound of his name, caustic as it was, made something in her belly flip over. This feeling— she discovered it with him. Beside a hearth home to a crackling fire, atop well-kept wolf pelts, soft but not as soft as his skin. His reliable hands banished the cold. He untwisted the knot in her chest with whispers of devotion, promises of safety.

Oh, my love, be calm... He cooed, and kissed her, and kissed her. 'Tis only I.

"You foolish child," said Fray, stroking her clit with an intensity that made her hiccup and jolt. She flushed hot enough that the tears didn't freeze to her face. "He's dead."

He was dead and she was sinking into herself, into the moment she felt him last. Reliable hands hung limp. Eyes that shone upon her all the light in the heavens clouded over. He was dead when she needed him alive, in her bed, introducing her to depths of love she could not possibly reach on her own. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that someone else touched her and she liked it. It wasn't right to drown in floods of grief and lust at once.

The warmth she associated with Haurchefant's praise blossomed between her legs... Then puddled in Fray's palm, dribbled through her fingers, and pattered to the cobblestone. Oh no, oh no—

"Ha, there you go again. Pissing yourself because your knight in shining armour isn't here to hold your chamber pot." Though her voice dripped with disgust, she pressed in further. The torrent blasting her hand rebounded, burbling back over Liborette's most sensitive spot. The more she peed, the more her clit throbbed, the more pitifully she wept.

Fray allowed her to cry into her chest. A reprieve from the relentless eye contact. A return to the dark, a rest for her dizzy head, how kind. Nevertheless, her whole body shivered knowing the one she loved, feared, and needed most was still staring. Quite literally, she felt Liborette's control trickling away. When she laughed, the girl gasped for shallow breaths and thought she might die. It calmed her just enough, the chilly gauntlet tossing her hair aside, settling on the nape of her neck, as she wet herself for a minute straight.

Her spats flooded all the way up the back. Rivulets ran down both thighs into her boots. The rest sprayed out between Fray's fingers, still rubbing her crotch as though nothing had changed, even as piss spattered her coat and pooled at their feet, so hot it steamed. The smell of old brickwork rose up in the frigid, nighttime air.

"Did you put it off too long?" she asked with mock concern. "Or are you just that terrified of your own feelings?"

It felt good. It felt so, so good, and still she couldn't move an ilm.

When Fray pulled away, Liborette collapsed. Not even the wall could hold her up, her knees wobbling as they were. She slid into her own puddle with a pathetic splash. It was already cold, already creeping further into her clothes, sloshing on the shore of her vulva, twitching and puffy inside her spats. Her toes squelched in her boots as though she'd trudged through heavy rains.

Time slowed on one muted movement, her mentor simply pivoting her heel. Liborette broke into new, hysterical sobs.

"Sorry—" she whimpered, words disjointed. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I—"

"I've heard enough of your apologies. If you're sorry, you'll change."

"P-please don't go." She grabbed at her coat. "Please, I need you."

"What would you ask of me, Liborette?"

A thousand years of shame and desire wafted through the Brume.