Lasting For All Time

Within only a week of her captivity, Aeris knew more about Draven than she would ever admit to. He had caught her red handed, trying to escape by means of destroying an entire wall, and was in the middle of one of those long winded lectures he was prone to. The demon loved to hear him talk, morphing one word to hit her guilt cleverly and another to make her feel lower than life. Even when looking down, at the cracked stone floor, Aeris knew that the window’s light was hitting her Familiar in the face, making his currently red eyes dance a cherry blood color, sparks of intense oranges and yellows near the core.

Ignoring his entire speech- he had somehow fit in that escaping was ethically wrong – she looked up and asked him, “When am I going home?”

Draven frowned, unwilling to accept the fact that the mage he had suckered into accepting him was being inconvenient. “You’re not going home,” he repeated himself from conversations of the past; the broken record response.

He watched intensely as the girl looked down, hair wet from the rain outside, and crossed her arms. He had never been as thoroughly unpleasant to her like the first morning she woke up in her new prison, but she still found it increasingly difficult not to cry because of the fact that she may never go home again. Rolling his eyes, Draven signed and decided the rebuking was over. Draven sauntered over to her, put an arm around her back, then half carried half pushed her along to her new room, since she had destroyed the other one’s wall.

She walked grudgingly, the first few steps sticky with indignation. The warm, sturdy hand shoving her in an almost gentle manner sent pleasant, self-assured emotions into her body, making Aeris hate Draven even more. His Familiarity to her made him connected physically, as well as mentally, and his touch, even if through the damp blouse, was the feeling of being given back a body part lost, or a memory long forgotten that wasn’t essential for life, but one that made life more worth living. What confused her even more about his touch was that it was not always cold, and a vampire’s touch was always cold.

In the time of her captivity, Aeris learned Draven’s habits and usual behavior, but she still had no idea what he was. In her mind, he remained some form of ‘shadow-demon’, but she had no idea how off track she was. He was more similar to her earth-mage nature than she could ever imagine, and until she would open up to him, it would remain that way.

Aeris was brought out of her musings when a door she had never seen before, in a hallway she had not yet explored, was opened in front of her. “Aeris are you listening to me?” Draven snapped at her, and the warm hand against her back sent cold darts into places she didn’t think she could ever feel temperature fluctuations.

“Wha?” She responded thickly, not sure if he had even been speaking.

“I said”- she could feel the impatience in his touch- “That this is my room. You’ll be staying in my room.”

Waves of horror washed over her as what he said hit her. She did not want to be in his room. Would she be sleeping on his bed… with him on the bed?! Or would he give her space? Just the idea of being in a place that was entirely his made her sick, nerves clenching her stomach as she backed out of the doorway, hysterically shaking her head from side to side.

“Come on,” he sighed and easily picked her up, pressing her against him and making her feel dizzy.

She once again was reminded how powerful he was; he was so powerful that he could fool her with his earthy-sprite mask, and so powerful that she could feel the dark, deep energy pooled within his being. All sense of the room surrounding her was drowned in the cave of his confusing magic, and Aeris only came back to her senses a few minutes later after he had dropped her onto a curiously similar comforter to the one she had been using all week. His eyes were a warm red, touched with familiar humor.