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The Breakdown of Emotions
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With Xe'Reth's foot placed on Malinda’s side, he swings her while she lets out a startling moan as she’s tossed sideways, so she tils, hanging, while Xe’Reth holds her in place with arms around her back and waist, making her hair dangle as her tights rests on his forward placed leg.
He grins teasingly at her for he's about to do an act, which will make Malinda's face turn into something else.
All going according to his plans.
Malinda’s gaping mouth of innocence is showing as she stares with wide eyes at Xe’Reth. The tigress turned into a female kitten, and a male kitten turned into a beastly tiger is what shows in front of the crowd of poverty. Making an Honored Lady moan, making her show her weakness of romance, but as Xe’Reth leans forward, he kisses her while both of them are in a posture as if it’s an end of a dance, a dance of affection.
Xe’Reth, however, doesn’t go too far, only the kiss of purity is displaying, no tongues, only two lovers who’re in an embrace, showing the poor people what they’re. They’re a couple is what Malinda wanted them to see, but now this spectacle that shows by the carriage is making the people…
Cheer in gratitude!
For a man of poverty is taming an Honorable woman right in front of their eyes. But what they’re cheering for is what Malinda had just spoken about. Assistance is coming their way! No more hunger, no more freezing coldness, and no more do they need to live such a miserable lives, if she keeps her word… which she will.
Xe’Reth doesn’t just stop with that graceful dance of his.
While Malinda is now leaning there dipping backwards, with their now dislodged lips, her mouth is gaping, her eyebrows are raised, and her azure spheres are staring at him with such bafflement while he gives her a smile as he then tosses her back to her standing position, but she swings too much, making her lose her footing. Though Xe’Reth is prepared as he smiles teasingly which she sees with even more opened eyes as she flings to the side.
As she begins to fall sideways again, Xe’Reth catches her, and while she’s tilting slightly, he spins his body while he holds her. Malinda begins to rotate so her feet places themselves on the ground, but they doesn’t remain there, they follow Xe’Reth’s movement as he spins with his violent whirlwind, though as he stops, Malinda keeps spinning for some reason. Her whole world spins and spins and spins.
Her one hand is raised above her head while he holds it with a hand too… And she’s standing on her tip toes, making the sabatons’ plated forward joints creak as she whirls and whirls. He’s actually making her do a pirouette while her skirt flows with the turning winds, showing her whole underbody. But it’s covered with underlying pants which she has on, for she would never just walk with her undies under her skirt, it’s a disgraceful manner to do, she thinks at least. What would happen if a sudden gust of wind were to show her… everything? She would’ve been utterly devastated if someone saw such a shameful appearance.
As her twirling twirls comes to an end, she rests in Xe’Reth’s embrace as this was a wild ride that he showed her. She isn’t out of breath, but her adrenaline pumps her heart to reveal a stunned but cheerful expression upon her face of beauty. She breathes heavily because of the shear surprise, and Xe’Reth looks at her with a smile as Malinda raises her head to look at him, with a smile too.
She pushes him away from herself teasingly, while not showing such an amused expression, but it’s just a rouse to not show how joyful that made her.
‘Dear Divine, how does he make such moves?! Even I can’t dance that well! Such a coordination of both legs and arms, and that body language! They were so precise!’ she thought in complete astonishment, for that was a very intricate dance, which she has seen before in the great ballroom of the castle when people of all noble classes had come to celebrate the birth of Merissa, Celyssa’s daughter, and other times too.
She had seen the lovers dancing while the instruments swayed to their exact actions. And the precious memories…
Those moments when her father tried to teach her how to dance, and not some tutor. He himself gave up time to learn Malinda how to dance, and her mother had stood on the sidelines, holding the thumb-sucking little Madelyn while being jokingly jealous of another woman dancing with her husband, a girl of ten years old trying to follow her father's teachings, his lovingly teachings she so enjoyed. A daughter that a father loved, a daughter who loved her father… and a mother who loved both of them.
Malinda’s tears begins to form around her eyelids as she remembers those joyful moments that she had with her family… But no more… They’re dead… They’re fading into memories.
As Xe’Reth sees her sorrowful eyes, he embraces her as if wanting to shield her from such memories. But, Xe’Reth opens his mouth to speak out what she wants to hear, he whispers to her, gently, “Your father was a master of his craft, a role model of excellence who invented that dance I just showed you, which you truly know, my Malinda, my love. Your father and mother is still with you even after their passing. They live through you, my love. And through your efforts, you can make them watch you, watch you with happiness in their hearts, while they’re up in the Divine Sky, protecting you… forever.”
Her outer shell cracks open, and a flood of emotions pours out of her. Her cry is completely heartbreaking. She clings to Xe’Reth for her dear life while she barrows herself on his bare bandaged chest.
He has done something that no one should do…
This was intended, for he had been taught by his mother, Theresa, about dancing. For she herself was a master of the craft, too, but she had no one to dance with anymore, only her lovely son, which she taught with such loving conviction. And spoke of those who had been hailed with greatness on the floor of flowing movements. The dances of nobles, the dances of lovers, and the dances Xe’Reth and Theresa shared.
In their store when no one was browsing Theresa’s various merchandise of clothes, she would be happily dancing with the little Xe’Reth in her arms. Since he was very short, she carried him as she pirouetted to her own swinging tune of happiness; side to side, forward and backwards, spins left, spins right, for she loved her son, her only son, her only star that brightened her lonely life of her lover-less heart.
But all happy ends… ends… And Xe’Reth breaks the hearts of those he comes in contact with.
As Malinda cries rivers of tears that soaks Xe’Reth’s bandaged chest, he guides her away from the crowd, around, to the carriage’s door. For an adult, she does cry in such sorrow. Taryna is standing there in disbelief, not even moving from her frozen position by the armored horses.
Only her moving eyes trails her Miss as Xe’Reth guides her into the carriage.
The crowd, too, stands there dumbfounded about this sudden woman of grief.
As the bare-chested young man guides her into the carriage, somehow, they feel gladness about their situation, for she had said that aid is coming. And what is even more astounding is, is that they’re thinking that she’s crying for their poor predicament, for them, because they didn’t hear Xe’Reth’s whispering words as he had uttered them to her. Those words that she wanted but not wanted to hear. The painstaking memories of her childhood that’re the most happiest moments of her life, but also the most sorrowful, for her parents are indeed gone.
When the door to the carriage closes shut, Taryna is left there by the horses, though with a shake of her head she snaps out of her disbelief and begins to run, to open the door. But as she opens it, she sees Xe’Reth there stroking Malinda’s beautiful grief-stricken head.
She’s still holding him in her embrace, tightly, not letting go for her life. It’s as if she’s a child that wants to be held by her parents, a child that has been to war; killed her opponents, a demon that gave no quarter to her enemies. It didn’t matter if they were children or men or women. She had done those horrible acts as she felt her lonely heart sink deeper into her own oblivion. For every kill, came a sorrowful frown upon her face, for every thrust came a face of her enemy that looked upon her with such hate, sorrow, and complete and utter innocence.
The enemy has done so many horrible acts just to gain a foothold in this kingdom of theirs. But through their desperate acts… comes carelessness, greed, and arrogance.
For those enemies’ kingdoms who has thrown armies upon the wall, one after the other, is absolutely ruthless to the core.
It didn’t matter who they threw, it can be children, elderly folks, sick women or men who didn’t have long to live! They’re the evil of this world that is unknown to everyone. Only the dead can tell a tale about those kingdoms, the scars of life, the broken bodies that had been worked to the bone.
For slavers are the enemy, they who care nothing about the lives of the poor, the sick, or the elderly. Even their own children would be tossed out onto the battlefield of death, only to increase the size of the charging army of soon to be deceased people that would be sprinting below, towards the Ebon Wall in madness, in grief, and in fear.
All of those thoughts are rushing through Malinda’s sorrowful head while she grasps onto her only hope, her new magnificent light. Xe’Reth is hers, her dark ebon star that can guide her through the deserts of unknown lands when she’s lost in her endless dreams. A hand that can reach out to her, if her own nightmares tries to drown her in that abyss of unconsciousness.
While staring at her Miss, somehow Taryna feels that she has done something terribly wrong. That a warning of a dreadful consequence will come. But she can’t put her thoughts at ease, for her Miss is crying, crying in Xe’Reth’s embrace. Malinda feels the warmth that oozes into her from his warm-blooded body… A daze comes over her as she weeps. A daze that clouds her entire mind of the world around her.
As they remain there for a short while, the crowd outside is going ballistic with cheering at the top of their lunges, for they’ll get aid, their assistance will come! Their savior: Malinda. And it went all according to Xe’Reth’s cunning pull of the strings. A puppeteer and a puppet, that’s what Xe’Reth and Malinda is.
But, he begins to feel a sudden stir of an unknown emotion inside him as he holds her in his arms.
He’s actually smiling without his mask of deceitfulness on. Pure joy is starting to seep into his black heart, but that emotion disappears as fast as it shows. His face turns into a neutral one as he sees Taryna there by the opened door.
“You should prepare the horses for departure… Taryna,” he said with a delighted smile, though not the same smile he had a second ago, but a smile of superiority looking down upon a slave that has willingly offered herself to be such a disgraceful being, called: Handmaiden. Willing to serve, willing to obey, willing to beg for food, willing to bark like a dog. He can’t help but despise such practices, even if it isn’t a shameful profession, it is even considered to be an occupation of sophistication.
But for Xe’Reth, he can’t help but think, servant means slave, and slave means obedience. He’ll never be controlled…
NEVER!
“You can shut the door now. As soon as I step out, you can drive the horses away from here, towards wherever Malinda wants to go,” he said while stroking Malinda very gently, feeling her blond smooth hair on his palm, feeling it as he runs it through with his fingers, combing her golden mane as if she was a male lion.
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Malinda herself is in such a sorrow as if her mind has been stirred immensely, which it has. But Xe’Reth is there to comfort her, to listen to her, to say the words she wants to hear, and to keep her in his arms... His calculating arms of pretense.
Taryna scowls at his demands, but she does what he says since she can’t really do anything in this situation. She can only watch as her Miss who she loves dearly, as a friend, being taken into someone else’s embrace.
While the door closes, Xe'Reth can see in a split second in the closing crack, complete sorrow upon the handmaiden’s emotionless face. A face of regrets, if she only were with her yesterday by the Ebon Wall… If she were just there, nothing of this would have ever happened.
She could’ve been there to stop her Miss from falling so easily for Xe’Reth, but every action that Xe’Reth has taken up to this point has made her Miss… love him more. The way he took advantage of her tired mind that had spilt the blood of her enemies. The way his words flowed out of his mouth, saying the words she had heard many times, but through her uneasy mind, her brain was grasped tightly onto, not letting go, not easing the hold of her conflicted emotions. Pulling her into an unforeseen void of carelessness.
Those possessions that she had kept to herself; her lover-less life of being completely alone, no one to embrace when she so needed it. No man to be there for her when she had cried herself to sleep on those horrible days when she had slayed children, and saw those horrors of innocent faces, which she so want to rip out of her head, to forget them, to forget...
Malinda drifts away as she is holding Xe'Reth while feeling his strokes of love...
As Taryna stands out there by the horses, the crowd has become slightly calmer, but still, their joy upon their faces are showing their true emotions. Their heroine, their savior is inside the carriage, crying, FOR THEM! Is what they think, but Xe’Reth has played them right into his hands, right into Malinda’s hands. Right now, EVEN NOW, HE IS TOUCHING HER WITH HIS FILTHY HANDS!
As a couple of minutes passes inside the carriage, Malinda, whose face is covered in watery wetness, looks up and around, as if she has just woken up from a long sleep. But as she feels the warm touch upon her hands, her hands which rests upon Xe’Reth’s chest of smoothness.
She recoils, falling back while hitting her head on the roof as she hastily stands up.
“Be at ease,” Xe’Reth soothingly said as he sees the panicky maiden who’s now rubbing her head in pain. “Come sit next to me.”
“Xe... Xe’Reth… I… I…” only his name can she get out from her emotional tremoring mouth, those rosy lips that spasms.
“It’s all right, Malinda. It’s okay to cry out one’s agony,” Xe’Reth said with a caring smile that makes Malinda relax a little bit. “But, crying, Malinda. Can make someone else feel your agony, too. For I can’t bear to see you in this kind of state. It brings me... pain… to see such sorrow upon your beautiful surface. So please, don’t cry anymore.”
Even if he said those lyrics, her crying doesn’t stop, it comes again as he said the words that she wants so dearly to hear. His concern, his love… His love for her, who Malinda just met yesterday… Her reddened-swelled eyes begins its cycle; tears running, snot running, and eyeliner running down her distorted face of beauty as lips and chin starts its seizures.
She flings herself at him, desperately, making the carriage itself shake as she lands to hug him.
The cycle turns and a couple of minutes flies by.
They now sits there beside each other while this adult woman, named Malinda, is being attended to by Xe’Reth as he wipes off her face with a… pink embroidered handkerchief that was hiding in her skirt pocket, but now it’s being used to blow her nose and wipe her tears away, forever.
“Dear me… Malinda, are you truly an adult? You aren’t hiding something from me, now are you?” Xe’Reth asked as he puts on a wide grin and eyes of jesting.
“Xe’Reth!” Malinda moaned as she blows her nose. She is not amused by being depicted as a child, but even she can’t be bothered to be angry. Instead, she too puts on a slight unserious smirk upon her own lips. “It is not funny!”
“Why are you smiling then? Heh,” his grin goes wider to the point of almost locking his entire face in check.
Malinda shakes her head in dismay as she gives in, in to his… embrace. She leans at him while he has his arm around her; feeling the metal of the light-plate pouldrons on his chest and on his one arm.
The silence continues as he waits for her to be ready, emotionally ready.
“I’ve shown you such disgraceful appearances… over and over again…” she sighed with a drooping head as she remembers when she angrily sent the captain to prison and when she shushed away the landlady.
Xe’Reth, though, has been rather relaxed about all of this… Fine leathery cushion beneath his buttocks, a beautiful woman in his arms, and being in a golden carriage of utter wealth… Life is pretty good, he thinks while he does minute nods to himself.
“You can show me your disgraceful side whenever you want, my Malinda,” Xe’Reth said as his eyebrows goes quickly up and down, up and down. Showing how interested he is, in knowing her… disgraceful side…
“Xe-Xe-Xe’Reth… You… You… You can’t be thinking of what I’m thinking of?!” Malinda asked with wider than wide eyes as she sees his seizure of up and down eyebrows of lust.
“Oh Malinda… I didn’t think you were that kind of woman—!”
“No, Xe’Reth! Just no. You shall be silent now, I demand you to be silent,” she said as she turns her head away while pouting her lips to mope.
“As you say… My… Beautiful… Honored… Lady… Malinda,” Xe’Reth mused as his one hand takes a hold of her chin gently, turning it towards him, slowly, so he can see her face of joying tease. “Have you calmed down?”
“Yes… I’m all right now… Thank you for being here with me.”
“What, no kiss? Malinda… You... you’re so cheap…” he said as he turns his head to mope like she did just a second ago. And she does exactly the same as him; turning his chin towards her so she can look at his grinning expression.
“A well-earned reward…” she kisses him with one long smooch, then as she removes her lips, she completes her sentence, “for my hero.”
“…Where are we, by the way?” Malinda asked curiously as her eyebrow raises themselves.
“Still by my house, your speech really set the crowd on fire. They’ve been cheering for a while now, but stopped a couple of minutes ago,” Xe’Reth responded as he looks at the nicely kept hair that hasn’t any flaws, which he was stroking before, to try to calm her down. “Your handmaiden is still awaiting for you to depart. What were you going to do again? Ah yes, you were going to find those who… Those who…”
He looks down at his bandages that has blood stains on them, which Malinda, too, sees as her upper and lower lips raises and lowers; they begin to spasm violently while showing her moistened white teeth. She even needs to cover her mouth to restrain her anger, which she feels towards such monsters.
She hastily looks around as she turns her head.
The opposite side where they’re sitting, are other leather seats, and above them is a window that would show Taryna’s covered-dressed legs as she would be sitting on the driver’s seat.
With a raised eyebrow, Xe’Reth wonders what she’s doing now… Malinda is now on her knees while she rummages through the compartments under the opposite seats. What she finds is a mirror, a hand mirror, though less expensive than her younger sister’s jewelry one.
While she begins turning her head in different directions to look at what shape her face is in at the current time, Xe’Reth just relaxes as he sprawls on the leathery seats. Literally sinking down as he awaits for her to finish wiping her face with her homemade patterns of pinkness, to remove the rest of her smudges of eyeliner, dried tears, and lipstick, to start all over.
‘Wow… Well, she’s a woman after all,’ he thought as she brings out a box that’s filled with tools of cosmetics which ladies around the kingdom is so utterly using up to pretty themselves.
Xe’Reth gives out an unexpected yawn, which surprises himself even. He doesn’t feel tired, but he feels that sensation of his regular worn-out stress which he has endures for so long. He only managed to sleep for around three hours, then came the city-guard who broke down his door, a door he needs to fix…
After the four men had carried their dead boss towards the graveyard in the night, Xe’Reth had followed them, because he was excessively worried that they might be caught. He had placed a broad and long shelf to cover his and his mother’s door, completely, since he was still scared that someone would come again when he was away.
As Xe’Reth had followed them, he saw the four men, digging and digging, while the one with the dangling jaw was in pain, but he too dug and dug. The graveyard is open for everyone, but as it was night, none but Xe’Reth and the four men, plus the dead boss were there.
He had seen them bury their boss, then covered the hole up with the shovels that they had found scattered around the area, for death takes nearly a person a day in the slums, even more, so there are shovels there to help them pass into the sleep of no-awaking.
As Xe’Reth had stood there behind one of the many deadened trees, gazing at the men walking away from their recently dug grave, Xe’Reth went and looked how they had done, and he was pleased. It looked like any other grave around the area, even a gravestone, though only a non-inscriptive stone was put in place.
While Malinda is doing her womanly duties of beautifying herself, Xe’Reth watches her with squinting, lost-in-thought eyes. But he flickers them as to get out of his own daze of remembering the events, about what happened to the brother of the captain who’s currently in prison.
“Malinda, I’ll be outside, fixing my door. Come out when you’re ready to leave… I’ll be waiting,” Xe’Reth said as he raises to stand, in a slight crouch while taking ahold of the carriage’s door's handle.
“Oh… Yes, you do that… This, this will take a while,” she said as she now sits there cross-legged while simultaneously fixing up her face and looking at him as she puckers her lips to ready them for the upcoming lipstick which she holds in her one hand, and in her other hand is her reflecting mirror.
She turns her head back to look into the mirror… while turning it to the side so she can watch the reflection, to see Xe'Reth's back muscles as he goes outside. A smile sprouts forth on her puckering lips as she turns the mirror back to look upon her face, which is at this moment, not the most prettiest of faces.
*Click* the door closes.
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