Characters/Pairings: Freya, Fratley
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Words: 465
Summary: From trance to trance.
Notes: Prompt: # 98 Trance
There was something both euphoric and monstrous about trance.
It began as a tiny cold pinpoint nestled and nurtured in dark crevices of the body, a bloom of soul-light against the black pits of exhaustion and hatred. Once ignited, it diffused into every sinew and fiber, a gaping maw of power seeking to fill and spill over into the air. Her skin glowed, and flakes of raw energy shivered off of her. It filled her legs, her hands, her brain, her mouth, her eyes.
Trance consumed and Freya enjoyed it. The tight ball of strength within her would unravel and spiral, ribbons of energy exploding from flesh to taste the cool rain and thunder clouds. It was the pinnacle of uncontrol, recklessness, even delirium.
It was scary.
Often, when she felt that biting pinprick, she would slip her helmet over her face lest Fratley see her wild eyes. They bulged and shivered and distorted, and they were alien to a normal Burmecian body with its normal Burmecian expressions. She thought it meant her body was incapable of handling her power, but most likely it meant her power was incapable of handling her body; unable to hold solid the body mold which encased it, her soul twisted and shaped her to fit purpose and need. It's violent gyrations reflected the wild terror beating a tattoo in her heart. But it was also thrilling, like her nerve ends were deliciously buzzing, like her entire existence was in tandem.
Her feet light and quick, she'd jump forward and back between dragons and chimeras, unable to quiet her scream-laughing even as she slipped her lance between a monster's ribs. With blood on her face, she would grin in delight and dance away, and Fratley would watch her with hooded, disturbed eyes.
In truth, she felt alive. There was something so real about the pulse in her fingertips and tips of her ears, more real than the quiet solitude between Burmician walls, the smiling mouths without smiling eyes, the rigid edge of Fratley's spine as he embraced a familiar stranger. Trance was not a state, but a purposeāan outlet for all her desperate fears and hurts, her darkest wants and needs. Within the haven of her helmet, she was a transcended beast, a celestial monster, but most of all she was solid and singular and real, not a wispy shadow of the king's cape and the prince's absence and Fratley's wane smile.
And if sometimes she cried at night, after the light was gone and the cold permeated her sweat soaked sheets, well that was normal, that was the consequence of falling in love with a fleeting dream. Trance was ugly and dirty and inevitably unsatisfying.
And yet, from trance to trance, she lapsed.
