How to Train Your Channeler

[Oriena]

Vodka – plain, unceremonious. Ori poured two measures, heavy-handed and generous, the clink of glass sharp in the quiet. She slid one back across the counter without looking, a gesture closer to challenge than hospitality. Whether he drank or not wasn’t her concern. The other she lifted and took a swallow from herself, the burn clean and familiar. It’d been a long time since it was simply pleasant and not a survival tactic, and she savoured the bloom of warmth. Then she liberated the whole bottle and brought it with her.

Rather than circling back around the bar Oriena lifted herself up onto it, palms braced behind her as she swung one leg and then the other over the edge. The movement was careless, confident. Damp hair clung to her shoulders, skin still flushed warm from heat and steam. The burn scars caught the low light as she settled astride the space in front of him: not old damage, though it looked it because of the healing. Despite that she wasn’t careful of the flame dancing above his palm, or how close it came to her skin as she moved around him. If anything, her eyes flicked to it with interest. Fire suited him more than obedience ever would.

“You look better with teeth showing,” she said, smirk slow and deliberate. “Power suits you.”

Tingling didn’t sound like a problem – but she reached for him anyway. Fingers threaded into his hair with a grip that was assertively rough, not painful by any means but hardly gentle. She leaned in, heedless of the flame he toyed with, and angled his head just enough to get a better look, eyes narrowing as she traced the remnants of where the device had bitten into him. Her thumb brushed near one mark, not tender but not careless either. The punctures weren’t bleeding anymore at least. Her touch lingered, and by the smile that lifted a corner of her lips she was fully aware of it. Ori’s attention always had an edge. Most quivered under it when it was given in earnest.

“I did try and tell you,” she said, meaning the power which came so easily to his call now. Her thumb brushed his temple – decidedly not where his blood had been rushing in the churchyard, else maybe he could have saved himself paying any price at all. She withdrew her hand, but not her interest. The sex had made her languid and loose-limbed, her posture as she sat back relaxed in a way that invited mistakes. But so too had the blessed emptiness in her skull. “So,” she said, tone easy and curious in the way predators sometimes sound just before they decide. “What’re you going to do with it?”’ The implication hung there unspoken: build something interesting, or make a problem for yourself. Ori looked prepared for either.