Forbidden Horizons

[Anonymous]

It was a beautiful morning on the red planet. The sun was a welcoming view to many, even though the horizon was laced with desert. This view inspired a well known Mordecai. Well known only because of her bloodline. Kiokure Kiraa was a descendant of the infamous Kuro Kiraa. He who was a rather successful Mordecai who defended the kingdom until the day he died. She had a name to live up to.
Kiokure sat on the roof of the fortress, overlooking the extravagant view with a large notebook in hand. She held an elegant pen and was drawing almost exactly what she was seeing with her yellow eyes. Long white hair graced her back delicately. Her attire consisted of a black skintight bodysuit. The bodysuit covered her arms, her neck, and half her face. It only covered only half her thighs. She had bandaging wrapped tightly around her torso as if it were a corset. She wore a short cut white robe over the rest of her cloth with  long cut sleeves.
While Kiokure was drawing, her feet were idly playing with her sandals. One of the most distinguishing features about her would be the dragon tattoo wrapped around her left leg. Almost nothing would pry her from her entranced state while she was drawing.

[Anonymous]

Carmel knew better than to bother Kiokure while she was drawing. While he tried not to ask her any questions or knowingly distract her, he couldn't help but peer over her shoulder to see what she was drawing. Carmel's chin was practically grazing her head, his normal eye watching her pen skitter across the notebook and his computerized eye darting up to look at the horizon.

Whoever paired the two of them up five years ago must have had an eye for aesthetics. They were nearly a matched set. Carmel's thick hair, the longest length of it tied into a braid that ended at the top of his thighs while the rest flowed freely around his face, was white and his remaining eye was gold. Carmel wore whatever Kiokure brought him, but insisted on wearing a long black coat with a hood and enormous pockets no matter how warm it was. His computerized eye, set in a metal socket that dominated the left side of his face, was quite fake. Whatever it was looking at showed up in a soft blur on its face, it had the barest suggestion of an iris and if a person watched it for a moment they would see a crosshair darting around it.

Mercy, the eye's A.I., activated once it got feed from Carmel's eye. It zipped restlessly around the landscape, highlighting the parts that didn't match Kiokure's drawing and superimposing the sketch over the mistakes. It wrote notes next to them as well 'tower too thin, 1mm approx. .8m real dimension', 'spiral off by 3 degrees'. Before, Mercy would have put up a prompt asking if changes were going to take place. Now it understood that Carmel wasn't in control of his power anymore and couldn't usually give advance warnings that things were going to start to shift.

Carmel let his gaze shift down to Kiokure's leg for a second before looking back up at her notebook. That was one change Mercy could expect.

[Anonymous]

Kiokure finished drawing on time to spot a slight change about herself. The dragon tattoo on her leg was no longer plain. It now adorned a very detailed aqua green color and a light blue belly. She lowered her large notebook just enough to peer at her leg, to see the dragon begin to spiral around her leg. Kiokure couldn't help but smile behind her mask as the dragon soon pulled itself away from her leg as a more realistic dragonling. She leaned back a bit and lowered her head back to look up at Carmel, allowing a delicate hand to slide up onto his cheek.
"Good Morning, Carmel." The lithe Mordecai spoke, almost knowing that Carmel was hovering behind her. The now lifelike dragonling soon squawked before fluttering towards Kiokure to spiral up around her arm. It stopped before Carmel's face and snaked its way through the air to find a perch upon Kiokure's exposed knee. The masked girl lowered her hand from the mage's face and turned her attention to the dragonling to scratch under its chin.
"And good morning to you too, Drygnol" She spoke to the dragonling, maintaining her smile.

[Anonymous]

Carmel was almost certain he would never get used to his magic being used by a third party. It didn't startle him anymore, but it still set the nerves in his spine on fire, like he was about to fall and had to fight for his balance. Nothing could be perfect though, keeping control over his magic meant he'd still be part of the Aedolian military. It was a welcome sacrifice... just, one he would never be able to embrace as thoroughly as the Edanith born mages that never knew anything different.

He didn't shy away from Kiokure's hand, though he did flick his tongue out at her now animate tattoo when it scampered up her arm to look at him. Mercy busied itself giving him a readout on how much energy was expended to make the tattoo to life and brought up a couple graphs to compare it to past animations. '.2% decrease in expended energy compared to previous results. Nearly 1% cumulative improvement over the past ninety-eight days.' Mercy concluded.

Tha-at's nice Carmel responded. He doubted Kiokure would be interested in the readout. That was Mercy's pet project.

"G'mornin' Kio," Carmel said, in an almost sing-song voice. "You sleep well?" Carmel ran his fingers through Kiokure's hair, as though he was smoothing down invisible fly-aways.

[Anonymous]

Maintaining her everlasting smile, Kiokure stretched back, extending her arms over her head. Either one of her hands were at the sides of Carmel's face. A sensational sound of comfort came from her as she did.
"Oh yes. I had a dream of the sunrise, so I had to wake up early to capture it." She mentioned as she lowered her arms to her sides. Still perched on her knee, the dragonling looked over at Kiokure's notebook just on time for her to reach up to it to place a single delicate finger upon the drawn picture. The picture she drew suddenly rippled once, sending color throughout the entirety  of it with the ripple. The sun on the picture began to move up within the picture as if it were the real thing changing the colors ever so gracefully.
Pleased with her own accomplishment, the lithe Mordecai placed her notebook beside herself to stand up. Drygnol found himself slightly airborne again, slithering through the air only to perch upon his creator's shoulder. This prompts her to scratch under his chin again.
"I believe it's almost time to start training." Kiokure noted, looking back at Carmel over her shoulder while still facing the sunset. From his point of view, the lighting from the sunrise that graced her form would give her the appearance of a deity.

(Forgive the late post, been kinda occupied. Oh, and the name Drygnol is a translation from my language, meaning 'Slither'. Worked out better than expected, in the end. )

[Anonymous]

((Aye, it did.))

"Ah-ha," he stopped messing with her hair so she could touch his face and shivered when she directed his magic to the picture.

Mercy began giving a readout of energy loss and the estimated time before regeneration, both of which weren't much. Compared to his previous work in Aedolis, duplicating a sunrise in a drawing was easy work.

Carmel gave an exaggerated wince when Kiokure mentioned it was time for training. His usual reaction whenever she decided it was time to train. "Didn't we train yesterday? Let's sneak off and do something else," he said winking at now haloed Kiokure. Her pale hair seemed to drink up the golden rays of sunlight and made her look angelic.

[Anonymous]

Kiokure could only smirk when Carmel came up with his own excuse. She turned around to face him, so that her back was to the sun. Her smirk turned into a grin, but her mask hid it enough to where it could only be seen in her eyes.
"You're right, Carmel. Training does get boring day by day. I say we sneak off to the town to see what's going on. What do you think?" She mentioned, almost seeming like she wanted his approval on the topic. Drygnol simply squawked at Kiokure's decision. She had her delicate hands at her hips as her yellow gaze focused on the mage.