I'm Dog and you're not, motherfuckers. Not here, not available...drop me a word, I'll hit you back.

Haters. Bros. Love 'em all, legions. Peace out.

beep

Could be I’m a fool, could be that I’m just plain blind and I’m not one to say that’s impossible. However, I will be the first to admit that becoming a god by the will of my lover? To me, that was pretty fucking unexpected.

Choice, not circumstance made a happy slave of me in the days before we came together as man and woman fit best. I served her, body and soul, when she asked it of me, and in service to her heart I lost mine in a very real way. I never meant to fall, but here I am at the bottom of the ravine with the high cliffs of love overhead.

It was an impossible thing for me to reconcile my worship of the goddess with my love of the woman…only in the divine light of godhood did I fully understand her nature and mine. I came to realize how she loves, for I now love the same way, and I came to realize that love is its own form of worship. This I knew, even as a mortal man, but I had no understanding that love alone was enough worship. It’s the purest kind, the most devoted form of adoration a god can want.

Falling in love with Katie was inevitable, for in following my heart to the end where she waited to meet me? I found the transcendence I always dreamed of achieving.

Muse: Dog Carter {Elpis, God of Hope}
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 240

They wanted to do things the right way…the natural way.

Boundaries were set and rules were made before Lisa and Tony Miller invited him to dinner, and the rules held as food and wine made them easy enough with each other to carry them to the bedroom. He stood in the doorway and watched as Tony undressed her slowly, entering only when Lisa beckoned him forward.

( WARNING: NSFW under the cut... )

Muse: Dog Carter {Elpis, God of Hope}
Fandom: Mythology (OC)
Words: 501

- Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day by Stevie Wonder
- Shut Up And Drive by Rihanna
- TV Party by Black Flag
- The One by Danzig
- Mr. Bojangles by Sammy Davis, Jr.
- When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin
- Paranoid by Black Sabbath
- Beat It by Michael Jackson
- I Stand Alone by Godsmack
- Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne
- Man In The Box by Alice in Chains
- Whatever by Nirvana
- Train Kept A-Rollin' by Aerosmith
- Iron Man by Black Sabbath (it's an earworm.)
- Low SO by Rollins Band

Dog Carter {Elpis}
Original Character

NOTE: Takes place just before Dog and Kate consummate their relationship.

The pain was driving him insane.

He wasn’t in any sort of physical distress, save for the raw wound in his heart and the heat in his belly that he couldn’t quell. There was no lack of hunger in him, but with his servitude so went his desire, and it was killing him.

She was a virgin goddess, for fuck’s sake!

Still he thought of her as he stood in the shower beneath a hot spray that stung the latest of his battle wounds. Scratches on his back, bruises on his face, all washed clean beneath the spray except for the darker desires of his body and soul. Behind closed eyelids, he relived dark, fevered dreams of the goddess in his bed, her body wrapped around his, legs around his waist and hands fisting in his hair…

One hand fumbled blindly to turn the nozzle up on the cold water. His skin stung…and still he burned for her.

Desires of the flesh he could forget, but not the way he felt when they would walk together. The smiles under moonlight, he imagined in candlelight, against his pillows. The gentle touches that comforted and cared, he envisioned in the afterglow of making love, the chance to read the story of her reign in the images that graced her fair form…

What divinity chooses, you cannot touch. What the gods deem, you cannot violate. You’re a jackass and a sinner of the worst sort for even thinking about it!

Shivering under the cold water, he burned. He ached…he hungered, body and soul.

His appetite for sex was healthy, but it was an easy thing to forsake the flesh…and if it were only the flesh that needed her, he could forget. It wasn’t the body that warmed to her, it was the soul, the power…the life.

The only way he could forget Katie was if he didn’t already love her.

Muse: Dog Carter {Elpis, God of Hope}
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 317
Partner: Katie {Hekate} (3rd_ray)

- faq u mang (Jay re: lunch...clearly the man don't like Italian)
- gold roses...can u do it? (Tommy re: a species he wants me to cultivate for his girl)
- I'M GOING HOME SHUT UP (Zee re: me ragging on her about her hours again.)
- Counting the seconds, Lover. (Kate re: a lunch date)
- BORED (Sassy re: boredom, obviously)
- ENTERTAIN ME (Sassy again, ten minutes later)
- bring me yarn. it makes kitties go bonkers. (Sassy, five minutes after that.)
- Bardini or The Rising Sun? (Ben re: choice of clubs to hit for the night)
- Tommy, jackass. (Mike re: a query about some cuffs I lent out and who had them.)
- Bauer job done? Need a hand on flagstones at Shafer (Chris from CLR re: landscaping job)

Dog Carter
Original Character

“I am a part of all that I have met.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson

There was a night not so long ago when my godhood first came to me, long before my goddess granted me the first taste of ambrosia. Looking back, it seems ages to me, that dim and distant parody of mortal life I was so content with…that life I’m still content with.

Darkness sought out my essence, and my lady saved me, drew venom from my veins and healed my damaged spirit with her divine light. We walked together, shared a cup of coffee and a few precious words where she imparted to me a piece of wisdom that I see now was meant to guide me to my true destiny…the one I am living even now.

In far prettier language than I could ever hope to spout, she told me that I am the world, and it is me. All I’ve touched, all I’ve known in act, deed, and person, all of it is connected to each other. Now granted, this is a thing I’ve known all my days, but to hear it from the mouth of divinity gave it new meaning.

And now…I can actually feel it.

Everyone I’ve ever known, touched, spoken to, their voices ring louder in my head than others. Tommy, Zee, Farah, Ollie, their prayers, their thoughts are mine. Hell, I can even hear the girl that rings me up at Starbucks every morning.

I was never human. Now I am no longer an avatar. I am hope, divine and true. I am her servant, her right hand in this battle, and my job is a simple one.

Protect her charge: man. Serve her army: the Fraternity. Their prayers are mine to answer, and the human race is mine to love and serve.

They are my lords on high now, not the gods. I was born to serve the powers above me…and now I shall, until the end of time.

The hollow, meaty sound of skin against skin stretched over wood rang out pleasantly in his ears, his fingers finding a natural beat that had always synched with the steady and eternal rhythm of his own heartbeat.

Working from memory was one of his only regrets about his ascension, because his heartbeat was gone now. Sure, it beat, but not as it had. The sensation and sound were dizzying sometimes, the beat replaced by an unending hum of eternity that animated him instead of the finite and restricted thump-thump that had always hammered in his ears with the wild howl of rage in his blood or the cresting urgency of passion in his flesh.

( The bongos helped him remember...so did the rain. )

Muse: Dog Carter [Elpis, God of Hope]
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 598
Partner: Kate [Hekate] (3rd_ray)

Maybe it's time that I
Tear down the walls, open my eyes
I wanna know love in another light

His altar to the goddess had been small, but well kept before she came to claim him. Now, it had expanded and grown to such a degree that he kept a second altar to the gods, hoping for their blessings in his time of need.

He turned to this altar now, seated in a Lotus and bathed in candlelight as he retreated within. Prayer, meditation, the calm of the inner spirit were his only guide now.

Bear my prayer, Hermes. Hear my call. Give my words to Themis, guide me to my path.

The paths of past, present, and future, the roads all guarded by Hekate…

Not for the first time, Dog struggled to keep his trance, to be patient. Still, it was hard. How the hell was a man supposed to choose his road if the one who held his answer was the very person he couldn’t ask for aid?

Taking a deep breath, he blew it out as gently as he could in a soft hiss between parted lips…but when the breath left his lungs, the sound lingered.

Opening his eyes, he nearly leapt from his seat when he saw the rattlesnake coiled in front of him. It’s glassy beaded eyes held his, tail shaking in the familiar, dry hiss of death that warned all living things not to tread too close.

He couldn’t move. One glimpse of the snake’s face and he couldn’t move…yet it wasn’t fear that rooted him to the spot as the serpent began to move, slithering closer to where he sat in jeans and nothing else. Vulnerable to attack, waiting for the deadly strike to come.

( But he felt no threat, no chill as the scales first touched the skin of his bare foot... )

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 703

- Check it out, I'm Dog and you're not, motherfuckers.

- Yes, that's my real name.

- The human tongue is a symphony I indulge in every waking moment. I love the way it ebbs and flows, the grace and power of the spoken word...but if I get on your nerves, I can talk as plain as anyone. Feel free to tell me to shut up.

- I'm a lot of things, among them a musician that works not with string and cymbal, but living things that sing the glories of our mother earth. I make my daily bread running landscaping at CLR Botanical in Chatsworth, California. When I'm not creating? I'm in the greenhouse with grafting and hybridizing.

- I wear the human face quite well, but human I am not. I'm an avatar of human virtue, a guardian of hope with all her power. Me and my kind are the children of Pandora, servants of the gods. If you know any of my brothers and sisters in the Fraternity of Light, you understand what that means.

- I'm far more literally a servant of the gods than any of my kin. Each child of Pandora is blessed with great power in one form of magic. Mine is mysticism...if I were heavy into ledgermain, I'd make a good spirit medium or mentalist, no doubt. Even psychic surgery might be my thing. I have, however, focused my power through alternative mediums. As a result? I'm no mere performer, but a holy man among my kin...a shaman in my little tribe.

- I serve the gods in all their forms, but if you had to pigeonhole my servitude? I suppose you could call me a pagan. I worship all the gods, but I've dedicated my life and essence to the Queen of Night, Hekate. I live my life and serve mankind in her name, as well as that of Hope.

- I'm also dating, sorry ladies...the woman holding my chain is an angel of divine grace I'll not shake loose from my life any time soon.

- One rule to remember with me: if you're human, I belong to you. If you're not, approach me with an open soul or else I'm done with you. Hurt those that are mine, those that claim me, and you're dead. It's really that simple. I may be a simple gardener, but this tiller of the soil knows how to wield his scythe with passion Hades and Charon could never dream of.

Dog Carter
Original Character

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” - Woodrow Wilson

Thrust, shove, tilt. The heat was a living thing against his bare skin, a joy in its dry intensity. Days like this were rare in Southern California, but at least they made it possible to breathe when the thermometer began to soar.

“So?”

Lifting his head, Dog smiled as he regarded the hole being dug approximately three feet from his. “A few more inches will win the day, friend. One more.”

He shoved his own shovel into the earth and leaned on it, watching as the sixteen year old boy named Bud dug in and took one more shovelful of dirt out of the hole he was digging. He was a scrawny kid, pale and clearly not the outdoorsy type. Still, here he stood in his goth black and pierced lipped glory, digging a hole with his sleeves rolled up.

“We’re ready.” He declared with a nod, moving away from his shovel and wiping his arm across his forehead to keep the sweat from running in his eyes. “You still with me, brother?”

Bud nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Dog let him be, not saying a word a few minutes later when he finally relented and peeled off his long-sleeved shirt. The body beneath it wasn’t all that bad…lean, underdeveloped, but had the potential for real strength.

“Take it up by the base…good. Now unwrap the bag and set it in your hole…is it ready for her?”

“Umm…yeah, it’s damp and stuff?”

“It’s good earth. Stick her in.”

He watched as the boy settled the Disneyland rosebush into its hole as he’d been instructed, every movement careful and precise. His hands were a little clumsy, but gentle and true. He filled the hole carefully, handled the leaves with all the delicacy his teenage awkwardness could muster.

“Look at her, she’s purring.”

“It’s a plant.”

“To be sure, but it lives. Think about it, any creature that beautiful has to be female, right?”

Bud frowned a little at the rosebush, packing in the soil gently as he did. “Fuck if I know, but…it has thorns. If you’re doing goofy shit like naming a bush or something, it could be a guy.”

“I think you understand your charge.” He observed with a surprised smile. “Because that’s what he is now. Just like I told you. This is his home now, and you delivered him there safely. Swear it on a stack of your favorite bibles, if you tend this little gem with your own hands and watch him grow, he’ll rise faster and stronger than any bloom your mom’s had us put in this yard.”

Bud rolled his eyes, but as he stood he continued to stare at the rose bush. “That’s such a crock.”

Dog just shrugged, clapping the kid on the shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie he knew he’d appreciate…this boy that felt the alienation of his age and a form that didn’t feel as though it fit him. “Come see me in two months time, little brother. I mean it, your folks have my card. If he’s not thanking you as any child would thank its father, I’ll slap you a fifty for your time out here today. That’s a bankable promise.”

“Yo, Carter! Where do you want these flagstones?!”

With a nod, Dog turned to take his leave and direct the rest of his crew in laying out the client’s new stone path…but he paused long enough to glance over his shoulder and watch young Bud giving his new rosebush one last, assessing glance.

He probably hadn’t made a gardener out of the boy, but those gifted hands and that willing body would respond to the sense of accomplishment he’d feel in the days to come. A seed had been planted alongside those roses…a seed that would grow into an exceptional human being in the sweltering afternoon sun.

In his hour of need, he would have turned to his goddess, his mistress for knowledge and guidance. He would have asked, and she would have led him to answers. Even to think it, she would rise to meet his need as she did every time he needed even to know where he’d left his car keys.

He forced himself not to think of answers, not to think of avenues where he might find help…because the last thing he needed was for his lover to stir.

She was napping on his sofa, one of his books spread across her stomach…and as he watched the tiger rattlesnake slide over her calf, inching towards her bare foot, he had little trouble in discerning just what Face had come for him today.

This was the living embodiment of Nightmare personified.

Dog didn’t pray for guidance, didn’t look for help. He tried very hard not to think at all, lest he stir her. Katie’s essence was divine, even if her form was a mortal one, but the form was meant only to suit her on this plane. His goddess couldn’t die by human means.

This snake, however, wasn’t human. He didn’t know what it could do to her, and if she woke…if it struck…it would be far too late for him to find out what the venom of primal evil could do to a god.

He was close…the snake only tasted her skin, it wasn’t poised to strike. There was still a chance.

Shutting his eyes, Dog slowly sank to his knees and extended a hand, keeping his emotions in check and opening himself to the energies around him. The divinity of Katie, even in sleep, the coming twilight, the human souls worldwide that cried out in joy and despair, feeding him every second of every day…

Cool scales touched his fingers. He had the power it wanted…a blessing.

He waited until the snake had begun to coil around his wrist before he offered silent thanks to the gods, unconcerned with waking Kate as he jerked his arm back and reached for the snake’s head.

With a satisfying twist, its neck snapped in his hands…but not before it sank its venomous fangs into his wrist.

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 371

“I know you want me, baby…”

( WARNING: cut for sexual content (heavy sexual themes, non-con) )

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 576

"Of all the stars to ever cross their cosmic paths, figures he'd have to wind up at my doorstep with Fate's stamp of divine approval..." Dog sighed, rubbing a hand over his face as he stared down at the ledge of his pool, where Tommy was in the water, his face beneath the surface.

Waiting to run out of breath.

Glancing to his left, he watched the two delicate Greek beauties Tommy had brought from Las Vegas, children of Pandora both of them. The darker one was like Ben, with no access to the power, but the virtue glowed within her face. The smaller one was ripe for the taking, but too young and untrained yet to pledge.

Both had sure power over one thing, though: the Kellar twins.

Mike was timing Tommy, but had been sneaking looks since he showed up, while Jay was far more open about admiring the bikini-clad Dimitra with open appreciation for her figure. There was no question, the boys were bit, but Dog had to wonder if Mike would take the bait. He was only recently back in the fold, and Dog knew he still grieved Lacey...

His thoughts were interrupted as Tommy's head whipped abruptly out of the water, a ragged gasp tearing from his throat as he filled his lungs with air.

"How long was that?"

Mike checked his stopwatch and shook his head. "Minute fifteen."

Tommy cursed, as dark a look as Dog had yet to see crossing his features as he swatted the surface of the water in frustration. "I need at least two and a half minutes to make room for any contingencies."

Dog snickered, glancing at the women surrounding them. "I'd watch my tongue if I was you, little brother...you're gonna stir these restless natives, and before you know it? The uprising will unseat you and strap you to a chair where you can't hurt yourself."

He’d been relatively lucky in his fights with the Darkness, all battles of blood and sweat…all ending with his life in his hands, warm and still rolling onward. The Face of the Darkness that seemed to love him best was Hate, and he was always ready for that bitch.

It was a hard road to get to the place he needed to be, but once there it was easy as breathing, simple and innocent as a child’s soul to give himself to the world around him and let love wipe him, and his world, clean again.

Other Faces, other Bringers came for him, but never in as steady or as vicious a stream as Hate sent its servants to destroy him. The unity, love, and serenity he embraced stuck too far and too deep in its craw, that Dog knew for certain.

Tonight, though…tonight maybe Hate had recruited help. That’s why he was laying there, truly afraid for the first time in his life that tonight he might join his kin in oblivion. That smear on the pavement, that blip on the screen…tonight, that might be him. The laws of science preserved the essence, but true evil defied laws of any sort.

Dog’s greatest fear was to be annihilated, but he fought in spite of it. Tonight, that fear gripped him hard. Hard as stone, hard as steel…hard as the ground beneath his back, hard as the tremors shaking his body as he lay there on his front porch, hidden by his lovingly tended shrubs.

The snake resting on his chest was sleek, black, and stared at him with eyes that burned like hellfire, glowing in the darkness. Its fangs dripped venom black as its heart, searing his chest as it splattered on his bare skin. Next to him was the box the snake had been packaged in, addressed from a man Dog had done some landscaping for not two months before.

The venom burned his skin, burned through his veins where the snake had bitten his throat…and as he lay there, sweating, shaking, and dying of inhuman poison sent to him by Cowardice itself, Dog realized that he was facing his greatest fear in that moment: poisoned by fear, facing lasting death, and unable to go without a single scrap of dignity.

All he could do was lay there…and pray to the gods for salvation.

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 396

He hates that his brothers and sisters have forgotten themselves.

It’s another night, another street, and another dead human boy at his feet…a servant of the Darkness, eyes still black with hate and weak with fury. All power, no soul. The truth of it is that the sixteen year old child was dead weeks before Dog put him down.

One of his kin might have done it more gently, but Dog did it more thoroughly. Burning the energy out of him, destroying his dark essence with flame and fury that the Darkness could never have shown him. That was the way to do it right, to see an end to suffering.

Reaching down, Dog gently closed the boy’s eyes, a light catching his attention out of the corner of his eye.

He saw himself in a broken mirror, wearing his true form. His tattoos glowed, his eyes were a blood red he recognized. He’d seen the eyes in Tommy just a week or so before, the look of godhood in their shy and quiet leader.

He hates that his brothers and sisters have forgotten themselves, turning to cheap parlor tricks and theatricality to exercise a primordial power. Dog had the training and the power…he could have followed the path into stage mysticism. Bullet catches, Hellstromism, swallowing razors, vanishes and voodoo routines. He could stop his pulse and cut himself, bite buttons off shirts and restore the broken. It was all the flow of energy, and all within his reach.

Instead, he buried his hands in the dark sweetness of Gaia and let her sustain him. In the heat of battle, he thirsted for blood as none of his kindred did anymore. He found his center and ruled the battlefields with the iron fist that was his birthright, he howled with the fury of the animal, and when his enemies looked him in the eye they saw irises that burned bright primordial red.

They were children of a race larger than Olympus and older than the myth they were born from. They weren’t just avatars, they were Titans…the world gave birth to them, and they gave birth to the gods that made the human race.

Forcing his blood to calm, he watched his dingy reflection fade as his tattoos dimmed and his eyes returned to their normal crystal blue before giving his attention back to the body at his feet. The deceiver…the deceived.

“If your soul survives, I wish it rest, little one.” He murmured quietly before laying his hand on the corpse’s eyes and, with a wish, willed the remains into oblivion.

Another night, another street…another dead human boy forgotten by all but one man.

Body by body…the battle rages on.

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 451

How many times can I break till I shatter?
Over the line can't define what I'm after
I always turn the car around
Give me a break let me make my own pattern
All that it takes is some time but I'm shattered
I always turn the car around

I don’t see the future, but I read the stars. The light, the energy, they’re my kin and my blood. My brothers feel the fire, but it burns me alive. It’s heat and hell and poetry in every cell, pulsing in the nucleus that breeds more fire with every division, every duplication. It’s life, happening inside of me every second and I can feel it.

I can feel my cells dividing and regenerating. I can feel myself aging. I can feel you doubting, hating, fearing. I can feel you coming, loving, dreaming.

I can break you. I can heal you. I’m the shaman of my tribe, and a rare one in my gene pool. Too many came before me, too many live among me, but I’m the only one here. The city, the state, the stage. Others work the line, but I live the dream.

I am Shaman. I am Father, I am Healer of my people.

I’m the one they’ll bring him to.

The shades are loose in him, and I can’t stop it until the wound’s already infected. The sickness is incubating, waiting to be set loose on an unsuspecting world, and the Dog may have to put a dog down.

I love to mince words, taste them as they roll off my tongue...they’re honey, so sweet I can’t say no. This isn’t the time for treats, though...this is the time for action.

[locked]

I’m a healer by my gifts, but this is a wound I can’t mend. It happened when he was under, and he brought it back with him. The Darkness...it got inside the first master magician the world has seen since the King of Handcuffs...since the dawn of our order.

I think Tommy Karras is going to die, and with all my power? There ain’t a damn thing I can do to save him.

[/locked]

Muse: Dog Carter
Fandom: Original Character
Words: 314