When first hearing her speak, Thomasin had to fight the urge to retreat.
Curt, cut like glass, exposing the budding dryad and her clumsy attempts at following from a distance. The question hung in the air between them, a sort of hesitancy beginning to build in Thomasin – for she wished to ask where she was going, the knight and their strange alabaster companion, but found that the gaze of the Amazonian had severed her vocal cords.
Was she conjured from Thomasin’s well-loved stories? Crafted from the ink and paper, leapt off the page to conquer dragons and save damsels? Mystery cloaked this stranger, this enigma, and curiosity couldn’t help but encourage the dusty mare to follow and leer, to ask how it was possible to demand the attention of these citizens without saying a single word?
How does one become so captivating? Somewhere inside her jewel of a heart, Thomasin wished to harness such a power.
Find an excuse.
“Excuse me,” she murmurs, sheepish and a bit ashamed at being spotlighted. Despite her meekness, she chooses to move up closer as the beast makes way for her.
The second time the wraith spoke, she had unknowingly seized the smaller one’s voice. The lamb swallowed, an audible gulp, blinking away the stress of finding a reason to have followed her.
Do not confess you were following because you were admiring.
“Have you traveled to worship Caligo?”
At the mention of the goddess, Thomasin felt herself a bit more grounded – though she would need to ask forgiveness for the slight deceit, never wishing to necessarily lie, but never wanting to expose her odd and eccentric habits of admiring strangers.
Her gaze would settle on the cobblestone and dirt underneath their feet, too diffident to look the woman in the eye, she spoke quietly as if a breeze in the spring. “I participate in group worship, a choir, and I couldn’t help but feel inclined to ask if you might be joining us today? We always enjoy new faces.”
Thomasin glanced up at the tigress, quick, as to not be rude to stare, but long enough to count the blood-red pearls underneath her eye. She was hungry to know her, longing to hear her stories, wondering if she once a wall-flower too, like herself, and how she managed to escape the confines of the wallpaper?
"talking."
tagged: @Antiope
