Moira Tonnerre
A furious blush, an embarrassment running wider than the world, a loathsome, dark look at the ground. Moira is taken off guard by the final statement. She coughs, choking on air for but a moment, afraid she might have to talk again as she did to Caine that horrid night so long ago. Or was it recent still? Unable to recall when exactly, unwilling to let that fight, that untamed fury roll onto her skin as rain does when the sun refuses to show its brilliant face, she offers instead a small shake of her head.
Curls bounce, but even they seem to have fallen more limp with the inquiry. It's as though she's placed before a firing squad with all laser pointers aimed at her heart. And what a pathetic thing it is - left to bleed and be patched up with band-aids covered in hearts in hopes for happier days. An aching, pulpy mess that won't quite let her wash away the sins of her family - the sins of her parents and her very conception, making her wish for the purity that the golden lion-girl before her has and doesn't even realize. Bexley is a creature so beautiful it fills Moira with both jealousy and admiration. The way she so easily holds herself tall, as proud as any King before. The way she is in completely control of every little aspect of herself - or so it seems. Everything about the regent is enviable.
"I've never used them," the phoenix woman croaks at last. Words taste like ash in her mouth - bitter remnants of the past still stuck in her teeth, loose shrapnel she's unable to swallow down or take in stride. An ugly duckling in her family, set up to take every fall, put on display as the fool to gawk and laugh at. It all tumbles in and out of her mind, even as she forces herself to shrug as though it means nothing, even as the pain threatens to swallow the lightness of those amber eyes that before danced so easily for the lion-girl.
"Lucky you, I was not raised for brawling. That, I'm afraid, is an acquired art form I never mastered nor learned. Do you brawl often, or are parties more your style?"
Where before it was so simple, so easy to meet lightning blue eyes, now she looks everywhere but them. Cornflower hair hangs long on her. Such a lovely mane and tail, too. it would be beautiful with more than the crown of flowers that so easily sits atop her head. But even that simple thing is rather becoming. Through it all, despite the pushing and finagling for information, no matter the circumstances and the scar upon the other woman's face, Moira finds her lovely. Like a flower that is yet to blossom, a youth still uncouth and learning the ways of the world, and a woman far too much like a flame than would ever be appropriate, Bexley is eternally mercurial and drawing the phoenix back again.
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