It does not follow her out of hunger or particular interest. In fact, it does not know that it follows her until it sees her through the blue-violet shades of night and the indigo shadow she draws across the ground as the moon frames her silhouette. It does not know that her heart winds against itself with the concern that he may mistake her motives – and it does not know that it could ever think of such a thing. Though it has access to the fires that once marred the Night Markets and the crimes against Isra, it had never delved into those closed files in the mind of the Erasmus-That-Was. It did not know the concept of betrayal or treason, and its understanding of trespassing was limited. He himself often wound in the private yards of the Denoctian citizens, marveling at what may be – their gardens, their statues, or simply the way the moon rested in the grass, or the way it was framed in the sky aloft its countless constellations.

Tonight was no different. They might as well have both been traitors to the ground the walked on, for it meant little to him than dirt and grass and moonlight bath, all Denocte and never his or theirs or hers, but earth.

So when he met her, their forms washed in the silver flow of moonlight, he did not mind if she did not belong to the Night Court or worship Caligo, and he did not assume that she was any creature of violence. Not because she did not appear violent – it knows better, like of beautiful flowers that devour their admirers – but because she did not bare her teeth or snarl when she saw him. She did not unfold like a carnivorous flower, all sharp edges and weariness, and blood-red ripe beauty that begged a taste of death. But neither does he.

Instead, he meets her as commonly as strangers may – though strangers do not often greet each other with hunger in their bellies that scrapes up their throats and threaten, o threaten, a howl from their lips. It comes tumbling down, down, a learned practice. A well learned one, when he had been run from the shores after taking a sizable bite of a sailor's hand upon his arrival, that his hunger must be patient. That he must be more beauty than hunger, if he wishes to achieve anything better than withering at the roots. So he swallows it, and he tells it, wait, wait, and it abides because – because –

Because predators know when they see something like her, that something is wrong. He sees her flesh sucked tight against her ribs, sees that when the moon glistens over them that they do not reveal the healthy luster of a plentiful coat. He sees that she, herself, looks hungry, looks depraved, diseased, and there is an inkling of wonder that death may manifest itself with warmth still. But he does not look to her with disgust, or much of anything beside the warranted compliance with societal-mandated warmth. His grin does not falter, his expression does not twitch with apathy. If anything, there is a small faint twinkling of child-like wonder when he looks at her, but it is fleeting and soft. Between these flickers, something else lurks, but there is no name for it.

There are small, awful moments he finds in which it cannot find the proper words. It struggles with greetings, with small-talk, and finds that it loathes most of what sits in the bank for using. Weather talk was too dull, hellos too complicated by gestures and tones, and all else was strung in chaos like webs of philosophical dreamings. Improvisation was best, but the aether is infantile to Erasmus's natural charisma, so it lacks the entire charm when it cracks: "leaving?" because it doesn't know that in its level tone it can be just as accusing as it is harmless, like some monotone threat that lingers in the air. It is unclear if words are worst than awkward silences at times. But he does not chase her, then, and maybe this alone shows the lack of ill nature in the way his voice curls around the word. He looks to the structure as she had looked before, his eyes passing over the razor-thin lines between the mortared stones, cutting themselves on the cracks that slip between faded eclipses of black crescent moons. He sighed softly, and the hunger lounges at the pit of his belly, burning off like dying embers. "is there something here you couldn't find?" he asks absently, without turning. He cannot find it either.

Erasmus was once a warrior.

Not the aether, which has only been an entirely different sort of everything - but erasmus itself, the boy, the vessel, had been raised to assess and engage with little mercy. A volatile creature when pressured, despite his extreme apathy that left him on the shallow end of passion. Little perturbed him, and it made him a prime spectator, some calculative and intuitive thing that found mannerisms and movements ultimate language over the trivialties of speech. The body rarely lied – though he would be a liar himself if he could say he could not be deceived – what with its minor twitchings or subtle gestures, no matter what guise one belied on the stake of their inflections.

The aether, the thing that becomes Erasmus, watches the nuanced recoil, and the tentative rebound. It, without Erasmus's help, has seen fear. It has seen creatures double against themselves, searching walls for holes behind them, pressing themselves to the midnight scenery as though they may, desperately, blend. The wide-eyed stare, the shallow breathing, and at last, in the intimacy of closeness – the fluttering, pounding, wildly flying heart thrummed against ribs, chest; a rhythm in blood.

It is not necessarily fear that moves her. So he quietly waits, calmly, for tell-tale signs that relayed the truth of her motives. What had been the word?

Guarded.

There was a defense there, something that did not belt against him like a rabid animal but fester and languish with timid curiosity, stowed in the fortuitous glance. He cranes when she does not, away from the cold slabs that comprise the wall of moons, brow lifted over an inquisitive eye. It comes in waves then, in words and tones, and he thinks that any other night of desperate hunger he may have seen how far she would run. Instead he listens and waits, no more movement from him than the casual labor of breath swelling the hard case of his chest and ribs, tail curling feline and stoical. As soon as it has come, it is gone again, just as guarded as she had been before.

“I believe you'll find that Denocte is quite inviting,” reflections of a once-Erasmus threaten to bleed through, as though he had once been loathing of this idea, a ghost of 'too much so' lingering in the back of the once-mind. Antisocial. Mistrusting. But the aether is even-toned, a smooth low dialect from nowhere, warm as fire and cold as a winter night. Like softly roving fog through a midnight forest, clinging to the shadows of pine sentinels. Let them come, then. “Finding things is easier when you know what you are looking for.” every syllable unrolls from between those pines, a ghosting embrace, untread waters. An ocean rises and falls in his eyes, and his chin lifts higher, if to reflect the mountains in the distance, jagged black teeth beneath a star-studded sky. “Have you checked the Night Markets?”

tense. her form, if it were contained by bristles and needles and the flutter of whim, would sprawl in its points if it could – he observed lightly, from the corner of his eye. She was but a movement there, a shadow, or the utter lack of movement beside the shuddering of muscle and the light press of her hooves against the dusty pathway. The aether had seen it before in the once-was mind beholden to it, a menagerie of subtle cues and a curious aptitude for tremors, twitches, a loose (and previously much ignored) understanding of etiquette. Should he back away then, so as to give her room to breathe, to thrive, to release herself from what hold she engaged, from whatever it was she sensed in her awareness could ever possibly be not-right in their equation? Should he bid her the night, to give her rest in its solace, the empty wilderness at their door fraught with the potential of better or worse things?

He did not move from her, release her into the night breeze, loosen her from her discomfort. There was a part in her tension that delighted a part in him, but it was not enough to sate the depth that resounded there. It was the same place of delight that found a solitude in the frenzy of pine-thick woodlands or the sparse wilds of the red-dust canyon, the same part that stirred with hunger and restlessness. A part that wondered if it should oblige her concerns, if it should search her wariness, test it, tempt it.

Erasmus's gaze fell back to her when she spoke once more, the depths of his eyes surging like the currents of a black lake. What I am looking for cannot be bought, I'm not even sure it exists. His brow furrowed, thin moonlight falling over his darker contours as his skull tilted in progression, skins buckling at the tender fold of his throat. There are moments where he is less horse and more wolf, and less wolf and more of something other, something else, something cutting and curling and unfolding and graciously given through the deception of angelic gestures. It knows the faces of hunger and the unkempt leagues of its bottomless existence, and it senses it there where one word meets another with uncertainty, seeking.

His expressions, often hardened by sharp angles and predatory shade, soften to ambiguity, and then to a resonance. Who are you? Always the question, never the answer they wish – to speak is to blaspheme the truth, because there are no words for what it is, no descriptor that could ever contain the endlessness and the nothingness that consumes anything its ideal touches. “I could be all,” he answers distantly, though his attention is stead on her still, “and I could be nothing. Which would be a comfort?” his voice sharpens at the end, like a blade pulled from the stone, like a craftsman admiring its work, like a butcher assessing the guillotine. “I have nothing to sell you, and I am not here to capture you.” Even, balanced, the lull of his voice is smooth baritone, lusciously cruel and unguarded, almost feline. “All hours are ungodly.”

As he breathes, moonlight bathes his chest in shades of indigo, violet rays gleaming in his flesh, gold grinning like fangs from the cracks. And then, a chuckle. It offers no graces, no mercies, an amusement unto itself alone. A strange man. “Do you often wander the outskirts of foreign courts at night, searching for something that you do not even know of?”