Until he’d said it, there beneath a different dawn, Charlemagne had never given thought to seeing the sunrise from other courts. Afterward, though, as he left that strange meeting with the bittersweet mixture of feelings it gave him, he couldn’t shake the thought. It had taken root, much like the runaway that had brought him to Novus in the first place — and perhaps it is what finally saw him traveling south, as much as the meeting with Camdis Lohir.

And here he stood, a silhouette in a sea of grass that whispered against his legs as the stars faded away.

For all its wild, raucous reputation, the Night Court has been nothing but peaceful for Charlemagne. The faces are open and friendly, no calculating expressions or sly smiles or snide remarks. It does not feel, here, that there is a right way to be. It makes the unicorn wonder — a slow questioning he doesn’t allow himself to name, because he knows that guilt will be on its heels. If he could not fit at Delumine, the frequent subject of long nights spent dreaming as a colt, how could he fit anywhere else? Besides, he had always given up too easily.

There is only a moment of surprise that passes across his features when he turns at her voice, but the true astonishment is that a smile follows it. It’s a soft thing, fragile and wry, but it is true. Her words help - he finds himself pleased to have surprised her, to have done anything outside what’s expected. His green eyes, shadowed in the lessening darkness, take in the features that are becoming quite familiar - though only in this light.

“I’m beginning to think you only exist at this time of day,” he says, his voice as soft as her own. Perhaps he has it wrong; perhaps it is he that only exists as daybreak. Certainly he feels like a ghost, most of the time.

Not here, though. In Denocte, he feels seen.

At her question he turns back toward the sunrise, watches the way it limns the grasses in rose and gold. It’s easier than watching her, though as he answers his gaze slips back. “What, are you the only one allowed to travel? Perhaps I’m seeking adventure.” The quirk of his dark lips lets her in on the joke, this one at his own expense. He might have continued like that, prodding her the way she had him, but his words have recalled his failed sojourn into the desert, his meeting with Bexley. If his time in the Night Court ended the same way, he might cast himself from the nearest cliff.

It’s enough to turn him solemn, and the unicorn once more looks away. “I came to find Camdis Lohir. He’s a..a friend of mine.” It’s not a word he’s used yet in Novus, but it doesn’t feel false, and that emboldens him. “Why are you here? More Dusk Court business?”

@Florentine