Charlemagne heads for the sunrise and spares only a flick of a slender ear when he hears her halt in the sand. Even when there is the snap of her wings unfurling he pays no mind, sauntering on with a satisfied little smirk. Perhaps she’s had enough of him and will head back to Dusk Court to go insult and bewilder another unassuming stranger. He only looks up when she glides over him, hooves nearly grazing his ears, and this time it is he who draws short with a huff. The girl could certainly be an imposing presence. There was a feral grace about her, softened but not wholly disguised by her cascade of flowers and golden hair, and the unicorn tosses his golden-horned head, just missing bumping her in the nose. The colt tries very hard to be neither impressed nor intimidated. But perhaps his eyes suggest it, just the same. Something has them sparking, with her close enough that the scents of lavender and sunlight linger once again in his nostrils. Charlemagne stands in the shadow cast by her lovely wings and narrows his eyes once he notices her gaze, slipping over him like…like he’s some broodmare. Just before he can give voice to his offense, she draws that gods-damned dagger. And has the audacity to threaten him. It is not difficult to mistake her mischievousness for eagerness - or cruel joy, for that matter. It is not the first time Charlemagne has been threatened by someone with laughter in their eyes, someone who could then say of course I never meant it. You could not truly threaten a lord’s son, even a minor one, even one that preferred hiding in the library. But he did not doubt for a second, if he had been common-born but with the same loathing of battle, their threats would have been more than words and laughing looks. For that long, long moment, Charlemagne is terribly still. And then, just before she stows it again, he speaks. “You said you weren’t like that.” He bites the words, hoping she will mistake the sharp edges of them as something other than the fear it is. His eyes flick up to hers, meet them, and whatever he sees there (or perhaps it is only fear, again - he does not trust her, this wild and changeable stranger) has him holding his tongue. It is well he does; wherever their young relationship was headed, unless you’re a liar, too, would be unlikely to help it out much. On the other hand, he isn’t terrible sure he wants to help it. She slights him again, and she is too near to see the way his legs tremble in the sand, though the unicorn does keep his ears from laying back. Perhaps he was wrong, and she was just like the ones he’d left - too sure that they had plenty of valor and bravery, and he none. Never mind that the bravest thing he’d done was run away - run away to come here, and have her be the first stranger he met. When she presses her muzzle to his neck, he at once realizes he has missed being touched and wishes she would not touch him. Musty and boring, she names his scent, and his green eyes widen. Before one taunt can even fade away like foam on the beach she sends him another, and perhaps he deserves it, but — “You don’t know me well enough to say those things,” he says, and this time there is no disguising the hurt in his voice. “You don’t know anything about me at all.” He feels very small and very angry before her gaze when she turns again, this fierce girl, whose little cruelties he cannot make out the meaning of. He feels like a boy, endlessly mocked for not being brave enough or strong enough or willing enough to fight — the very things he’d come to Novus to escape. He thinks her beautiful, yes. Beautiful and terrible and half-mad with her stories of dying and opening holes through time. There is a part of him that still wants to hear her tales, for surely she has thousands of them. Perhaps if she hadn’t threatened him, perhaps if he had been a day or two past arriving here, perhaps if he had been more sure of himself at all. Or perhaps none of it would be enough to overcome the differences between them - a girl who was loved for precisely who she was, and a boy who was...not. This time he straightens beneath the gaze she runs like a hand over his body, and holds himself like his father taught him, and when he speaks he tries to make it sound like his father’s voice, cold and hard and impersonal as the stone walls surrounding their home. “Go on, then. I would hate to impede your adventuring. Thank you for the directions. Perhaps I’ll hear about your stories someday, in books.” His smile is as bright and useless as her dagger, and then he turns away. @ |
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