I paid the price and own the scars
why did we climb to fall so far ?
Taught to sing and dance and be merry, Moira is not gifted with the art of observation for her surroundings - only that of her patients and friends, those few who are called as such. Tales of the Crows and the death they could bring, ravaging the world as a disaster had struck and making it look more simple that it truly was, rending flesh from bone and leaving no evidence... None of it had reached the Tonnerre estate, winding its way within the compound until terror would have risen and stories whispered at night to put the children to bed. The Crows she knows nothing of yet, not even fully in Denocte enough to have learned who they are, what they are.
So it is with little apprehension that she finds blue eyes in the water, staring at her as a voice slithers in with the man, like a snake in her bed it is cool along her spine. But the coolness does not alleviate what she feels. Instead, as yellow eyes flutter shut and the phoenix woman expels a breath, she squares her shoulders and straightens her spine to turn and face him.
The sight is striking enough, so much so that she could have stumbled and cried. He could be one of us she thinks, pulled into memories of family portraits and lessons where she was forced to learn the history of the Tonnerres back to generation upon generation ago. This one was your great, great, great, great, great, great aunt Emile and uncle Louis, they had Francis, Elie, Marc, and Reginald. Your family decended from Thibaut and Emile after that, little Moira. That's what they'd tell her as she stared at grim face and bleak eyes, watching as each one glared or snarled or simply existed without having ever breathed happiness into their lungs and expunged the gray skies that lived in their hearts.
He looks like a ghost from her family.
But the light in his eyes, the simple way the sun seems to light his skin on fire where lightning should have been, it reminds her that he is not them. Despite the ice in his voice and the isolation in those eyes, he is not a Tonnerre. Movements are much too smooth, not poised nor refined enough, and he sits too still. Although, Moira would argue her Aunt Aurelie could have taken him in a glaring contest hands down.
"Moreso what I don't," she says at last, her voice is velvet and smoke at midnight - not the chiming bells that other girls wear so well, but something darker, more subtle and suitable to pleasurable nights and throes of passion than hospital halls and colorful canvases. "What is it you see?" The phoenix asks, brows raising as she meets those strange, sharp eyes that are as fresh as the first rainfall. What white would she blend with blue to get that shade of winter, she wonders, marveling at the man in the mere tapestry of the world about them.
Moira enjoys looking at people as paintings far more than she should, but when you're not her patient, you're simply there and gone like everyone else, it would seem. Her only memory would write him on a canvas with colors so bold, so cold, that to look would to feel the chill to your bones.
code: e-cho; image: unsplash @Raum well hello handsome ovo
we made our love out of stacks of cards
