i have made the obscene decision
to do something unforgivable.
to do something unforgivable.
H
e doesn’t really know who to look at. The white stallion, with hatred in his eyes and menace in his jaw, or the bay mare, with distrust gleaming brighter than the red in her feathers. Tough crowd, he thinks, with a touch of drying humor.
They have not even told him their names. Are manners dead in this forsaken kingdom? He, at least, had tried to be pleasant. (Even if he hadn’t meant it. But meaning — does that really matter, over what one appears to be? Caine does not think so.)
"I live here,” the scowling man says. Do you? Caine wants to say back, glancing over once again at the impeccable pearl-white of his coat. You don’t look like it. At least, not to his foreigner eyes.
The girl, though — she is made for the sun. “I’ve been studying her people since birth, and I know a native when I meet one.” Her neck arches like a nervous cat’s, and Caine’s smile grows ever more genuine.
"Then you are very sharp.” His wings buzz at his sides, shivering against the cold, but he pays them no mind and tilts his head just a fraction towards her. "I am not a native.” And just what… he wants to ask, are you going to do about it?
The wind cuts through the streets like a scythe, and when Caine’s wings spread out like an eclipse to block it, he makes sure to stretch it wide over the girl’s small frame. (He is cold, so he assumes she must not be much better off, thin as her sleek pelt is. And his manners have always been impeccable.)
He also makes sure to shake the snow off in her general direction. (The boy is restless, restless, restless. He feels drawn as tightly as a huntsman’s bow, with no wandering stag in sight.)
And so Caine is not sorry when the proposal slips from his lips like a dare. He is not sorry when they both turn to stare at him in unison (he almost relishes it, and if he were not so agitated from Saints knows what he would’ve puzzled over his own tumultuous mood. He does not often lose his facade of calm.)
“Now?” the girl asks, incredulous, and Caine almost says "Yes, now." with a taunting smirk, but the pale man opens his mouth first. ”I wanted to go anyway. Might as well.”
"Finally, some excitement,” he drawls, the stone-smooth delight in his tone foreign to even his ears. With a flick of his wings, he makes to head towards the edge of the city, where the horizon is capped by snow-covered dunes —
Before the girl beats him to it. “Okay - let’s.” She pushes past him, resolute, and Caine pauses for a moment to watch her stretching shadow.
"After you,” he remarks, voice low and lyrical and feral. He does not look back at the man — his pride does not allow for him to be the last at anything — before he picks up his stride and catches up to her in two long steps.
"Neither of you have bothered to tell me your names, you know,” he says, and he makes sure his voice carries in the wind to reach the stallion’s fine-tipped ears.
"And I was thinking that — since we are going towards a herd of giant, magical elk — we should at least know that much about each other.”
@El Toro @Elif | "speaks" | notes: -screams-
