But he had grown up charmed, gifted with a supportive extended family and in a time of peace, and he would never know anything otherwise. (Sometimes he craved something... Something more, something that sent a shiver right through the tips of his feathers. Something that scared him, so he kept it bottled up-- a secret.) If he could read the white mare's mind, her insecurities would be as foreign to him as pain-- a feeling he understood, as it was defined, and thought he knew how it felt, but had never truly experienced for himself. (Even flying had come easy to him. Flying!)
He wants to ask her more about her thoughts, and he wants to tell her she has a poet's tongue, or maybe a philosopher's, and there are so many other things he wants to say but before he can, she quickly changes the subject.
Culver's root. Culver's root. He knows he's seen it before, in the quick briefing they had before leaving the capital. He remembers wondering who Culver was, and what one must do to have a root, of all things, named after you, and when his attention returned to the lecture the topic had already moved on to Morro's whip, a seasonal grass... and naturally that name had sent his imagination flying even further. So, Culver's root. "Umm... Yeah, we're acquainted. This one,right?" He reaches for a plant with serrated leaves not unlike Culver's root, but not arranged in the characteristic whorling pattern, and bumps it with his nose. Two weeks ago he would have unceremoniously grabbed and tugged it out of the earth, but between then and now he had a strangely unnerving conversation with the prince about whether plants could feel or not. He had cut the topic of conversation short before it got too deep (it had been such a beautiful morning, wasted on philosophy) but it stuck with him anyway, and he had begun to treat plants much more respectfully, almost fearfully.
Abruptly, Mateo asks "what would you call it?" He simply could not keep his attention on plants, and so he changes topics back to the first without blinking an eye. "A book that's full of your thoughts, I mean." He has a few ideas- bold of him, knowing nothing of the stranger- but he does not want to taint her response with his own, so he keeps his mouth shut. It is an uncomfortable feeling, for a man so used to saying the first thing that comes to mind, and he fidgets uncomfortably as though wrestling words unspoken. When he smiles suddenly, it is boyish, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't, and it is reassuring, and it is sweet as only the terribly optimistic or terribly naive can be. He happens to be both.
- - -
@Reckitt
