elif
In that brief moment, that quick exchange between the boy and girl beside her, Elif feels something shift.
Perhaps it is all in her head (it would not be the first time), but that is the power of illusions, anyway - they could only hurt you if you let them. It is with uncharacteristic silence that she watches the rest of the exchange - appeasing fathers and shopkeepers, smiles sharp as daggers that become swords. (She has been jealous enough, in her life, that she ought to recognize the feeling now - though this is tempered by something else, an itch almost like fear.)
Elif wants friends, but she isn’t sure how to have them - and right now O and Caine don’t feel much like friends, anyway. They are in this moment too Other, similar not to her but to one another in their strangeness, their separateness from the life of simple sun and shadow that she lives. Elif has magic, too, but nothing like theirs - nothing to reshape the world, nothing that can tell lies.
It is with clear reluctance that the girl shakes her head, the sharp green of her eyes cutting to the side as she turns her gaze away. Back to the table of whips in the sweltering, heavy sun, away from the illusionists and their eyes that spark and burn.
“Later, maybe,” she says, her words clipped and short in an effort to keep emotion out of her voice. “I still want to look at these.” And with a snap of her sparse black tail - and without a glance back - she stalks over to the table and pointedly studies the wares. There they lie, coiled and easy as sleeping snakes, simple and strong from handle to fall. Elif longs to pick one up, but she waits - she can feel the eyes of the stall-keeper on her, and other eyes, keener yet.
Oh, to be a weapon, too, dangerous and strange.
@Apolonia @Caine Ilu but I'm trying to cull my threads D: but I require a thread with each of them again soon!
