the most dangerous woman of all is the one who refuses to rely on your sword because she carries her own
Their discussion was standard in every sense of the word. It was not love bleeding through the air, braiding their hearts into one. When he gazed at her it was not as if every sigh was cut from her lungs and launched into the wind like midnight smog. They hadn't touched yet, though the girl concluded that the world would not cease and quake with anticipation and fervor if he moved for her flank in this very moment. There were two sides to every coin: if it wasn't love between them, was it hate? Her eyes peeped at him and she did not feel animosity and enmity well up in her heart just as she did not feel fury burning through her veins.
If they could, the trees would laugh at the girl's thoughts now, dressed in their skimpy attire, the nakedness of winter apparent on their branches for even though Maerys was a child of reflection and contemplation, everything she did and spoke was over-thought, every outcome previously foreseen. When she had little to reminisce about, she explored the realm of infinite possibilities. This was not the approach to a fulfilling course, but the girl was a mere infant in experience and would hopefully determine quickly that over-thinking may not be the most satisfying way to exist.
Beaming tenderly as he joins her at her side, they walk towards the Library, her step equaling his.
As they progress, the scene (though drastically modified) reminds the girl of her brief stay in the Illuster Meadow. It had been her and one other (Fia, she recalled), the same as now, but everything else had been changed. The daylight had wrapped Maerys in a blanket of sunshine and the snow underhoof bit with each hoof fall. The trees were remote and few between, offering irregular shelter from the downpour of sugary snowflakes (not that shelter had been at all desired at the moment). The breeze had felt lively and cool, a rousing sigh of clean air. There'd been nothing alarming about the scenery, but her company at the time had divulged that certain malicious beasts- "Doth thee know of monsters that lurk here?" The question fell from her lip mid-thought. It would seem undeniably random, but the girl's curiosity begged her to inquire. Could she just ask about monsters and still be taken seriously? Fia knew of monsters, but did that mean Lasairian would? "I am new to these regions and have heard murmurs of such creatures." Such was true, she'd only arrived less than a couple weeks ago. Everything seemed so typical to all the others she had met, but it was all complex to the girl. In her homeland, they had monsters, of course, but she knew how to evade them or conquer them. She'd known thieves and murderers but knew well she could guard herself against them. There were poisonous sprouts in abundance, but she could identify them all. In Novus, she felt as though she was leaving everything up for a gamble.
Lasairian appeared knowledgeable due to the fact that he seemed to venture to the library so often. To the girl, this signified that he had plausibly read something at least once about monsters. She watched curiously, waiting to see what the stallion had to offer.
