to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
He is getting the wrong idea about her, maybe, from all her answering smiles - but he’s a keen enough eye to notice the hesitance, and anyway, it’s long been part of his nature to put people at ease. It made them more pliable, more likely to open up, easier to eventually manipulate. More than that, he genuinely enjoys it, and there are no ulterior motives for him this bright cold morning. What had begun as a simple intent to assuage her guilt over colliding with him (though he really ought to have been paying better attention, not listening to the wind call his name) had bloomed into something that felt like, if given a little more room, a new friendship.
August can always use another friendly face.
Now he slants another arch-browed look at her, his smile more subdued but undeniably present, as though as much a part of him as the tattoo on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call a shipwreck luck - oy! Templeton!” For out of the corner of his eye flashed a little dragon of crimson and gold. Closer attention revealed the creature had been chasing one of the over-sized magpies, as attracted to the markets for their food and shiny trinkets as everyone else. At the sound of his name (or at least, what August called him) the small beast looked around, weaving like a scarlet thread over to the pair.
“Boudika, meet Templeton,” he continues, as smoothly as though there’d been no interruption. He huffs a breath at the dragon, who huffs a puff of smoke back, and gestures toward the basket of broken bread bits. “Give him one of these - though I’ve already fed the bugger today. You’ll have his heart forever.” Once the introductions are made August ambles on, dragons at his heels and birds overhead, part of the weaving, half-frantic dance of the docks. At her question a curved ear slants toward her, and he weighs his answer for only a moment. “Some would say that’s my most important job. But I’m also a…manager, of sorts, at a gambling house in town. Here we are.”
Indeed, before them is a dark wooden stand, above it a plain sign adorned with the painting of a braided loaf. Tending the stall is a young chestnut stallion, only just out of his colthood, dusted with flour and smiling broadly, if a little puzzled to see the palomino again so soon. “Hello again, Talan,” August says, setting the basket back atop the table. “I couldn’t stay away. Same as earlier, please, and whatever my friend wants. Also, if you can think of anyone who could use the rest of these…” He indicates the scuffed and broken bread, which Talan takes with a knowing nod. There were plenty of hungry foals in the lower city who could use a bit of breakfast.
As he passes over payment and the baker readies his second purchase of the morning, August turns back to Bouikda with a grin more sly than any yet. He fishes from his satchel one of the strange, simplistic cards for the White Scarab - black and matte, stamped with the beetle-and-sword. “Come visit sometime,” he says, passing it to her, and winks. “But you’ll have to find it for yourself. That’s half the fun.”
@boudika | <3
