it was meant to be simple
just one golden rule
just one golden rule
S
he doesn’t realize that she isn’t alone until the voice comes brushing up against her like a breeze while she is leaning out, looking over the white-caps and breakers of the sea. It would be hard to tear her gaze away, if she had been given time for a choice; she has never seen the ocean so close (save for the island, but that still felt more like a dream than anything of the real and waking world) and there is something mesmerizing about it, something that transfixes her as easily as the weaving dance of a snake might a bird. How it moves, ceaseless, how the light shimmers off of it, how far and far it goes, drawing a line to the horizon! Elif could almost forget why she is here, and linger forever upon the parapets.
Until the voice. At the sound of it she shuffles back a few steps from the edge, already rounding on the speaker, opening her mouth with no idea what she will say. Their words are nonsensical - bravery, and cages, and flames? - but before she can say so the grass-green of her eyes is touching on every part of the stranger, and she finds herself disarmed by their beauty.
He is tall, far taller than she, and more elegant than any gilded noble she has known from Solterra. Their coat is as cream-soft and varied as a marble carving, with soft rose eyes, a waterfall of hair (she could never keep hers so long, or so neat, even if she could grow it). The column of his neck is bound in a scarf such a soft blue that it makes everything more beautiful, like a swath of dusk light.
Elif feels small and crude before him, though such things have never really bothered her before; it annoys her that they do now, and she tucks her wings in tighter like a moody eaglet to hid the barrel-slats of her ribs. She has never been beautiful, but Raum’s rule has turned her leaner yet, dull as a pauper.
It isn’t until he says story-teller that she relaxes a little, for now the poetry she was greeted with makes more sense. And any question about flying is enough to coax a smile from her lips and loosen the cautious set of her shoulders.
“I’m Elif,” she says, for it is the easiest place to start. “And I know nothing of fire - this band I wear is my alaja, and it bears the prayers of my family. Though one of those is for bravery.” She realizes she hasn’t stopped looking at him as though he is more art than man, and she is grateful for the excuse to look away when she shifts her gaze back to the sky, an uncomplicated blue.
“Here everything tastes of the sweetness of grass and the salt of the sea. But high enough, or out over the desert, where I am from - well, it is too cold and clear to taste like anything, but it feels like…” Oh, she is no poet. If Mateo were here, he could tell this beautiful stranger exactly what it is like, she is sure. “Like dreaming, or like galloping full-out but never growing tired, with nothing but the wind to touch you. Safer than anything, and more wild.” With each word she says she grows more self-conscious, which in turn makes her more guarded, until at last she’s peering back at him with her chin tilted almost haughtily (her defenses always make her look as arrogant as a falcon).
“Are you looking for the armor too, Aerie?” The lilt of his name on her tongue softens her, enough to add, “That’s a flying name, you know.”
@aeranas | she was wrong about the clue but I'm not even mad. Excited for this thread <3
