in sunshine and in shadow;
The sound of her laughter, merry and soft as the brook that weaves through Susurro, is more welcome and lovely a sound than the rain as it welcomes him deeper into her home.
It’s a lovely kind of wonder that wells in him each time she speaks, even as his gaze drops by habit to look for the pad of paper Fiona always kept with her. How much stranger it must be for her to not always reach for it; the king wonders if she’d always known how her voice would sound, or if the tone of it had surprised her.
“Tea sounds wonderful,” he says, and as she busies herself in the cozy, warm space of the kitchen he takes in the room, smiling as he remembers the boy he’d been and the shock such a room would have brought him. How strange it seems now, to think of a life lived in the wild, and so often alone. Now he can hardly remember what it was like to be lonely.
Her voice, that warm, strange echo in his mind, prompts him to lift his eyes to her, grinning at the expression she wears. “I’m too impatient for mysteries.” About as impatient as for cinnamon rolls - as she sets down the napkin he takes one, pausing a moment to enjoy the scent of it, thinking he ought to bring Moira to try them (and how sweet a thought that is, too.)
But as she begins her story the bay is attentive, dark ears pricked (though of course her voice does not travel through the air) and dark eyes soft as the clouds outside. How well he remembers those winter nights, the heat of the fire a barrier against the cold bite of the air, the warm hall where the people made art and Moira came -
Perhaps it is only because he is thinking of the pheonix-girl that he notices the tone of Fiona’s words when she says Atreus. He still knows so little of the man, but if he could make the lavender paint’s voice brighten so, it spoke well of him.
By the end of her story he is smiling, too, and reaches out to touch her cheek. “I’m glad it was worth the taste,” he says. “What a wonderful gift, and one so well deserved. Does it still feel strange?”
@Fiona
Asterion.
