WE MEET NO ORDINARY PEOPLE IN OUR LIVES
If they were not just strangers, he might confess
her eyes are
the colour of the sea
in the sun, on strange days.
Magic days.
Orestes does not mean to startle her, and an apology blooms upon his tongue—before he can utter it, she speaks. Oh—do you think so?
Yes, he does.
He does not reaffirm it but he laughs when she does, and his laughter is as beautiful as breaking glass, as run through with tragedy and light and something ringing, ringing. It is soft, nearly husky, a sea that goes shush, shush, shush in the light he imagines upon the shore. “You do,” he finds himself reaffirming, against his earlier thoughts. “And people should tell you more often.”
Orestes was not the type of man to deny himself simple pleasures, and one of those simple pleasures includes the compliments of others. To bring joy, genuine and unexpected, in places it would not otherwise belong. It was one of his great purposes—to offer unassuming happiness, brief and transient (some may even say cheap) but he feels his smile widen, widen, and then
he is just a boy
and she is just a girl,
and she invites him inside.
Orestes glances towards the sky, a gesture that is almost childlike in its abruptness. He stares at the looming clouds and can feel the humidity sticking, already, to his skin. He returns his eyes to hers with a wryness to match her smile, and just as boldly says, “If it were raining now, and if I knew your name, I would ask you to dance.”
But it is not yet raining, and he does not yet know her name. So instead Orestes trots toward her, up the Solterran steps and into the Solterran building, where he is met with the luxury he has become accustomed to seeing in his home Court. The difference is this wealth is not old, or dusty, or decaying. It is vibrant, bursting, everything in the colour of royal gemstones. Yes, Orestes thinks. There is no happenstance. He does not step further in and instead waits for her lead, captivated by her presence.
She is an enigma, and it pleases him. Orestes has not many in Novus thus far that present to him an enigma; but she wears the Night like a second skin and enters, as if it owns to her, a building that ought to be miles and miles north, in the city of the sun. There is a sharpness to her, and a softness too, and her eyes draw him in again and again. Jewel-bright, emerald-bright, and he wants to tell her the story of his people, how to them eyes were truly the window to the soul. Do you know, he wants to ask, that among the most beautiful people, green eyes are among the rarest, and they say protector, creator, balance? They say, peace, peace, peace and— the sound of so much laughter underwater, as haunting as the songs of whales.
Orestes does not say this, however. “I’m Orestes. Thank you for getting me out of the rain.” As he says it, he hears the storm break outside—and what comes is a torrent, a downpour, vicious and bitingly cold. He feels the sea closing in, but for now the candlelight keeps it away, and the memories he holds so dear of other skins and forms seem even father away, as if that is a life that belongs to dreams and dreams alone.
“Tell me about yourself? But only if you would like to.” it is a question, a request. He says it politely, gazing wide-eyed and intrigued at the decorations and how everything seems gilded in gold. The firelight catches it, and it burns and burns and burns in a way only gold can. He would know. It dances along his dapples, his glimmering tattoos, in the very same fashion. Orestes eyes are deep, and old, and young, and full of light when he says, “It is beautiful here, too.” And thinks: the candlelight has transformed her into the sun. He thinks of telling her.
But he does not,
no. He does not.
@Aghvani | "speaks" | notes: LOL for the sake of liquid time... this happens after his thread with Moira when she takes him to Night to experience the Festival? But before the audition/meeting thread.
x