Corradh has always found reality to be sadly disappointing; he had spent months—perhaps even years—imagining his encounter with the striking, winged fighter. He had again and again told himself exactly how the exchange would transpire; Corradh had plotted out every possible conversation. All of these imagined encounters lay unspoken and unlived in his mind; the truth of it unfolds before him, both disappointing and beyond whatever he himself could have concocted.
Because no one is like me. The audacious confidence with which she says it takes Corradh aback, and this is where whatever fantasies he’d had of who she is dissolve; he is left reeling in the aftershock of her words, as one does after any natural disaster. The colours seem a little brighter; the music louder than before. The flash-bright image of her smile engrains itself in his mind, more teeth than lips. Her touch, too, seems in and of itself to carry the power of a small inferno.
Corradh finds himself at a loss in the face of her confidence, if only because the Solterran aristocracy comes in one mould only. There are many like Corradh, and he knows it.
In contrast, she radiates danger and something nearly anarchist; her wings are a movement in and of themselves, unhurried and constant.
You did not fight tonight. The way she says it makes Corradh believe she knows he has fought, and does fight. There is judgement there, a type of scorn he is familiar with. He does not always fight not because he doesn’t want to, but because how it risks his reputation. That great and terrible wing brushes down his side; and Corradh smiles with all the dark things in the desert. He smiles in a way uncharacteristic; he shows his teeth.
“I did not,” Corradh confirms. And in confirming, his mind plunges down a deep and twisting tunnel: why, why, why he asks himself, disappointed in each and every answer. “Would you have watched me?” He asks it with an edge of daring. With the sun on the horizon and a sleepless night behind him, it does not seem like the time to be conservative.
The edge in her voice has evoked him; Corradh dislikes being challenged, yet it has never been in his nature to be anything save coy. His eyes are emeralds when he says, his mouth just slightly too close to her throat, “And if we had fought?”
@Amaunet || "Speech." ||
until the lion learns to write
every story will glorify the hunter
