moira
you can't fathom why i'd gobble your kisses but duck your attention, please. understand -
He is a black star falling and he is beautiful, she knows this, she's always known this from the very first moment they met in a dark library where she'd been caught sleeping next to a text dug up from the bowels of the shelves in the room. Still, Caine makes her pause, takes her breath before giving it back, and what throws her for a spin the most is the missing wings. Once, she shied away from him so completely that her body had been set a-quivering at the mere sight and thought of flying, of launching into the unknown high above. Now, there is a morbid curiosity that haunts her as he does over where the second pair went. Despite the lack of the double set that he told her he hadn't always had, she still cannot deny how beautiful the man looks with his hair in its twists and braids, with the fire opals winking at her from his neck, with those dark, swarthy wings set as an even darker cape about his back.
She wonders, briefly, if she looks like a living flame sweeping over the floor with the way her own are luxuriously draped atop her back - no longer so tight against her sides that it would take a crowbar to pry them away, but relaxed and more comfortable than Caine ever would have seen her with them.
There is no time to let herself ponder no her own appearance for she knows she could still be a belle of the ball. Every Tonnerre had turned their heads when she debuted among them, watching as the spritely girl seemed to float down their staircase, presented before the family not as a disgrace, but as a Tonnerre to her people. God, it had been horrid. She likes to think that she's grown since then.
The confidence she wears is also new, still learning its place in the fibers of her skin, the nooks, and crannies of her face, the depths of her eyes. Moira is never so confident to be cocky, she wouldn't say that about anything of herself save for her practicing medicine and her drawings that she hates less now, but enough that she seems to glow as only a bonfire can: from the inside out, she burns for him.
Once, perhaps, there would have been jealousy to see another brushing against him, cooing softly as she might have had she been bolder before. Now, there is only the tilting of those dark lips as he apologizes and goes back to his hunt. A beast on the prowl is always an entertaining thing to her lately, and perhaps she's picked up that amusement, that focus, from Neerja. So often does the tigress fall into her own silent stalking, leaving the phoenix behind so that she could be wild if only for a few hours. Moira does not mind, she never minds the pleasure her companion gains, and so lets her run freely in the arms of the Arma Mountains where she might feel at ease outside of the court. When she is gone, the woman returns to her façade of the Emissary, walking among the people and figuring out the next olive branch to send.
She's sent so few lately, this is one she cannot fail at.
At last, she appears before him not as a phantom, nor memory, nor an illusion, but as her star-studded self redolent of her mother's people who swoop through the sky on wings of red and green and pink and blue, with such joy and complete belief in themselves that it is too impossible to ever consider they might fall.
Moira does not fall now.
"Caine," she purrs with a slow smile, licking the wine from the corner of her mouth. The roar of the crowd, of the men bustling past and women that look over toward the unlikely duo with vague interest while pretending not to listen, fades away when he smiles. She's nearly knocked off her feet, but she's learned so well how to not stumble when eyes are upon her. So instead, Moira offers her own flash of teeth, ignoring the way her heart does skip a beat when he looks at her like that.
It doesn't matter. That smile doesn't matter. She tells herself this over and over, even as she continues. Gold glad feet slide forward, she moves like a snake to get closer, smooth as satin, smoother than silk until they are near chest to chest. It doesn't bother her so much that she has to tilt her chin back to look up upon his face now, not when she smirks and says "That depends, Little Crow," and her words are soft, they are velvet, they are his illusions come to life. Moira Tonnerre tells herself it's the first glass of wine that makes her slightly dizzy and not Caine. She repeats it internally when that amused tone enters her voice "Do you intend to see me drunk?" There is teasing there, but there is a true question.
Moira has only really been drunk with Michael. In those moments, she demanded his time and took him away from the crowds. Truly, she doesn't know how she is around others when inebriated.
Tonight, she can't afford to find out.
Instead of voicing these concerns, she laughs at his words. Head tilts back, lips part, and the chiming of her laughter is like smoke drifting into the dark clouds. Golden eyes follow the glass he steals back from her, watch as the light plays on its surface. Magic reaches for it, strains for those refractions, begs to pull it down, down, down even as he talks. She would weave between them a gameboard, chess, perhaps, to see who would finally win this battle. This does not happen, no. Now, the woman places that smile (oh it's so true, so genuine just as his is,) and shakes her head for the benefit of the golden woman that peers more closely their way. "Perhaps I should have hidden longer, do you know what they would say of a man under a woman's dress?" How she teases him, like they are old friends - but aren't they? Aren't they old friends? It's only fair, it's alright.
