D U N E
- ☾ -
I
t brings a small amount of satisfaction to see the stranger does not visibly enjoy her drink. It would be more satisfying, of course, if he didn’t find himself fond of her. Dune personally found the cocktails of this evening frivolous, and it brought him pleasure throughout the night whenever some gaudy guest scowled or grimaced at whatever they had drank. As if to spite him and his dour attitude, his own drink is decidedly not sitting well in his stomach. Too sweet, he thinks, and tells himself that it will pass. (it will, but not until the next day, and not before getting far worse.)The prancing about in place does nothing to settle the foulness in his stomach. It’s just as well, for she’s definitely not looking at him with the coy interest he had vaguely hoped to spark. It's fine, this is fine- he mostly just wanted to ignore whatever soon-to-be-violent drama was unfolding behind him.
She then proceeds to be exceedingly complementary, which he treats at first with no small measure of skepticism. It was a basic strategy of self preservation, one learned after being duped one too many times by kindness. People were deceptive, and Dune was slow to trust those he had never Dreamed with. But she is so straightforward and speaks- even somehow moves- with pure genuity, he has a hard time staying on the defensive. “Have you ever in your life told a lie?” he wonders with laughter in his voice, for he doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone so seemingly lacking in guile.
(It was not necessarily a bad thing... but he found himself worrying on behalf of this stranger. Solterra could be a rough place.)
Dune doesn’t know much of trees, except the things he’s learned in dreams (which can’t really be trusted) but the tone in her voice makes him want to. He can sense her nostalgia, taking her to someplace far away. Nicer than here, assuredly; he wishes he could follow. All he can do is watch the expression on her face as she dips in and out of a memory.
He notices for the first time that her eyes are two different colors. His stomach begins to cramp. The two aren’t related, he thinks, but he could be wrong. He is beginning to sweat. He tries not to think about it.
“Thank you,” he says finally. No one has ever told Dune he looked nice. “You look nice too,” he adds, not because he feels obligated to say so but because it’s true. “But like nothing I’ve seen before.” If he had experienced a greater range of foliage and landscape and seasons, real seasons, he would have named her autumnal. But he hadn’t, so she was just as strange to him as something out of a book. Of course, Dune had seen many foreigners and tourists, and so bits and pieces of her are familiar to him but not the whole picture: the ram horns, the wings, the pattern between her eyes he is not travelled enough to identify as an oak leaf. “What’s your name?”
He's about to smile his most charming smile, but his stomach clenches again and the expression blurs into something uncertain and a little pained.
we look almost happy out in the sun, while we bleed to death from wounds we don't
know about
