—
Oh, he thinks suddenly -
she is like me.
Neither of them care anything for the party or the sheep who attend it. This unicorn, this small gray storm-cloud, is a creature of war the same as she is; even now when she looks around the room he can tell she’s judging the pulse just beneath every throat.
And he thinks she should be my daughter. If she were my daughter -
Then he kills the thought before it can leave another track in his mind.
Instead he watches her and her wolf, the roll of the ocean in her steps. A voice rises up like a wind from the silence, wavering and soft at first, then firm and true. There are lines about love and wings and moonlight and it is all nonsense, but Martell sees the way Avesta listens to it - he watches her even over the wolf’s level, hungry stare.
He can see how she wants. That is a feeling that he knows, too - that yearning for beautiful things, things to be dreamt of, things he can never have. By the time the flute joins in, he has lost interest in the song.
“None of these are instruments I know,” he says, his gaze leaving her, just for a moment, to make a dismissive sweep over the musicians. Martell had been trained on other tools, ones that sought blood and not beauty. Oh, in camp there were the war-drums, and the great pipes blown to signal troops and put fear in the enemies’ hearts, but they were not his duty.
But when his eyes drift back to her he smiles, not so feral as hers, but unreadable as a pattern in the leaf-litter or the clouds. “Did your mother ever sing you songs from the old country? There is a lullaby called Dream Me Home that every Elettran child knows.” His look turns considering, and he leans away with a sigh. “But I suppose a girl like you has no interest in lullabies.”
@Avesta
she is like me.
Neither of them care anything for the party or the sheep who attend it. This unicorn, this small gray storm-cloud, is a creature of war the same as she is; even now when she looks around the room he can tell she’s judging the pulse just beneath every throat.
And he thinks she should be my daughter. If she were my daughter -
Then he kills the thought before it can leave another track in his mind.
Instead he watches her and her wolf, the roll of the ocean in her steps. A voice rises up like a wind from the silence, wavering and soft at first, then firm and true. There are lines about love and wings and moonlight and it is all nonsense, but Martell sees the way Avesta listens to it - he watches her even over the wolf’s level, hungry stare.
He can see how she wants. That is a feeling that he knows, too - that yearning for beautiful things, things to be dreamt of, things he can never have. By the time the flute joins in, he has lost interest in the song.
“None of these are instruments I know,” he says, his gaze leaving her, just for a moment, to make a dismissive sweep over the musicians. Martell had been trained on other tools, ones that sought blood and not beauty. Oh, in camp there were the war-drums, and the great pipes blown to signal troops and put fear in the enemies’ hearts, but they were not his duty.
But when his eyes drift back to her he smiles, not so feral as hers, but unreadable as a pattern in the leaf-litter or the clouds. “Did your mother ever sing you songs from the old country? There is a lullaby called Dream Me Home that every Elettran child knows.” His look turns considering, and he leans away with a sigh. “But I suppose a girl like you has no interest in lullabies.”
@Avesta
