tense. her form, if it were contained by bristles and needles and the flutter of whim, would sprawl in its points if it could – he observed lightly, from the corner of his eye. She was but a movement there, a shadow, or the utter lack of movement beside the shuddering of muscle and the light press of her hooves against the dusty pathway. The aether had seen it before in the once-was mind beholden to it, a menagerie of subtle cues and a curious aptitude for tremors, twitches, a loose (and previously much ignored) understanding of etiquette. Should he back away then, so as to give her room to breathe, to thrive, to release herself from what hold she engaged, from whatever it was she sensed in her awareness could ever possibly be not-right in their equation? Should he bid her the night, to give her rest in its solace, the empty wilderness at their door fraught with the potential of better or worse things?
He did not move from her, release her into the night breeze, loosen her from her discomfort. There was a part in her tension that delighted a part in him, but it was not enough to sate the depth that resounded there. It was the same place of delight that found a solitude in the frenzy of pine-thick woodlands or the sparse wilds of the red-dust canyon, the same part that stirred with hunger and restlessness. A part that wondered if it should oblige her concerns, if it should search her wariness, test it, tempt it.
Erasmus's gaze fell back to her when she spoke once more, the depths of his eyes surging like the currents of a black lake. What I am looking for cannot be bought, I'm not even sure it exists. His brow furrowed, thin moonlight falling over his darker contours as his skull tilted in progression, skins buckling at the tender fold of his throat. There are moments where he is less horse and more wolf, and less wolf and more of something other, something else, something cutting and curling and unfolding and graciously given through the deception of angelic gestures. It knows the faces of hunger and the unkempt leagues of its bottomless existence, and it senses it there where one word meets another with uncertainty, seeking.
His expressions, often hardened by sharp angles and predatory shade, soften to ambiguity, and then to a resonance. Who are you? Always the question, never the answer they wish – to speak is to blaspheme the truth, because there are no words for what it is, no descriptor that could ever contain the endlessness and the nothingness that consumes anything its ideal touches. “I could be all,” he answers distantly, though his attention is stead on her still, “and I could be nothing. Which would be a comfort?” his voice sharpens at the end, like a blade pulled from the stone, like a craftsman admiring its work, like a butcher assessing the guillotine. “I have nothing to sell you, and I am not here to capture you.” Even, balanced, the lull of his voice is smooth baritone, lusciously cruel and unguarded, almost feline. “All hours are ungodly.”
As he breathes, moonlight bathes his chest in shades of indigo, violet rays gleaming in his flesh, gold grinning like fangs from the cracks. And then, a chuckle. It offers no graces, no mercies, an amusement unto itself alone. A strange man. “Do you often wander the outskirts of foreign courts at night, searching for something that you do not even know of?”
@Luvena
