[P] oh, painted ruin

[Raum]

If Rhoswen thought the ballroom was beautiful, it was nothing compared to her in it.
 
Raum had arrived only a few days before, taking those days to get himself settled with Solterra and its harsh, sundrenched lands. All the while, he knew this moment would come: a reunion, 12 months in the making. There were no others when he chose to go to her. No ears to overhear their conversation. There were things the red girl knew that would be better kept between them. Only dust motes, caught in the sunlit windows, were here to keep them company.
 
He moves from where he had been watching her, in the shadow of the doorway. Raum slink out, quicksilver passing through ebony shadow. He moves to her with the silent ease of a knife cutting through air. She is stood before him, resplendent, a splash of crimson blood within a gilded gold hall.
 
Around her the room was slowly dying, and yet it went so gracefully, still able to steal the breath from one’s lungs. Much like the girl who watched it now.
 
He knows the force of her cloudy eyes before they even set themselves upon his skin. But when they do, he lets their intensity roll over him, smoke over water. He would be the cool wind to drive on her threatening storm.
 
“You have grown, Rhos.” Raum says, his voice smooth, even for its lack of use. Denocte’s civilians often joked he had no voice, the Ghost of Denocte, a creature of silver nightmares. Yet this girl of blood and silver, would be the last creature scared of him, and she knew the sound of his voice.
 
He ignores the eyes of the god above him, yet he is sure he feels their judgement blaze upon his spine. Solis was seated in his rightful place in the hot, hot sky, but he was no god to Raum. The quicksilver thief was born to worship Calligo it was in her darkness he bathed. The goddess of shadows and stealth was the only reason he could move like liquid night. Only she could turn his bright silver skin from gleaming metal, to sooty shadow.
 
Sea blue eyes watch only Rhoswen, and how the room bends to shape her. The Crow wonders idly if she has always been this beautiful, or if it just this room. Here this palace of expensive candelabras, gilded pillars and rich tapestries, pull her in to a lavish painting, drawing more colour from her skin than Raum has ever seen. 
 
He stands beside her, now taller, but only just. The silk of his scarf breathes in the space between them, his dagger cold against his leg. He is silver moonlight to bath in and her hair was the fire that burned at their evening bonfires, her skin the silver smoke that rose. But now, now seeing her here, knowing she turned from The Crows, from Denocte, from her brother, Raum realizes he was wrong. Rhoswen is the fire of the sun, raging, burning, consuming.
 
But she would not consume him.
 
“Long time no see, Rhoswen.”

@Rhoswen - gah, HTML is being a butt! When I get his picture I shall get some proper HTML on ze go! <3