![[Image: lothaire_pixel2_by_outofthefurnace-dbhn4ra.png]](https://orig00.deviantart.net/e7c1/f/2017/206/0/5/lothaire_pixel2_by_outofthefurnace-dbhn4ra.png){kind=tracking}
His skin breathes, blooms. He was the night and the gentle nebulosity of thought incarnate - evaporating into the cool air, seeping into every porous shadow. Someone nameless and faceless had once beckoned to him in the pitch of midnight: " angel of darkness " and the title had since stuck in the viscous grey matter within his mind. Lothaire had long ago decided he could be defined as what he was not; in his heart, his chest, he held no pride, no rage, no love; nothing but a writhing colourless void, tainted perhaps only by the tide of curiosity.
And in that current, full moment it was Freya who held that tide. Through black-submarine eyes Lothaire stared, the hollow wind of his interest soaring and dipping - silently feeding on the startled look bleaching itself across the woman's decorated face. The moon splashed and plunged her features into white spectral light, illuminating each expression as they unfolded calculatedly. He simply watched; motionless and unobtrusive, a spectator upon a throne of stones.
His name sounded unwelcome on her tongue, as though Freya had hoped never to find it there, find him here, despite stepping closer. Her lips move again, this time a longer string of black pearl syllables falling into the shadows, perhaps intended to rouse a reaction from the serpentine monolith. There was no shame nor repent in his eyes as he blinked slowly - once, twice, thrice - "If you wish to know where I have been, you have only to ask." From the nonchalant light glittering in those glass eyes Lothaire took it upon himself to suspect she would not. He had only once previously studied her at a candlelit court meeting, and even then he had sensed the apathy rolling off her skin like heat. What lay beneath? Did she too share a hollow chasm where emotion should have been? Something told him otherwise.
"It's not polite to lurk in shadows."
Lothaire might have smiled. Instead he merely tilted his head mid-thought; it had never occurred to him to follow the trodden path of what may or may not be polite; and he found quickly he did not care to either. The cool dispassion of his voice echoed long into the dark; "would it also be impolite to wonder what a Crow is doing so far from her nest?"
@freya weeee
