elif
First her mouth slants down at the subtle way Caine brags, but she can’t help her gaze from darting once again to his wings - like the paint stranger’s she’d met at the Oasis, they were magnificent. Nothing like the skein-thin gold of Aion’s, but the antithesis to them. This man was no Apollo, no Hermes - the dark shine of his feathers instead told tales of death.
It is a good thing that his next words strike her as patronizing; if not for her sudden flare of indignation she might have asked to watch him use those double wings. “I’ve been studying her people since birth, and I know a native when I meet one,” she says, neck arching, though it would be more honest to say spying on. Elif has always been far too curious, and too fond of making up stories.
Or maybe what she should have said is I would have remembered seeing you.
The smile does nothing to soothe her suspicion, so she is glad when the horned stallion speaks - if his brief response could really be called that - so that she might look back at him. “Ah,” she answers noncommittally, and wonders if she should feel more or less suspicious of them both (certainly the dark man’s answer had been vague enough to make him worth keeping an eye on).
For all her questions, she is glad to be standing between them when the gust hits; she shuffles her own wings against her shoulders, fluffing them out like a disgruntled hawk, and narrowly misses the cast-off snow from the stallion’s shake. And though his gaze is on the horned man’s, her own does not leave the unnatural silver of his irises as he speaks, even as her brow furrows a canyon as deep as Elatus at his blasphemy. Her first inclination is to rebuke him for his lack of faith - was not the god among them now? - but then he lets slip his question that could never, to her, be anything but a dare.
“Now?” she asks, hesitant, just as the bull-horned (and, she thinks, headed) man answers too. It seems clear then that the answer is yes, she she can never bear to be left behind.
“Okay - let’s,” Elif says, only just managing not to add and I’ll race you there. She is not a child anymore. But she still is the first to turn and start walking the street to the edge of the city, her shadow striping gold and white across the patches of sand and snow. She tosses the remainder of her hot cake to a scrawny yearling in passing and casts a glance over her narrow dappled shoulder to see if they follow.
@El Toro @Caine
