[P] golden child; lion boy

[Vercingtorix]

fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn

We’re not known for our tolerance. Vercingtorix’s favorite subject has always been history. He nearly says, instinctively and upon principle, that’s probably because you don’t have enough resources to support foreigners.

And yet, they have enough resources to support the rich.

It is not that Torix intimately knows the culture of Solterra; it is simply that he had never seen silks or fine jewellery before visiting the center of the city, the festival, until he had walked among those descended from a monarchy long dead. He is too much a foreigner to recognise the telltale signs of a royal family; even so, he recognises fine breeding, the fine indigo eyes, a face as well-boned as a sculptures. 

So Torix only smiles.

Nor is he, he supposes, known for his tolerance. At the mention of Orestes’s, Torix’s smile widens just so. “You’ve discovered my entire motive. The plot’s ruined.” 

Of course, he is only joking. If Vercingtorix had wanted to be anything like a “Sovereign” he would have stayed in his homeland to become a general, and then a senator. 

That had once been his destiny, anyways.

Now it isn’t. Now he stands across from a handsome blond. His smile is gone by the time Adonai rises to his challenge; but Torix’s eyes are no less mischievous. I don’t. “Good. It’d ruin your charm.” His tone is a bit too serious to be teasing, and slightly too light to be deprecating. Sure. If you get it for me. It is in the pause that Torix appraises him a little more closely; his shuffling gait; the way his eyes belong to a dream.

“Very well, Fair Prince.” Vercingtorix lowers the bucket and refills it; the thing squeaks rustily when he draws the now-full pail back to the top of the well. Torix unhooks the bucket and draws near. He goes so far as to even lift it to the Prince’s lips with the fair patience of a man who is accustomed to caring for others.

He had enough friends hurt in the war to know how to let one drink without spilling.

“Though, if you haven’t heard,” he adds, as he lowers the pail and returns it to the wail. “When you are given a drink from a well by a stranger, you owe that stranger your name.” Torix’s eyes are alight; are cool teal fire. Gleaming, impish, certain. His smile is crooked by the scar at the edge of his mouth. “And, perhaps, more.” The way he says more curls around his lips; the way he says more is the same as some promise love or hate or wealth. 

The water has already dried from his face, his hair, his neck. The desert is beginning to swelter. 

“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂