The room feels too small with both of them in it.
It is not a large space, but with Manon or Agnhavni or any of the others who blur staff and family it feels cozy, or at least serviceable. August is as nonchalant as he had been in the marketplace the day that they met, but there is an energy between them almost thick enough to hum. They are strangers enough that their awareness of one another feels like its own kind of intimacy.
After a moment of standing like a simpleton, August crosses to a cabinet in the corner, and pulls a bottle and two glasses from a mostly bare but dustless shelf. He takes his time pouring and the sweet-thick smell of the bourbon rises around him; when he glances over at Boudika she is looking at his sword, and something in him eases, his nerves dissipating like fog.
He doesn’t remark on it yet, but he’s almost grinning when he steps toward her, the glasses with him. They are cut crystal, heavily textured, and the light in the liquid leaves amber-colored diamonds on the floor.
I do know, she says, and he hopes his eyes don’t show the way his thoughts touch on the Relic like fingertips might worry a barely-scabbed wound.
The palomino is grateful for her question, then, and when he laughs the memory of the island feels a little further away (he wonders if it, too, will ever vanish below the surface of his subconscious they way it had been swallowed by the sea). “They both have their merits, though I fear we have room for neither,” he answers, and follows her gaze to the sword. His mouth is grinning, but his silver eyes are not.
“Thank you. It was my father’s. I don’t get as much opportunity to use it as I’d like.” For the first time, he wonders if that’s true. The idea of violence has always been…complicated for August, but sparring and swordsmanship never has been. It’s as much an art as practical defense, and he has never had to use his skills for more than convincing a drunken loser that he had better take his hard feelings elsewhere.
He wonders if he could use that beautiful, supple blade to kill.
Once more he wrests his thoughts away, turning back to Boudika, to the firelight glancing off the planes of her face. August offers her one of the glasses, and holds his high to meet it. “To new friends,” he toasts, and is glad to drink; the bourbon burns clean and warm down his throat. The last time he’d drank from this bottle had been on the floor of the Scarab, talking with Charon, their heads bent together as they spoke of Solterra. And that memory brings up another, from earlier that same day, of a stranger with strange questions in the square.
He hadn’t spoken to him, but he had heard him asking shopkeeps after their new Champion of Community - asking after the woman beside him now.
“Speaking of,” he says, and his eyes are light and watchful on her face, “I ran across a friend of yours. Or someone asking after you, anyway. Huge fellow, horns rather like yours. Walked with a limp.”
It is not a large space, but with Manon or Agnhavni or any of the others who blur staff and family it feels cozy, or at least serviceable. August is as nonchalant as he had been in the marketplace the day that they met, but there is an energy between them almost thick enough to hum. They are strangers enough that their awareness of one another feels like its own kind of intimacy.
After a moment of standing like a simpleton, August crosses to a cabinet in the corner, and pulls a bottle and two glasses from a mostly bare but dustless shelf. He takes his time pouring and the sweet-thick smell of the bourbon rises around him; when he glances over at Boudika she is looking at his sword, and something in him eases, his nerves dissipating like fog.
He doesn’t remark on it yet, but he’s almost grinning when he steps toward her, the glasses with him. They are cut crystal, heavily textured, and the light in the liquid leaves amber-colored diamonds on the floor.
I do know, she says, and he hopes his eyes don’t show the way his thoughts touch on the Relic like fingertips might worry a barely-scabbed wound.
The palomino is grateful for her question, then, and when he laughs the memory of the island feels a little further away (he wonders if it, too, will ever vanish below the surface of his subconscious they way it had been swallowed by the sea). “They both have their merits, though I fear we have room for neither,” he answers, and follows her gaze to the sword. His mouth is grinning, but his silver eyes are not.
“Thank you. It was my father’s. I don’t get as much opportunity to use it as I’d like.” For the first time, he wonders if that’s true. The idea of violence has always been…complicated for August, but sparring and swordsmanship never has been. It’s as much an art as practical defense, and he has never had to use his skills for more than convincing a drunken loser that he had better take his hard feelings elsewhere.
He wonders if he could use that beautiful, supple blade to kill.
Once more he wrests his thoughts away, turning back to Boudika, to the firelight glancing off the planes of her face. August offers her one of the glasses, and holds his high to meet it. “To new friends,” he toasts, and is glad to drink; the bourbon burns clean and warm down his throat. The last time he’d drank from this bottle had been on the floor of the Scarab, talking with Charon, their heads bent together as they spoke of Solterra. And that memory brings up another, from earlier that same day, of a stranger with strange questions in the square.
He hadn’t spoken to him, but he had heard him asking shopkeeps after their new Champion of Community - asking after the woman beside him now.
“Speaking of,” he says, and his eyes are light and watchful on her face, “I ran across a friend of yours. Or someone asking after you, anyway. Huge fellow, horns rather like yours. Walked with a limp.”
August - -
there's a lover in the story
but the story's still the same
but the story's still the same
