stoneface.

[Luz Cresceno]

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SAUNTERA mood-pirouette, a life-telling trip into caprice. "Likewise." How heavy her heart seemed this particular tick of the heart, a lump of lead amid bone and sinew. "It is a lone consistency in my life." She touched the telescope to her mouth, savored a bite of chill brass, before at last relinquishing it to the rucksack. Some shift of the muscles that live below cheek and jaw rendered her homely, suddenly, and abruptly haggard. No Le Soleil in Teh Sky-trick saved her. She was world-weary as only travelers are; she was a wanderer. Such a lifestyle was not suited to facial maintenance, to ensuring that some tenderness of heart and limb remained at the day's close. She had bartered some speck of her soul (perhaps the whole) to the breezes at an age so far gone it seemed the stuff of fancy. A grey girl-child, outfitted with amethyst eyes, fastening her heart to faithless winds? That was poesy, a smear of romance to the truth that was (ever and anon) Luz Cresceno. But this was what had happened. "However," came the drawl, the sort of word that promised some juicy declaration, some philosophy-tressed thought, "perhaps the things I am not outline me more clearly than that occupation, an astronomer. A dutiful daughter would not have done what I have done, nor would a heroine have made my gravest mistakes, unless in the name of love -- a thoroughly abused name, but one with at least initial good intentions, which I rarely possess." Prying eyes would have noted that such confessions were unsuitable for strangers. They were, if you required such time-tests to speak truths. Luz Cresceno needed no fig-leaves, and she had few friends. She divulged at whim. Still unsaved by whatever means the night used to turn a poesy-despising astronomer into a half-lovely thing, her face had stayed near slack throughout her profession. A twitch here or there, perhaps, a small slant to the eyebrows, but no true betrayal from the network of sinews. Even her eyes had sought only distant shadow-play. Now they returned to his face, to the scar-ridden creature called Skoll. "And you?" she asked, a lopsided smile half-started, as if her own avowels had spilled and stained the expensive carpeting -- and the coyote-woman never intended to disguise it.

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