05-23-2012, 06:47 PM
"Alegria?"
She'd gotten so unused to hearing her name in full - lately others had adopted the shortened version, the brief, hard yet feminine two syllables and three letters of 'Ria. It was an effort to get closer to her, an effort to breach that fronteer of impersonal sarcasm, that dispassionate face she showed the world. It didn't work, because what others didn't realize was that there was no deep, sentimental Alegria hidden under folds of sarcasm. She was as she showed herself. She truly didn't care, it wasn't a game of pretend. What they got was all they'd ever get of her.
Before her stood the coywolf that matched the name she'd been repeating to herself in her head, over and over, yet Vesper the coywolf seemed far more real than Vesper the name had: the canine that stood before her didn't seem dreamlike. Perhaps slightly out of the ordinary, but very much real, the same way she had years ago.
Alegria flicked her left ear, fully conscious of the irony of her movement, cracked a toothy smile at the blue-eyed girl in front of her. "Hallo, Ves," she said, the nickname slipping easily off her tongue. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
She let her eyes trail over where the ear used to be, then back at the blue blue eyes and added, "you haven't changed a bit." Then, after what seemed like a second's worth of reflection, "have I?"
She'd gotten so unused to hearing her name in full - lately others had adopted the shortened version, the brief, hard yet feminine two syllables and three letters of 'Ria. It was an effort to get closer to her, an effort to breach that fronteer of impersonal sarcasm, that dispassionate face she showed the world. It didn't work, because what others didn't realize was that there was no deep, sentimental Alegria hidden under folds of sarcasm. She was as she showed herself. She truly didn't care, it wasn't a game of pretend. What they got was all they'd ever get of her.
Before her stood the coywolf that matched the name she'd been repeating to herself in her head, over and over, yet Vesper the coywolf seemed far more real than Vesper the name had: the canine that stood before her didn't seem dreamlike. Perhaps slightly out of the ordinary, but very much real, the same way she had years ago.
Alegria flicked her left ear, fully conscious of the irony of her movement, cracked a toothy smile at the blue-eyed girl in front of her. "Hallo, Ves," she said, the nickname slipping easily off her tongue. "Been a while, hasn't it?"
She let her eyes trail over where the ear used to be, then back at the blue blue eyes and added, "you haven't changed a bit." Then, after what seemed like a second's worth of reflection, "have I?"