Baby Steps

Levent Kartal · 09-02-2012, 06:27 PM

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Levent was not wholly unused to jumpiness; Wilson, for example, was a wary creature by nature as a cat surrounded by wolves. He was startled by her response, though, frowning as she denied anything having happened (a clear sign that something had) and bristling at his sudden presence. He wondered for a second if he looked intimidating—but that was a total laugh. He made so much of a point to not look intimidating that he doubted that was the case; he was only a short simpering luperci most of the time, not a threat even when he did have a weapon of some kind on him.

Still, the dark-haired man reached out in a gesture of concern. He was used to communicating through touch, massaging or petting or even just resting a hand on a shoulder to comfort others. He reached out, too stupid to guess from her behavior what the reaction would be, and so his eyes widened when hers did. He blinked as she leaped backward, and yelped a dreadful yelp, and suddenly it was all he could to do stand back and look on with utter horror as the girl hurt herself on the tree. She devolved before his eyes, hunching against the tree trunk and whimpering in a way that only victims did.

A sudden coldness came over the Turk’s eyes, touching the blue to ice-white, but it was a violence directed far from the poor child. He shook his head quickly and crouched next to her, keeping his distance and folding into himself to make himself seem even smaller than he already was. “İyisin, tatlım, you’re fine.” His accented tongue fell into a soothing lilt as he watched her—and didn’t even watch her, kept his eyes innocently off to the side though he watched her from his peripheral vision. He could see the scabs and even the reopened wound on her back, and he very slowly shrugged out of his shirt—praying that the image wouldn’t send her into more frantic hysterics, which would confirm something much worse than he was imagining. He held it out to her, smiling. “If you need to stop the bleeding, feel free,” he said, and his voice grew a bit firmer though he wore the same peaceful smile. “Please, Keldava—tell me what happened to you.”

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