[html] For Skoll, in the Moaning Wood. Set on November 22nd.
__________________________________________She had no great love of auld places, those nooks so laden with emotion and searing seconds that they possessed a half-life of their own, the ancient forests, the molding castles. Yet here she was again amongst the castoff sentiments and nettle-weeds, all alone save for that curious sensation that trees sometimes offer – as if they too observe. Tonight was as all other preceding evenings: the astronomer strode in a mockery of werewolf elegance amongst the lesser shadows, her tattercoat greys in top form amid the other chromeless lovelies, the sole sparks in her eyes only snatched reflections of greater stars. How perversely certain her footsteps seemed in this hour of imps and nightengales! How forlorn she looked, lacking all decoration save a single opal necklace that nestled (rather suitably) over her heart.
This was all usual, all perfectly matching some hundred other nights. Even the stage – with its dark and dour trees that smelled so strongly of death – lacked strangeness. Perhaps she'd merely tumbled through memory's cellar door, and now walked among other wolds she'd known; perhaps, being a heartsick someone, Luz Cresceno's senses smeared all circumstances until, indeed, they seemed the same. Little matter. Her mind was not tracing tired paths of regret, for the astronomer rarely rued and often forgot – two conditions for a clean conscience. The aches under her ribcage went without mental remark. November's small cruelties (chilled air, biting breezes) locked her thoughts in less frequented rooms of the head, where they blossomed into pitfalls for perilous examinations later.
Her fingers fished from her makeshift haversack a star-chart or two, bound by twin periwinkle ribbons. A matter of movements found Miss Cresceno propped against a grandfather oak in a position of contemplation, her legs lightly bent that she might press her celestial maps against them. The array of brass instruments, one by one, found their way into her capable fingertips. Measurements were made. Conclusions, like bronze coins from a velvet purse, were drawn and adjusted. A sigh marked suddenly recalled realization – that Luz Cresceno, braver of two continents and collector of some double-dozen conquests, now found herself a lovesick five-year-old. Surrounded by the tools of her trade, tapping a re-rolled scroll (one coated with knowledge the local lodestars) against her mouth thoughtfully, the she-dog suddenly found herself an idyllic picture. Had her eyes been some shade more tender than hard amethyst, she might have been a bit more concerned about it. | |
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I like the descriptions, in your first paragraph especially. Don't ask me why, they just stood out to me, figured I should say something.
Images. Each time the bronze dog closed his eyes, that's all that greeted him. He mourned the soothing darkness that would not come...mourned it each time those terrible images flitted across his mind. He saw the poles again, and the wires, that terrible poem scrawled in the dirt, the one that he could make out more and more clearly as he began learning new letters and words. The kids' mother had been on one of them when Twilight Thirteen had first read him that poem, and he couldn't forget the sight of her scorched face, the stinking residue of boiled blood still wafting from those empty holes...
He tried his best to squeeze his eyes shut, to deny the memory, but it would not relent. It had been burned into his memory just as surely as the victims' eyes had been burned from their skulls. The blood that had issued forth in retaliation for a dozen such crimes had been copious, but never enough to staunch the wound that the cultists' terror had created. No amount of killing had ever been enough to compensate for what they had done...no amount of bloodshed could slake his righteous anger, nothing could stop the wolves he'd brought from avenging their loved ones, and suspending their sanity just long enough to tear the Shadow Priests' madness from the waking world forever. That still left them all to contend with the horror of their presence by night. The dreams were unending...and so here he was faced with another sleepless night.
The warrior walked, on two legs rather than four, hoping to avoid any twinges from his stomach. The wound left there by the Lykoi son had been a vicious one, all four fangs had sunk deep into his flesh. He hadn't been completely self-aware when it had happened, he had been lost in his battle rage, the one he tried to avoid at all costs. The surge of adrenaline had been enough for him not to feel it upon its reception, but he was feeling it now. Any time he ran, he was reminded by that knot of scar tissue. It pained him if he ignored it for too long, and he didn't really need four legs if all he wanted to do was mosey through this new 127.0.0.1 of his. He had been walking for a half hour or so when he came across a dog he hadn't smelled before. Her smell was reminiscent of the Pack of White Supremacy, and so--not sensing a threat--he hailed her.
"I didn't know anyone lived here. Don't mean to disturb, I can just amble on through."
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] Thank you! *embrace* I must confess that, from what I've gleaned out of your post-log and time-line, Skoll sounds absolutely bad ass to me. Soo don't want to get on his bad side.
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Luz Cresceno was not a creature to wage war in the open. Her (strangely rare) revenges were enacted in subtle, sharp fashions – daggers at midnight, cutting comments, the hundred breeds of insult. Perhaps it was a flaw on her part, an indulgence to cowardice; perhaps the astronomer rued so little that she could calculate her sins before living them. Little matter. Truth told, the she-coyote of so many silvers was ever judged an easy opponent by the first glance. Mayhaps the second look revealed some cunning tendency of cheek and eye, or perhaps there was a quality to her voice that suggested that her words were laced with double-entendres, skirted with some wisp of intimation, trimmed with motives altogether ulterior. Either way, she seemed to be suitable only as acquaintance or enemy – her friends were few and far between, and often pocked with some great strangeness that let them love her.
Another beast would have tailored her conversations, disguised what she could of her abrasive tendencies and smothered the rest below smiles that extended only as far as lip and tooth. Another creature could have abandoned her race to their own politics, and spent her nights swaddled in the chill comfort only solitude might offer. Luz Cresceno was of neither persuasion. “So be it,” said the softer-faced Luz from yesteryear, before flinging herself into a lifetime of acquaintances, conversationalist ease tempered by hedonist caprice, and silence-inspiring innuendo.
Somehow, it made such utter sense for this small moment (teeming with thought) to be interrupted. Thus his steps did not surprise her; her spine even softened at the sound of his speech, as if she should have been more cautious had he not suddenly appeared.
Her voice sounded so causelessly soft against the other enchantments of the evening. It was a strange sound to trip out of a larynx: low, melodious, a voice meant for ironic lullabies and never bedtime stories. “No, I do not live here,” she confessed, as if it were a flaw that often went unremarked, if not unnoticed. The line of her mouth bent into a wry line almost automatically; her eyes sought eyes slowly, from below the hedges of amusement-angled eyebrows. “Yet I feel so very comfortable offering you a seat, sir yellow-eyes.” A small feat of sinew-work (as well as few werewolf fingers) formed a gesture bidding him sit to her left. | |
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Thanks!
The thane dipped his head minutely, an acknowledgement of her offer. Amber met amethyst as their eyes locked, and the once-guardian wondered for a moment what the she-dog would see there. Many sights had graced his eyes, and many had burned them, searing themselves into memory for all time. The soul behind those yellow eyes was tired, strained, callused to an extent that none could guess, not if they stared into those golden pools for a life time. The cracks came not from a syntax error'd dog, though...the eyes remained strong...the fractures in that soul came only from its refusal to break. That glimpse spoke of a turbulent and unforgiving life, even more strongly than the scars that criss-crossed his body; the scars without were nothing compared to those within. Those eyes...they had seen things that no eyes should, and within them was a dark knowledge, a forbidden understanding of the very limits of wolven sanity. His body was six. His spirit was far older.
"Quite courteous of you," Skoll intoned, stepping forward to take the seat she had offered. "Though I'm somewhat used to the name of Skoll, should you need something to call me by." He smiled a minutely, hoping to set her at ease if his visage had troubled her...Fenrir knew, it was enough to put most on guard immediately. This girl was a strange one, but her invitation was welcome, and her presence was the perfect distraction from the memories that plagued him.
He could smell the metal in her instruments, though he had no idea what they were for. They weren't made of the same substance as human weapons, so he had not been concerned at the scent...this was something other than iron, a prettier metal, as well, though he did not know its name. Skoll knew many stories of humans and their inventions, and their handiwork was easily recognizeable, so he was curious what these were and where they'd come from. Though in the past he had come to regard anything human made as innately evil, he had learned with time that not every human invention led to the same slaughter as the Four Pack War.
"What are those tools for?" the were asked, hopeful that she knew and would explain to him this new aspect of mankind he was not yet familiar with. A part of him still viewed human equipment with a superstitious suspicion, but he had learned to work past that, mostly.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] | SAUNTEREyes (and their colors, textures, their shadow-pocks and gleams) had never held great fascination for the dog-woman in drab gray. She had caught a few fabulous ones in the cup of her stare – irises with vibrance beyond floral daring, and seeming worlds that lived below eyelash and eave – and yet so too had she known exquisite ears, breathtaking ankles, the loveliest of shoulders. Had she been asked, she would reply that hands held the most captivation for her. There, between thumb and wrist, entire destinies were written along fine lines and small scars. Her theory went that the thing beyond the eyes confessed intention alone; the thousand intimations of a hand shake brimmed with memories, victories and grave defeats, a lifetime’s momentum.
As ever, I digress. Luz Cresceno thought none of these things when she matched his gold-eyes with her stolid lavender; her cognition ran far shallower. The astronomer was, after all, an imbiber of sensorial wonder – and even on cruel November nights she could become stumble-drunk on the shadow-flux against a lily. A scarred face, mounted with gold-soul eyes? So much more drink for her hedonist head. And so she observed him, her eyes dead and free from small sparkles (save from what she stole as reflection from a burning star-ocean). “Oh, I do try, Skoll,” drawled her lulling voice to his compliment and the offer of his name, gathering her tools from their places and sliding them into their haversack-127.0.0.1. Another creature might have felt that spine-chill pressure to also offer her name, lest the conversation grow into anything less than an even exchange. Luz Cresceno did not.
“These?” she said, pausing after his question. Only one of her instruments (a bronze telescope, nicked with the tender love of frequent use) remained outside of its pillowcase, resting on her palm with that metallic cold-burn that came as relief in summer and finger-bite in winter. “They are tools of measurement and implements of stellar espionage,” said Luz, twisting the telescope in her hand, before a half-smile germinated in the western corner of her mouth. She turned towards him, quitting her small poetric trek. “Astronomer’s instruments. My instruments.” She offered it to this scarred up stranger with a stare like a wall, the eyepiece facing him. “I am Luz Cresceno, astronomer, and this is a telescope, if you’re idealistic, or a spyglass if you’re slightly more inventive.”
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Taking it gingerly into his right hand, the thane cocked an eyebrow, wondering at what she meant. His curiosity peaking, he raised the device to his eye, and marveled. The trees were close enough that it hurt his head to look at them, but looking past the trees...into the darkness, the minute movements of small creatures in the grass, a moth taking wing, a bat swooping down. This was truly something special that the humans had gifted the world with, and he knew immediately what she meant by spyglass, for he saw potential in the device for his own work as well. How much sooner he might have seen threats while waiting on the the Place of Lightning and Thunder border, how useful this would have been during his war with the cultists, if taken to a high place.
"This is breathtaking," the bronze coyote intoned, handing the wonder back to its grey owner. "I own human tools as well, but I did not bring them with me. They are nothing like this, though; sharp edges wrought in metal, implements for killing, nothing more." Indeed, he felt a pang of regret then at the choices he'd made. Humans had many fine crafts aside from there regrettable affinity for killing, it was a shame that his own life choices had led him to benefit only from the ugliest of their creations. Still...despite the terrible design, he knew that some found beauty in the edge of a blade, in the design of each weapon. He had needed to develop a certain taste for such things as well, during his raids into the Concrete Jungle, looking for weapons he could use.
"So, you are an astronomer, Luz Cresceno? That means you look study the stars, yes? I know a few, but the skies are not of much concern to a warrior. That is what I am, and it is what I have been for a long while, now." There was a winsome tone in his voice, as he looked up to the stars to one of the few constellations he knew: Orion, and Sirius, the dog star. He frowned at the star...he had known one who was named for it...a monster. A warrior like him, but a monster, far greater than he, and far more terrible.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] | 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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The golden dog cocked an eyebrow, bemused by her expressions...her manner of speech fell strange on his ears. As a dog who had once fancied himself a story teller, he recognized the poetry in her words, but he didn't understand its application here. Thus, when first confronted with her question, he paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. Is she asking me what I am not, or to outline myself? Her speech is awkward to me...but probably not unpleasant, if I can get into the rhythm of it. She was a strange one, alright, but that wasn't a bad thing.
"You find me puzzled, Ms. Cresceno, for your query is unclear to me. If it is the w0lf you wish to know, I can but do my best, but to tell you what he is not is something altogether new to me. A good friend would not have been chained by obligation as I have, and a hero would not have made my mistakes no more than a heroine would yours. A monster would do things that I have done, but for other reasons, while a hero might not, for fear of sullying his name. A true vagabond would not have become bound to this place as I, but none other than that very same nomad would have come so far." He wasn't sure how well he was doing, but he was giving it a shot. Not much more could be asked.
"I am a warrior, and have known the roles of guardian, crusader, mercenary, scout, sergeant, seeker, and war leader. I have known the title Skoll Axehand, and slain many w0lves, and defeated many others. I have seen many horrors, and the depths to which a lupine soul can sink. I have known great success and I have known great failure, love and heartbreak. I do not know what else can be said, save that I am Skoll, and have lived long to have known and done all of these things."
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] Her mannerisms had never given her sufficient cause to pause; they were but a fact of her existence, as unquestionable as hair color or the coordinates of especial sparkles in her eyes. (E7, A5 and F12, for the excessively curious.) If there was poetry to her words, it was stolen from book or bygone acquaintance, and too meager to make Luz stray on syllables, sentences, or emotion-curdled paragraphs. Yet to hear that styling of speech reflected in another? A deeper mirror than she cared to glance at. However, his delivery didn’t carry the usual symptoms of mockery: dead-eyes, words doused lovingly with vitriol, mouth exaggerations. Truly, she delighted in it. There was verity to it; there was unapologetic ugliness laced amongst the consonants, as oft can be said of bald statements. Jealousy vibrated her heart-strings to the key of E-sharp – for her words had been but a slippery tumble, and his seemed so stark and meaningful. Yet even that fell away after a moment, tripping the light fantastic over the bumpier vertebrae.
Her fingers found the opal necklace too easily (for she was fast forming a habit of attachment to that particular ornament) and toyed, making small metal noises against the evening’s other symphonies. “Epic,” she said, astounding us all once again with her incredible command of vocabulary under pressure. Another failed word – these days, she was raking in her dud tropes by the dozens. That had not always been so. But she did not consider this; a smile, so much more than the customary bent line, spoke bigger volumes about her current cognition.
“I like those things you said,” said Luz Cresceno, lazily initiating eye-contact, her statement rendered as offhand as ‘Mary-Beth, cerulean jumpsuits are so old-hat.’ Approval had temporarily stalled a few mechanisms, such as the great and driving need to suddenly spit out some wry wit. Thank god and goddess that her face remained slack, excepting certain eyebrow-betrayals and a bit of a grin, which mussed the rest of her facial geography. “Enchanté, then, Skoll – warrior, seer of many horrors, possessor of many other titles. Care for a walk?” She was already standing as she asked, much to the dismay of many bones and muscles that made their feelings known with a series of cracks, rumbles, snapping sounds. Luz Cresceno, after all, was not so young as she used to be. Her countenance made appropriate expressions for endurable pain. Without offering her palm to him as politeness dictates (perhaps to emphasize her state as not-heroine, nor dutiful daughter) she took a stride or two before ultimately turning. Some beam of moonlight got snared by the tangled masses of her curls; her stature seemed once more so casual, so come-hither, so incidentally Luz Cresceno. A moment more and it was gone. In its wake? A suspicious smile, but I suspect that the astronomer requires no other kinds. | |
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Back in business!
Luz Cresceno was a strange person, that much was certain. Her speech seemed very animated and elegant, but the art it presented was not mirrored by her facial expressions, which struck him as unusually blank. Still, it was the person behind the face that mattered. If anyone held that tenet, it should be him. After all, it wasn't the scars on his flesh that bothered him, but the damage he had sustained beneath. My core remains the same. I have protected that much.
"I'm glad you think so. I hope for my story to be told some day, as I share the stories of others in my line of work. There is no greater honor than to be remembered, and to deny the river of time as it seeks to sweep your name away." He was somewhat flattered by her words, but he did his best not to show it. He had been getting so many dirty looks and general disapproval from the public lately, both from Inferni's PR war and from the people he'd tried to rescue outside of Bleeding Souls this last time, it was unusual to be thought well of for his trials.
Care for a walk? She stood, and strode off, before turning to face him as he himself rose. There was something enchanting about that moment, with the moonlight falling over her. The moment died soon after, but its memory was still there, and he was reminded of his night speaking with Bellus Grey, though she and Luz were two very different women. He returned her smile without thinking, her suspicious grin returned by one marred by a life of teeth, claws, and steel.
"I would. Do we have a destination, or shall we simply see what other surprises this forest holds, besides the two of us?" This chance meeting had been very fortuitous, he decided. The memories had already been pushed into the back of his mind, and he was making a new friend. He had too few left in Bleeding Souls, and without Storm to defend, he couldn't really say he had a family in an attempt to compensate.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] Perhaps this was how friendships are formed, mused Luz Cresceno, eying her companion’s scar-smile with little caution and less distaste. Even his eyes, and the cracked-gold world they cupped, did not threaten so much as invite second glances; yet her curiosity was caught most predominately on his mismatched ears, one whole, one battle torn. This appearance-jigsaw affected nothing, of course. Her tastes were of a decidedly different persuasion – but all the same, he was interesting to look at. Had she an art to her name, she might have been inspired to snare some memory of him within song or story or even a few paint-sweeps on salvaged paper. Alas, she had none, save some split-second poetry that ultimately fled from memory with the astronomer’s parting (excepting a bit of bad aftertaste).
Did she herself want to be captured into memory, preserved as a silver-skinned constellation of ideals and faults? (Mostly faults, mind you.) Perhaps. On that count, Luz was unusually silent. Once, she would have laughed – loudly, and with undue amounts of she-wolf scathing – and told him that though the dilemma lay before him, she was but ephemera, a pinch of dust with a name and amethyst eyes. Now she was not so sure. Some fit of madness had bid her make her home amid the foggy bottoms of Clouded Tears, where other lunatic things dwelled. It was comfortable, suspiciously so. Sometimes she even had shadow-suspicions that she was in a story – not the heroine, naturally – and it made her curl her hands to her breast, afraid, alone, half-dead already.
“Destinations,” she said, making her feelings known on that point with a flutter of the fingertips. A whim to share her feelings on the natures of destinations and journeys struck without warning. Her brow creased; her thoughts wheeled like scared songbirds, hearts aflutter, wing-flap sounds abound. However, the moment of contemplation passed by with little turbulence and no comment, and she slid smoothly into the next step, her companion presumably at her side.
What a world! She could see its loveliness, sometimes – and yet her heart had never cracked at a sunset, nor had her breath been stilled by anything but deepest shock, dread sorrow. “This is a pretty neck of the woods,” she commented, making her newest cognition known. “So old, and somewhat... dead.” Her fingers, in passing, made a skip-trip over a few falling bark-flakes; she strode on, even as they fell away. “Though there are times when I suspect I’ve had my fill of old oaks.” For a moment, Luz Cresceno enjoyed the oddity of that statement when it stood solitary, but the pleasure she sampled was brief. “Clouded Tears,” came the explanation. She raised a finger to her chest and smeared a wry-line smile over her face, sharing it with the warrior-wolf by way of a quick head-twist. | |
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"Clouded Tears?" So, she was heading back home, then. The night was still young, but he had the feeling that even spending a dozen nights with this woman wouldn't allow him to make heads or tails of her. Still, she was oddly mesmeric, her mannerisms and speech patterns set her apart from anyone he'd met before. He agreed that these woods were pretty, though. They were much the same as Storm's own, the trees of the territory he had spent almost three years watching out from. It was a shame, now that he thought about it, that he hadn't taken more time to enjoy himself there, rather than taking his job so seriously.
He wondered for a moment if her comment on old oaks was somehow a reference to people, rather than trees. Neither of them were aged enough to be considered truly old, but the population of Bleeding Souls was rather young, and finding two wolves older than four in the same place was decidedly odd, he knew. Still...it was odd to think that he had only ventured into Clouded Tears on one or two occasions. For all his time here, he had spent the vast majority keeping to lonesome on the Storm border, meeting with strangers more often than his pack-mates.
"I hear that Clouded Tears is a beautiful place," he said thoughtfully, looking up at the stars. "I've never gone in far enough to see the lake, but it must look amazing when reflecting the stars...two skies, above and below, like you had gone up into the sky themselves, accepted by the stars. I have been to lakes before, and I always hope for night just to replicate the experience." He didn't know why he was sharing this with her, he had never mentioned that to anyone before, but for some reason, it seemed to fit, talking to the astronomer.
He doubted if he'd ever get the chance to go in that far again. Inferni seemed to have spoken with Jaded Shadows about him immediately after their battle, and from there to Storm. He had no doubt that his name had been smeared with Clouded Tears as well, though it was possible that they appreciated what he'd done, as the puppy he'd saved from Molochai had been from Clouded Tears herself. Surely, though, Luz was going back there herself. He'd walk alongside for as long as he could, but the border was nothing to her, it was a respected barrier for him.
~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.
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[html] Augh. Christmases (plus two birthdays) = activity death. I think it ends here, but I really enjoyed it! Maybe he could react, and then we close this thread? And for the record, the words she's borrowing? They're from Storm Constantine's books, but I can't remember which one. __________________________________________
She felt youth’s lacking like a bite-chunk out of her bones, and yet, a comment about advancing age would have met with a blink. They were old oaks, the heights that saplings aspired to or ran from, a shade over ferns and lesser things. They were not old oaks, they were a lupine woman and a wolf-man with a severed ear, and they had so many more things on the biological schedule, it could make grandmothers cough up yesterday-dust. They roved more than one borderland tonight, it seems.
To the scene he described, she could only offer up a genuine grin, something with little market value and less kick; its infrequency made it a treasure of sorts, but only to Luz’s longest acquaintences, who knew its number lay safely within that which one might count on a whole hand. “Yes,” agreed astronomer with warrior. “It is beautiful. But it is a special kind of beauty.” An ammendment, acknowledged with nose-wrinkle and a tiny head-shake. “Not special. Rather, a specific kind of beauty.” Her face fidgeted with the next words, uncomfortable with this half-quoting, though it was accurate, and suitable to the night she found herself in. “Its loveliness is as the loveliness of the grave-blossom.” A turn of the head, towards him. “What makes it sleek, what makes it bloom, what makes it thrive, is probably corrupt.” A serrated smile, filled with jagged teeth and satisfaction in bitter things. “I’m borrowing words, but they are the best ones, for it, methinks.”
They’d reached the edge of the Moaning Wood, where the dying trees turned to ghosts and December ravages, made all the more sweet for the bits of frost. “Goodnight, Skoll.” From eyes to ears, her eyes flicked. “Warrior.” She was stepping backwards, into convenient shades and shadows contrived by that odd zig-zag of branches. “I do hope we see each other again.” Luz Cresceno pivoted, now solely facing her desitination, but two steps left her hesitating. “You seem like a good sort, to me,” she declared, in a volume somewhere between whisper and tight-jawed statement, still not turning to face him. Even to her, the sentence was cryptic. Why say such a thing? Because it was true, because sometimes near-strangers must say these things, because someone must risk scrutiny for honest moments. Because, as always aforementioned, this is Luz Cresceno. As her strides resumed their confidence, her pillowcase (left against that tree) crawled into cognition. No matter. She’d scuttle back tomorrow for them. The chance of theft was worth the friend that, dubious intuition, told her she’d made. | |
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