Dace, who doesn’t belong to anyone, startles and delights Saint, who doesn’t know who she is without that which she belongs to.
A smile—wistful and maybe whimsical, too—drags the guardian’s lips up enough to reveal glittering, sharp teeth. They look lovely there, porcelain just barely stained by the darkening red of a recent kill, pointed in a way that makes such a lovely smile turn into a dangerous one.
(She doesn’t mean it—to look dangerous. Saint wears her ferocity so effortlessly. Subconsciously, she takes a liking to Dace because he appears so nonchalant.)
It doesn’t strike her, being the once princess she is, that someone might not understand what belonging to something means to her. So when Dace asks, Saint simply states, “Tephra,” following the word with a tilt of her head and a curious gaze.
“You look like you belong to the water. Like it gives you magic,” she adds after a few moments of contemplating what exactly it is about him that speaks to her. He is relaxed and intricate. Like her mother’s garden sculptures and the scales her father once wore. His red and gray reminds Saint of watching rain pour on tropical flowers—
That’s it, she thinks. He looks like he belongs to Tephra.
I like him, she decides. The water splashes as Saint takes a couple of steps closer.
“Does it give you magic?”
—Saint—
into the fray
@[Dace] <3