[private] grey mist on the sea’s face & a grey dawn breaking

[Oceane]

for the call of the running tide

"To be quite honest," Oceane says to Castile a bit sheepishly, "I did not consider friends in my assessment. Such relationships were, ah..." she pauses, her winged shoulders rolling in a small shrug. Nau-Aib, and the climate it fostered, had not allowed for the fruition of friendships. Her eyes fall away from Castile's in something akin to shame. It would seem that wartime strategy is not as straightforward as the violet pegasi had originally anticipated; the presence of friends adds a factor she had not learned in her studies to include.

Castile's rolling chuckle, the one that follows her comments on Ruinam, draws a more comfortable smile back onto the woman's lips. Her previous embarrassment retreats into itself, making way for the tension between them to return. She nods in acknowledgement when he assesses the Resort King and his potential, but otherwise lets that topic fade into silence, and then into discussion of Castile's secret.

Or secrets, as Oceane excitedly assumes.

She loses Castile to his thoughts for a brief time, giving Oceane the opportunity to tour the sharp ridges of his face with her amber eyes; if she hadn't been taking the moment to drink him in, she would have missed the way he bristles. It's gone just as swiftly as it arrived, leaving a shadow on his countenance that is only accentuated by his words that follow.

"Not everything worth seeing and experiencing is enjoyable," she offers to the Loessian King with a coquettish curve of her lips. She cannot deny her curiosity and intrigue, cannot help the way her tongue curls to ask him to show her now, but she catches the words between her teeth and curved lips long enough for the desire to pass, though her amber eyes never falter from his mismatched ones.

When she moves to preen her opaline wing, she catches his gaze moving with her and settling on her feathers. She mistakes his gaze for something that it is not (certainly she could not know he is imagining rending the flight-appendage from her gleaming shoulder) and lingers here, preening and flexing her neck just as long as his gaze decides to dawdle there.

When the spell is broken by his deep inhale, he captivates her with another. He inches closer to her, exuding electricity as he requests reasons to trust her and letting his exhale (it smells faintly of smoke, something she is only able to observe because each singular molecule of her body is on fire and in tune with him in this moment) brush across her balefire coat. "I want to build that trust with you," she murmurs quietly, taken aback by his sudden vulnerability. The courage it takes to ask someone for trust, especially coming from one who sits upon a kingdom's throne, is no small factor.

His exhale caresses her again, lighting her opaline skin alight beneath his breathy touch - if only, in this moment, she knew his secret. "I am no soldier," she breathes back as her gaze steadies on him. Bloodshed and physical prowess have never excited her, "But strategy and subterfuge and politics... those things excite me." They require knowledge, and the possession of it. They require stealth and intelligence and the ability to look into the future, to see the bigger picture.

His breath, again.

I want you to show me what would make you happy.

Oceane clears her throat, forcing herself to inhale fresh air - it borders on smokey - before coaxing a coarse whisper from her throat. "I don't think I can show you that," she says before she loses her nerve and then tries to brush by what she has just said, "Anyway I can serve you and Loess while feeding into my need for learning will make me happy."

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@[Castile] | speech