10-25-2022, 12:58 AM
T U M U L T
She is just as electric as he remembers, and that is all at once a victory and a defeat, because a part of him almost wishes that he had only built her up in his memory. That perhaps it would be easier to find that she is not the ferocious storm he had let cross his mind one too many times, that he had simply been struck by the enchantment of a first meeting.
He is, of course, wrong, because she is everything he had thought and somehow still more.
“You taunt me,” he says, with a strange quirk of a smile on his lips at her slyly spoken question. He is not irritated or angered by her words, even if they are meant to be a barb; a way to needle some kind of reaction out of him. He doesn’t know her well enough to be sure if she is the type to do such a thing, but he thinks that she might be, and thinks that he has done nothing to earn such civility from her.
Yet when lightning flickers across his skin in response it is not because he is annoyed with her, but entirely the opposite.
He is, as always, intrigued—borderline captivated, though he is hesitant to admit it—by her.
Too much so to let himself poison the moment with his own insecurity.
“It would be just my luck, though, to conjure a storm that spins so out of control it nearly destroys the entire land,” he muses somewhat drily, thinking on his own tendency to stumble into situations that are above his head. “I suppose, as an outsider, that would earn myself the right to be exiled.” Would that be such a bad thing? He did not hold any particular love for this place, and is sure there must be other places far more peaceful than this land that seems intent on tearing itself apart. But he turns his storm-gray eyes to her face, and to keep the stupid, bewitched thoughts of her from taking root in his mind he says, “I assume you were born here. If you lost the place that you called home in the storm, I am sorry.”
He is, of course, wrong, because she is everything he had thought and somehow still more.
“You taunt me,” he says, with a strange quirk of a smile on his lips at her slyly spoken question. He is not irritated or angered by her words, even if they are meant to be a barb; a way to needle some kind of reaction out of him. He doesn’t know her well enough to be sure if she is the type to do such a thing, but he thinks that she might be, and thinks that he has done nothing to earn such civility from her.
Yet when lightning flickers across his skin in response it is not because he is annoyed with her, but entirely the opposite.
He is, as always, intrigued—borderline captivated, though he is hesitant to admit it—by her.
Too much so to let himself poison the moment with his own insecurity.
“It would be just my luck, though, to conjure a storm that spins so out of control it nearly destroys the entire land,” he muses somewhat drily, thinking on his own tendency to stumble into situations that are above his head. “I suppose, as an outsider, that would earn myself the right to be exiled.” Would that be such a bad thing? He did not hold any particular love for this place, and is sure there must be other places far more peaceful than this land that seems intent on tearing itself apart. But he turns his storm-gray eyes to her face, and to keep the stupid, bewitched thoughts of her from taking root in his mind he says, “I assume you were born here. If you lost the place that you called home in the storm, I am sorry.”
CAN YOU TELL ME, WILL I BREAK OR WILL I BEND?
