12-26-2018, 10:10 PM
The way she watches him is disconcerting, though he cannot know it is no different from the way he watches her. There’s less hunger in her gaze perhaps (or at least a less literal appetite) but there is a marked similarity in how the watch, as though puzzling apart the other into a thousand different bits. It is uncomfortable, and so he yawns, the gesture revealing far too many teeth. It’s not a threatening gesture – it is simply how he responds to minor stress – but it is far from his most alluring act.
That lack of interest in drawing her in is, rather conversely, what keeps him near.
It is not that he does not want her, because he does and does move ever slowly closer, but rather that the reluctance to be near her brightness simultaneously repels and attracts him. He wants to put out the glimmer of her starshine, but he’s not quite sure he wants to destroy it forever. For a creature that deals in absolutes in the sea, this indecisiveness is foreign. The kelpie settles for agreeing, the idea of drawing her back to Ischia at least being something that he is sure of.
“I will.” He says, now just out of reach in the dark water. This near, he must glance between Lirren and her stars. Taking his golden eyes from their glow for too long seems a dangerous choice, but he must also watch the mare herself, and the way the water glides against her mahogany sides. “You should stay, too.”
That lack of interest in drawing her in is, rather conversely, what keeps him near.
It is not that he does not want her, because he does and does move ever slowly closer, but rather that the reluctance to be near her brightness simultaneously repels and attracts him. He wants to put out the glimmer of her starshine, but he’s not quite sure he wants to destroy it forever. For a creature that deals in absolutes in the sea, this indecisiveness is foreign. The kelpie settles for agreeing, the idea of drawing her back to Ischia at least being something that he is sure of.
“I will.” He says, now just out of reach in the dark water. This near, he must glance between Lirren and her stars. Taking his golden eyes from their glow for too long seems a dangerous choice, but he must also watch the mare herself, and the way the water glides against her mahogany sides. “You should stay, too.”