She breaks the spell of his gaze, feeling herself shaken in the aftermath of it, to focus on the rest of him. His answer surprises her, enough that the playfulness bleeds from her and leaves instead a worry that settles into her bone and a confusion that she can’t shake. “Why would you want to leave?” The question escapes her before she can possibly think to stop it—not that she would. Of all of the things that her parents have taught her, she has never quite soaked in the lesson of politeness.
(And it wasn’t a lesson that Sochi truly put any effort behind.)
He is more timid than she would have initially thought the dragon boy would have been, and there’s a strange sensation in her belly at the idea of it. Why would he be so shy? Why would he not glory in the power of his claws and the gleam of his scales? She has never considered what it would feel like to not feel like you fit into your own body—even when she wore so many different forms, they all felt right.
“I can’t though.” She is blunt but not entirely uncaring, angling her fine head so that her dual-colored eyes can consider him more. “I can barely change myself some days.” She isn’t embarrassed to admit it, nor does she try to hide the toll that the shifts had taken on her earlier—her neck still slick with sweat and her breath not quite steady. “I still don’t understand though. Why you would want to fly away.”
It sticks in the back of her brain and she takes another step toward him, her coltish legs dancing a little as she settles in close. She wants to know—wants to understand better. Wants to understand him.
Wants to know the future she saw in his eyes.
Was it them?
Was it true?
I want to swim until we both begin to feel the weightlessness sink in
@[yadigar]