VILLANELLE
She is a near petulant thing when standing before him, tiny and tense, staring rebelliously up at a once-god.
What lesson is there for him to learn? Nell almost scoffs, eyes of molten steel slitting to a suspicious width. Like two moons her emotions are carried upon, the eyes give her away. She is expressive, not stoic, so terribly different from the woman she perceives herself as. So terribly different from the behemoth standing opposite her.
“It’s foolish to look for lessons where they are not,” Nell quips back, though the satisfaction is stiffened by her inability to keep her irritation from her tone. She wonders, briefly, if he’ll tire of her attitude. He certainly doesn’t seem the type—she thinks he’ll brush past her without a thought, if he truly desires so. That antagonizes Nell further: an assumption turned sour as they often do.
A grin, sly and wolffish, lifts Nell’s lips. She thinks she has something he wants, intoxicatingly delicious. She is back to being a spindly girl, teasing her non-royal counterparts, more vicious than the fire her father spits. Excited ears swivel, the moon-mimicking eyes shift, the grin peaks—she is devilish, perhaps impish, so impossibly misbehaved.
“It’s a mountain,” Nell states flatly. “It has rocks and dirt, and when you get to the top, the trees grow sparse.” All facts even a babe knows. The woman’s now closed lips twitch.
After a beat, she sighs, almost disappointed. “The Mountain has magic and Fae. The Fae sometimes grant magic to those that ask—but never without a price. If you go begging for a lesson, I’m sure they’ll give you the exact opposite of the one you want,” she says, as plain as before. Her mouth no longer twitches but the eyes—the eyes continue to give her away, dancing like frantic lovers caught in a tune, twisting with something far too devilish to just be mischief.
@[morrowind]