bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
The darkness is one of the strangest phenomena that he has seen in Beqanna, and the studious part of him desperately wants to study it further. Wants to leave her company so that he can wade belly-deep into the shadows and monsters and learn more about them. Wants to find his relations and pull them into the place beyond time so that he can keep them safe there. But there is something about the innocence in her eyes—and, more so, the loneliness deep within that jeweled gaze—that keeps him rooted to the spot.
When she mentions his wound, he frowns a little, nearly forgetting the price he pays.
He knows beneath the fresh blood and the dust of his time asleep is dried blood, nearly caked in spots. It has been a lifetime of tearing himself open to access his gift. A lifetime of sacrificing himself for it. He knows that there are other magicians who draw upon other elements—those that are so much easier to find. He wonders, sometimes, what it would be like to be one of them. To have magic powered by the sun, or by the flora and fauna. To be powered by the world in a way that he never would be.
Instead he has to pay for each and every gift.
It is no wonder that he barely feels it anymore.
He turns his emerald eyes back to her, nearly amused, but his face still too stern to betray it. “I bleed a lot,” he deadpans, not answering further or explaining it anymore. Instead he takes a step toward her, filling the space so that the shadows cast from the glowing orb are even more severe across his dark face.
“Narya,” he repeats, voice rumbling from deep within his chest.
He doesn’t give her his name—not yet.
“Why do you like being alone?”
He could hunt through her mind, he knows. Could pluck the answer from her as quickly as she could even think to hide it, but he prefers to hear the answer that she would give willingly.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste