He has avoided company so studiously that, though he recognizes many of those who share his home by face, he knows almost none of them by name. So it takes him a moment to place her. The panther whose company she often shares is one of the few he had met. Once.
He hadn’t cared to learn more, but even with his limited knowledge, he recognized a mated pair when he saw them. Though he eschews it himself, he would have had to be a fool not to know it when he had been born to another such pair. For a moment, as Ion stares at her, he wonders what drives them to open themselves to so much potential pain like that.
He doesn’t put voice to those thoughts however, instead shaking his head before leaping from his perch. He had accepted he would never be like them. He couldn’t, not when half his soul had been ripped from him at birth. They were creatures made complete in a way he could never be. It’s useless dwelling on the cruelties of the fates that had stolen it from him.
Her question hangs in the air between them, but instead of answering, Ion wraps the night around him before shifting. The dark swirl that coalesces offers him protection in his most vulnerable moments as bones stretch and joints crack until his body finally settles into his more ungainly equine form. When it finally settles, he banishes the squirming shadows from around him before lifting his deep brown gaze to the pale mare.
As Wren trills in combined irritation and relief before settling on his withers, shudder runs down the speckled pewter of his skin. With the exception of the night sky that glimmers across his hip, he is as plain in equine form as he had been in feline (though he cannot know how distinctive anyone who has met his family might find his coloring regardless). In any case, he does not expect the woman to find him particularly good-looking in this form, nor is it why he had shifted.
“Ion,” he finally replies, his voice rusty with disuse. He stares at her for another long moment before admitting, “I’ve seen you before.”
ion
in the empty of the grave, only distant dreams remain
@Ryatah