clarity, paint me bright like stars in the dark of night
She was surprised by the rough edge to his voice, the bruises in his eyes, but she didn’t show it. There was something about him that made her think of father with the ghosts that haunted him or mother with her own demons; the way they iced over when certain subjects were brought up. It excited her, made something zip through her veins. Here was danger and challenge. She felt herself blossom before it.
“Ruan,” she tasted the name a little, closing her eyes as she did so. Hawke never did anything half way, never did anything without throwing herself completing into it. She hummed with pleasure as she opened her light eyes again, finding the alien blue of his own. “It suits you,” she said, finally, having weighed the syllables on her tongue and finding them adequate. His name was like a bullet; short and staccato and hard. She was glad for it. It wouldn’t have been right if he’d been named something flowery.
He deserved the bullet name.
It matched the same thing she saw in his eyes.
She felt more than saw the tension in the way he held himself, the muscles hardening beneath his coat, the stiffness in his posture. But she never considered backing away or giving him more space. It wasn’t that she was terribly rude—it was just that she lived too close to the fire to ever truly fear the flames. She was intrigued by it and she found herself studying him with curious eyes, tracing the lines of his body without reservation, settling on the deep scars that lined his shoulders. Her head titled at that, lips pursing.
“I am everywhere often,” she said with an elusive grin. “I do not like to stay in one place for long.” That included Tephra. Although she was still young, cresting on two, but her quest had aged her, brought her closer to the brink of full maturity sooner than if she had avoided it. She was not content to live within her parent’s home forever; she would not be content to live anywhere forever. Not when there was such a wild world out there for her to taste. Could you imagine tethering yourself one place? She couldn’t.
Her bit her bottom lip for a moment and took a small step toward him, wondering how he would respond to the closeness. “Do you have any stories worth telling?”
Her eyes sparked. “I love a good story.”