maybe you were the ocean
When he had approached, Wane had not carried with him many expectations. But her gestures (the slow blink of her eyes to let him recognize how endless they are, the way that she intentionally moves against him so that he can feel the burn of her skin against his, how she watches him, softly, from underneath her dark eyelashes) are exaggerated, if not formulaic, and for a moment they do leave him considering the ease of this interaction. Wane, however, is not overly complex. He is just self-involved enough to recognize that the opposite sex have always come easy to him, and so rather than question her motives long he instead plays right into the palm of her hand, assuming (as he is apt to do) that today he is just more charming than usual.
So, when she addresses (no, coos) her embarrassment and tells him her name, and everything is punctuated by an appropriate giggle, or sigh, or raspy breath, he does not linger on it long and obligingly cranes his head to gingerly lip at the soft patch of skin behind her ears for a moment or two. The reality is that in this meeting she’s proving much smarter than he is, or in a twist of irony and despite her scales, more evolved.
“Wane,” he answers when she asks, grinning into the eyes of a viper.
The rain around them sounds like static in the otherwise silent meadow. It’s heavier now, and water pools and collects at his feet so that when he shifts his weight and cocks a heel the newly dampened earth squelches here and there while sucking at the bottoms of his hooves. There was something violent about a spring storm; the way the rain could barrel down to hit the petals of wildflowers and knock them from their stems into the earth, how it could change the ground itself by boring trenches into it. It made him feel powerful - sent something ancient burning through his veins.
He wonders if she’s come to revel in the feeling, too.
He decides to ask.
“Why are you out here alone?”
The sentence itself is clumsy, full of insinuations that certainly are not applicable in her case. But Wane, effortless and egotistical all at once, doesn’t seem to notice his faux pas, or if he does isn’t dwelling on it even a second.
@[Khuma]