[private] grey mist on the sea’s face & a grey dawn breaking

[Oceane]

to the lonely sea and sky

Oceane's past in Nau-Aib is fraught with turmoil and absent of anything real, warm, or enticing. There is nothing worth sharing about her childhood or young adulthood. Nothing that she can say contributed to the being she is today. She runs from it, flies from it, and tucks it away in the depths of her mind to be revisited only in the midst of a night of fitful sleep.

Never while she is awake. Never willingly.

So, to say that this spontaneous attraction she has developed for Castile over the past season is new would be nothing short of an understatement. It has become a distraction. And while Oceane still journeys away from the foothills of Loess to explore the greater area of Beqanna, the tobiano stallion always seems to linger at the edge of her thoughts. She does her best to attribute it to a desire to learn more about her new King and nothing more.

"Happy to hear I enjoyed the trip, or happy to hear the state of the Resort?" she manages to respond to his crooning despite her mirroring grin. She hadn't expected the added distance she'd created to help dampen the tension between them, and admittedly she's glad that it hasn't. Though she's aware that he is likely pleased to hear of the quiet in the aforementioned island nation (even without knowledge of his history with its sandy beaches), what with politics being of great import to a King, she can't help but hope that her jest keeps that grin on his face.

Castile seems to sink into reverie in the moments that Oceane wracks her brain for material to continue their conversation, but she's pleased that her attempts to do so seem to pull him back to the present just as easily. His inquiry, in return, feels just as dangerous as her own. Again, Oceane shifts her weight and adjusts the opaline feathers at her sides; a tick, it seems, that has developed in her attempts to not fold beneath this new tension.

Forcing her amber eyes to gaze solidly at his despite the desire to coquettishly side-eye him, Oceane takes a few seconds to exaggeratedly ponder her response. "I wish..." she trails off, her words lilting and her gaze traveling to the upper right before returning to meet his mismatched and mischievous eyes, "for you to tell me why both of the men I've seen you interact with have watched you like you could eat them for dinner if you wanted to." The request ends up half-matter-of-fact and half-breathy, a combination that suits her warm yet not-too-sweet voice. Genuine curiosity lingers in her words, lust just at the end, and she falls into silence with this probably much-too-personal query hanging between them.

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@[Castile] | speech