you pour the water —
If he doesn’t fill the silence, then she certainly feels no urge to do so. She is content to sit in the quiet, to walk alongside him and let the rest of the world fill up those spaces where they do not. She is grateful, in a way, that he does not chatter at her—does not force such conversation upon her. Baptiste is such a quiet, serious girl that she is not certain that she could handle such a thing. Not certain she would allow it.
(Would she run? Would she just end the conversation? She’s not sure.)
But he doesn’t and thus she says. She walks idly, tail flicking behind her, her wings folded gracefully over her slender back. Every once in a while, her rose gold eyes slide to him and she studies his young profile, wondering what exists beneath the surface. Once or twice, she thinks that she might feel something. A whisper of emotion that is not her own. Something that feels alien. But she tells herself it is imagined.
She could not possibly know what he is feeling.
Could not possibly pick up on such things.
It is only when they come to the place where he leads that she says anything at all. Her eyes widen with youthful wonder, a glimpse at the girl she was made to her perhaps, and she steps forward into the dancing lights. Her nose lifts and she closes her eyes in pleasure as they dance around them.
“It’s like magic,” she whispers under her breath. “Absolute magic.”
— I would haul the stones
