CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
His irritation is not lost on her, though her own expression remains mostly impassive. She is not afraid of him, but his irascible demeanor has set her on edge, though it is kept hidden beneath an unreadable shield. She has never been the kind to loose her dragon on anyone, and it was unlikely that he could do anything that would threaten her into doing so now. But the way his tongue is so sharp, and with the anger she couldn’t quite place that darkened his face, it was all enough for her to keep herself guarded with her great dragon wings, knowing that she could shift at a moment’s notice should she need to.
But his words are a strike to her chest, partially because she has never heard anyone spit her mother’s name with such animosity, but mostly because it was a blow to hear her name at all.
It sounded different, knowing that it was a name for a ghost.
“She’s dead,” she hears herself saying, and she wonders if the metallic feel of those words will ever go away. She realizes this was an odd thing to say—to just blurt out to this stranger that her mother is not alive, and her face is shadowed with grief and guilt but she quickly washes it away. “Someone killed her,” she continues as if the explanation could soften the abruptness of the first statement, but judging by the way he had spoken earlier she does not expect this man to care.
She finds herself looking at him a little more closely, though, realizing that in order for him to recognize her so easily as one of Ryatah’s children he must have known her well. The tone in which he spoke made it difficult to discern exactly how he had felt about her; she hadn’t really known her mother to have any enemies, but there was really no other explanation for why she had ended up slain in the field by the river. Perhaps she’d had more than any of them realized. “You knew my mother?” she asks him, her usually sharp blue eyes having softened with the sorrow she carried with her. “My name is Casimira, by the way,” she tacks on hesitantly, fairly certain that he does not care but feeling the need to say it regardless.
@Ashhal