Damien
oh, let's take a chance and roll the bones
try to forget all them enemies and debts
try to forget all them enemies and debts
Damien lets her words about tradition sink in with the kind of silence that isn’t empty, but measured. He glances toward the sea as though he could see the weight of centuries moving beneath the waves, carrying ships and bodies and luck both blessed and broken. “I believe that,” he says finally, tone pitched low enough that it folds into the sound of gulls and rigging creaking overhead. His mouth quirks just slightly. “Up north, the mountains and tundra demand the same.” There’s no dramatics to it, just a plain and quiet truth, the sort that belongs to someone who’s lived it.
When she wiggles her fingers and the stargate ring catches the light, his eyes fix on it with a steadiness that lingers longer than polite curiosity. For a beat, his expression goes unreadable behind the dark glass of his shades, but the weight in it is obvious. “A star gate, huh,” he echoes, voice edged with genuine curiosity. “I'd heard Torchline is quite loyal to Safrin.” The implication hung between them, more statement than question, but leaving space for her to fill in the meaning.
But the next moment, he’s covering the gravity with a sharp swallow from his glass, the second round of rum burning brighter and cleaner than the first. It rolls through his veins with the unrelenting rush of a storm surge, stripping his bones bare and filling them with something electric. His hand tightens slightly around the glass — the only betrayal — before he sets it down again and clears his throat. “...Still overrated,” he says rather bravely, voice roughened just enough that the lie is obvious, though he sells it with the stubborn calm of a man defending a bad hand at cards. “Nothing Torchline brews will ever match a Halo Deepfrost whiskey. Must be the altitude.”
When her lilting question lands, he shifts his weight, watching the line where ocean froth curls against the wood of the docks. “Born there,” he answers simply at first, letting the quiet stretch just a second too long before adding, “Some might say that’s punishment enough.” The dry curve of his mouth makes it clear he’s joking, but the undertone is there, the acknowledgment that Halo is not a place people tend to choose, at least not without a reason carved deep enough to survive the cold.
He glances back at her, his sunglasses catching the flare of sunlight off the waves, and adds, “Still, there’s something about it. You grow up in Halo, and it grows into you. Hard to leave behind, even when you try.” His voice dips, almost as if the words are more for himself than for her, before the humor resurfaces like a cork bobbing back to the surface. “Besides,” he smirks, “if I left, who’d keep the whiskey industry honest?”
"What about you? Has your home always been here?" He vollied her own question back at her, though his curiosity carried a genuine edge. He had the sense Flora wasn’t… ordinary, not with parents like hers, but he didn’t yet know how to ask about that without overstepping.
When she wiggles her fingers and the stargate ring catches the light, his eyes fix on it with a steadiness that lingers longer than polite curiosity. For a beat, his expression goes unreadable behind the dark glass of his shades, but the weight in it is obvious. “A star gate, huh,” he echoes, voice edged with genuine curiosity. “I'd heard Torchline is quite loyal to Safrin.” The implication hung between them, more statement than question, but leaving space for her to fill in the meaning.
But the next moment, he’s covering the gravity with a sharp swallow from his glass, the second round of rum burning brighter and cleaner than the first. It rolls through his veins with the unrelenting rush of a storm surge, stripping his bones bare and filling them with something electric. His hand tightens slightly around the glass — the only betrayal — before he sets it down again and clears his throat. “...Still overrated,” he says rather bravely, voice roughened just enough that the lie is obvious, though he sells it with the stubborn calm of a man defending a bad hand at cards. “Nothing Torchline brews will ever match a Halo Deepfrost whiskey. Must be the altitude.”
When her lilting question lands, he shifts his weight, watching the line where ocean froth curls against the wood of the docks. “Born there,” he answers simply at first, letting the quiet stretch just a second too long before adding, “Some might say that’s punishment enough.” The dry curve of his mouth makes it clear he’s joking, but the undertone is there, the acknowledgment that Halo is not a place people tend to choose, at least not without a reason carved deep enough to survive the cold.
He glances back at her, his sunglasses catching the flare of sunlight off the waves, and adds, “Still, there’s something about it. You grow up in Halo, and it grows into you. Hard to leave behind, even when you try.” His voice dips, almost as if the words are more for himself than for her, before the humor resurfaces like a cork bobbing back to the surface. “Besides,” he smirks, “if I left, who’d keep the whiskey industry honest?”
"What about you? Has your home always been here?" He vollied her own question back at her, though his curiosity carried a genuine edge. He had the sense Flora wasn’t… ordinary, not with parents like hers, but he didn’t yet know how to ask about that without overstepping.
