I need your hand but I don't want to burn it
Vesper knows she’s coming before the grass begins to whisper beneath her boots. Her mind reaches him first, familiar even through the discipline with which he’s spent the day refusing to look directly at it, and the cards in his hands go abruptly still, but only for a moment before his fingers resume their quick, complicated work, splitting and folding the deck through itself in patterns too precise to be called idle, as though nothing in him has changed at all.
He’d kept the herd between them whenever he could, found work on the opposite flank when he couldn’t, and made himself scarce once camp was raised. It had been easier beneath the sun, with orders to relay and unicorns to turn, than it is now with the dark drawn close around them and the memory of a desert still dry at the back of his throat. Her note has done nothing to soften it. If anything, those few spare words have sharpened the understanding he’d carried north only to find her gone.
Icewater surges through his veins at the sound of his name. His blue eyes flick up beneath the fall of pale hair, finding her through the darkness while the final card slips neatly into place. There are several answers waiting behind his teeth, all of them sharp enough to finish what he’d started between them, to puncture what he'd been letting go soft in the last few weeks until her note had made clear his foolishness. But Vesper has no interest in giving the camp a spectacle, especially not with Sunjata’s fucking hEars close enough to collect every brittle piece of it.
"Yeah," he answers at last, the word low and level despite the cold still moving through him. "Got one." He squares the cards against his palm and tucks them into his coat, then rises with the smooth, soundless ease of a shadow pulling itself loose from the ground. Rather than invite her closer, he gestures towards one of the moonlit meadows beyond the reach of the tents and the listening dark, already turning that way with the expectation that she’ll follow.
He’d kept the herd between them whenever he could, found work on the opposite flank when he couldn’t, and made himself scarce once camp was raised. It had been easier beneath the sun, with orders to relay and unicorns to turn, than it is now with the dark drawn close around them and the memory of a desert still dry at the back of his throat. Her note has done nothing to soften it. If anything, those few spare words have sharpened the understanding he’d carried north only to find her gone.
Icewater surges through his veins at the sound of his name. His blue eyes flick up beneath the fall of pale hair, finding her through the darkness while the final card slips neatly into place. There are several answers waiting behind his teeth, all of them sharp enough to finish what he’d started between them, to puncture what he'd been letting go soft in the last few weeks until her note had made clear his foolishness. But Vesper has no interest in giving the camp a spectacle, especially not with Sunjata’s fucking hEars close enough to collect every brittle piece of it.
"Yeah," he answers at last, the word low and level despite the cold still moving through him. "Got one." He squares the cards against his palm and tucks them into his coat, then rises with the smooth, soundless ease of a shadow pulling itself loose from the ground. Rather than invite her closer, he gestures towards one of the moonlit meadows beyond the reach of the tents and the listening dark, already turning that way with the expectation that she’ll follow.
No I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it
☆ has a pale star tattoo beneath his left eye, and freckle-sized constellations move across his skin
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
☽ hair changes from bleached blonde to brown
☆ telepathic: Sunlit Shadows | The user can read the surface thoughts and emotions of those within a 60ft radius. Control is excellent. Note: "Thoughts and emotions" include anything written in a character's narration in a post.
