Rings of flowers 'round your eyes and I'll love you, Leilan.

[Jenova]

something about the dark. something about our bodies, and the way we find one another.
something about the place where fear melts in the mouth and gets lost in kisses and under fingernails.
Jenova is one of those rare beautiful fools, one who doesn’t understand the true workings of the world around her. Her eyes don’t see the thread that connects them all or the way her life is always so close to danger. Instead, she only knows of her daydreams and the perfect world she’s sculpted for herself. The precious girl spends her days sighing and imagining the life of a princess or queen as though their lives are perfect and so far away from what little troubles she knows. Even now, she believes missing her parents is the penultimate of pain. Her heart is fragile like the crystalline icicles dangling from nearby trees – one breath might shatter them both.

Her ear turns to listen as he approaches and she looks over her shoulder at him. Her long lashes blink slowly as her wing hides the lower half of her face like some modest angel, but she doesn’t realize the things she does. Jenova smiles as he observes her work and tucks her wing tight against her to reveal the sweet expression. His compliment has her laughing softly and the sound is sweet like delicate harp chords plucked just gently enough to emit a sound. Ignorant girl, she doesn’t know what he means when he says ‘of Ischia’. If he had not paused after saying his name, she might think the title was also part of it. LeilanofIschia.

She absent-mindedly bites her lower lip shyly.

“I am Jenova, of here,” she says with another laugh. She mimics his careful pause, lest she be called Jenovaofhere. “The pleasure is all mine, of course.”

She says this with a little bow – wings splayed out to accentuate the gesture, a dainty foreleg lifted. When she rises, her bright blue eyes look over him curiously. The little golden strands of his mane draw her closer without any concern for personal space. Their chests are touching before she realizes but she seems unbothered by the contact, though his cold aura sends a shiver up her spine. The glimmering gold is too alluring for her to worry about all that, though.

“Were you born this lovely?” she asks as she delicately touches her nose to the strands to see if they are as soft as the others. Her breath is almost hot against his skin but she doesn’t seem to notice or care. She’s a curious thing, refined in her words and some of her gestures, but entirely wild in the way she carries herself. Her mother didn’t have time to teach her quite everything there is to being a lady so she improvises from time to time. It certainly makes for an interesting girl, to say the last.

Jenova
something about the sanctity of trust, of midnight confessions,
of held breath let out on a sigh like a smoke signal, a safe harbor.
some kind of magic. the kind that’s only for us.

@[Leilan]