One moment, Agetta is distracted by the sweet rain and the rumble of the thunder growing distant – watching the thick clouds that clashed a moment before – and the next her attention is drawn into the river by a voice. She pauses her wandering immediately, turning to face him. For a flash of a moment, she searches his piebald face for anything familiar, a string she can cling to, but when there’s nothing there her long-buried instincts kick in and her voice travels over the water towards him. “Do you mean I’ve met an interesting character – or that you have?”
There was a gentle sort of teasing to her voice, those deep blue eyes brightening with a touch of laughter. She actually wasn’t sure what he had meant to say, whether it was a compliment for herself or a brag about himself. Considering he was standing in the middle of a river for no apparent reason she supposed the scales tipped a little more in his favour making him more interesting. Certainly, if she had caught the show when he had shifted from lightning bird to stallion there would be no contest.
But she supposed it didn’t really matter what he had meant. She couldn’t believe how incredible it felt to hear someone else speak to her, how pathetically whole it made her feel to look at someone who was looking right back at her.
It made her feel less of a ghost, as though this simple reaction had already given her some weight and presence again and made her less invisible in this shifting, strange landscape.
These were, of course, thoughts she would never share. It was ridiculous, she knew, to be so affected by the presence of a stranger – but her gratitude nonetheless made her smile soft and her voice sweet as she stood there in the rain. “Regardless, I am glad ‘they’ have proven right for once.” Her midnight-blue gaze shifts momentarily, watching the ripples caused on the moving current, before it focuses once again on his golden gaze. “Are you enjoying the water?”
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