CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
She doesn’t know if he can feel it too, that delicate thread of tension between them that seemed to pull tighter the longer they were next to each other. It wasn’t lust; Casimira wasn’t familiar with such an emotion, which seemed to be a rarity of her bloodline. Her mind moved too fast to focus on romances and desire, her worry and her anxieties seemingly overpowering any other thought or emotion that might try to break the surface. It’s why she can’t fully recognize what is trying to form between them – or maybe what is already there and she’s just trying her best to not see it.
She has been alone ever since she was reborn, and she cannot help but to think that perhaps it was best this way. She has grown into her own worst enemy, and even though she has begun to realize that waging war with herself was a battle she would always lose, she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Well, so am I,” and this time there is a hint of teasing in her tone, but she doesn’t continue to argue with him. “I guess if you’re around me enough, you’ll have the misfortune of seeing what I mean.” Though her tone is light, the sudden spark in her pale blue eyes suddenly seems to dim as the truth of that settles around her. She had almost forgotten for a moment what she harbors inside. She had almost, for a moment, let herself wonder and fantasize an imaginary future with someone – maybe him, maybe not – before her reality crashed again over her. The more he was around her the harder it would be to hide what she was. The more he was around her, the higher the risk of him getting hurt, or just plain rejecting her became.
“I’m afraid that my happiness might come at a price,” the words are soft again, her eyes diverting from his and to an empty space in the distance. “It seems selfish to try and find happiness if it means someone could get hurt.” Like you, she thinks, but doesn’t say, her eyes returning to his with a half-hearted smile. Instead she falls quiet as she listens to him, and something that she cannot place stirs between her ribs when he speaks of the man that he had considered a father. Casimira has never met her father, and she had learned at a young age to not ask about him. Ryatah’s answers were always vague, almost evasive, even though she had nothing negative to say. All she knew was a name, and that her mother says her twin brother reminded her of him sometimes.
“How a woman should be treated, huh?” She decides to pick out the phrase, with a laugh lacing the words as she repeats them. He was closer now, and it was impossible for her not to notice. That tension once more pulling at her, drawing her in, until she has closed what little space had been left between them. Close enough now that the warmth of her breath fanned across his skin, close enough that she worries he might hear the way her heart kept skipping. “That’s probably an important life skill,” she says on a breath as her lips tentatively, almost cautiously, touch against his shoulder.