He is perhaps the last face she wanted to see right now, and that thought brings with it a twinge of guilt. It’s not his fault. She knows it had not been him in the dome, she knows that it was not his face she had mutilated in her attempt to get his antlers untangled from hers. It was a twisted illusion of him, and the logical part of her brain desperately tries to grasp that.
But she cannot deny the way her skin suddenly turns hot at the sight of him. How her muscles draw tight beneath her skin, twitching with a reflex that hadn’t existed prior to the plains. There is a suspicion that clouds her brightly colored eyes, because for a moment she cannot help but to wonder if this was a trap too.
“Voro,” she greets him in a voice that is strangely detached for someone that is usually so animated in nearly every way. She is still watching him, studying his face, his antlers, and sweeping her gaze back to his body – searching for any sign that this was not really him. But eventually her eyes make their way back to the vibrant aqua of his, and she offers him a taut smile when he mentions that she looks different. “I have antlers now. Just like you,” she accentuates the statement with a tilt of her head, and she wills away the memory of what it had felt like to have her antlers locked with his – pushed away the echo of ivory crashing against each other.
There is a pause, and she knows that she is acting strange, but she hopes that maybe he is still too oblivious to social cues to pick up on it. She clears her throat anyway, though, and forces her tone to sound more upbeat she asks him, “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in awhile.”
Aislyn
she set fire to all the things that held her back
and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was