10-05-2020, 06:39 PM
He seems startled to find her looming there above him, and she cannot decide if it is because he had been sleeping, or if it is because she is the first winged panther he has had the pleasure of coming across. Maybe it’s both, she decides, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she scrutinizes his marbled face. Most of it is like smooth alabaster, so pale and white she thinks he must glow brighter than even bone. But his cheeks are dark and striped, not unlike that of a tiger, and the notion makes her smile wider. Seems befitting that she, a panther, would stumble across a tiger-boy.
She leaps down with her wings flung wide, and it is like the impact shakes the panther free from her body. Her forelegs thump down against the ground, and then paws become hooves as the shift ripples fast upwards throughout the rest of her now equine form. She shakes herself as though the shift unsettles her, and for a moment she is hardly more than a tangle of dark wings and even darker hair. But then she settles again and the smile on her mismatched lips is genuine as she refocuses her gaze back on the boy.
“I was looking for you, of course.” She says, those warm brown eyes twinkling with mischief and delight as she takes a few steps closer. “I could hear you.” She gestures with her dark nose to his brow, though she isn’t close enough to touch him. “You sounded happy and I thought maybe we could explore together.” There is a flicker of some new emotion that slips like a shadow over her eyes as she watches him, too bold to be apologetic for eavesdropping, but scolded often enough to know she should pretend she hadn’t been. Then, because this hole is not quite deep enough and she does so enjoy digging, she asks, “Who is Aero?” She has the decency though, or the gall, to say the name with a kind of casualness that implied she hadn’t been eavesdropping again.
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
@[lumineer]