Youth becomes her, but she knows it is but a shadow of what is to come.
She is striking, in the way of a rose unfurled, a viper ready to strike—walking the line of dangerous and meek as she makes her way from Pangea and into the common lands. Her face is carefully composed into the lines of innocence, but there is something beneath that speaks to more. To undisturbed bodies of water, to the ripples on the surface. It does not reach the belly of her, but it’s there if you look.
She moves gracefully, picking her way through the meadow when she catches the sight of him.
The slightest angle of her head, the sun catching where the ivory grows, her pale brown eyes studying him. She watches as he rises and then falls, crashing into the earth in a display of utter abandon that she could never imagine. What it must be like to fling ones self into the wild yonder, she thinks.
There is a moment, when she considers walking on—when she thinks of simply turning back home to where her twin and her parents await her—but she remains. Lips pursed, she feels the thrum of something closely resembling curiosity in the back of her viperous mind. Something nearly normal in its youthful hunger and it roots her in place as she watches him rise, shake the dust from his coat, and attempt again.
Finally, unable to bite down the questions any further, she moves toward him.
“Some would say this does not appear to be your calling.”
Her voice is nearly as delicate as her bones, sweet as poison on her tongue.
The smile that follows is soft, the sharpened edges nearly lost in the quiet.
