CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
With her anger having dissolved she allows herself to look at him with clearer eyes. She has never seen him except through a wary veil—when his mouth was always stained with blood in Hyaline, when his nightmares drove most out of Tephra, and later as the monster that had killed her mother—in quick, stolen glances. He is not really what she had expected, mostly because he is in fact rather handsome. It isn’t that she had assumed he wasn’t, but more that she had expected him to be a different brand of handsome; the kind meant to lure you in before it peeled back to show you its teeth.
And maybe that is how he used to be, but it isn’t what she sees now.
He seems…lost.
Perhaps not subdued, but still quieter than she had expected.
When he explains that he had been cursed she can feel the pieces sliding into place. She does not realize yet that he means cursed in the literal sense, because she had often thought her dragon shifting to be a curse. Though she was not the ruthless, untethered creature she had been as a youth, the memories are still alive and well in the back of her mind. It is a constant effort to ensure that she never loses control again. A daily routine of shifting far away from anyone that she might harm, testing the control that she had gained over the years lest she ever be put into the position of needing to use her dragon form as a weapon again.
She had never thought herself to be similar to her mother, but, in this moment when the ice in her eyes and chest dislodges and slides away, and she finds herself leaning towards forgiveness and empathy rather than bitterness and clinging to animosity, she is more like her than she realizes. “Cursed?” she questions him, not because she doubts or doesn’t believe him, but because she is trying to understand the scope of it. “Who cursed you?” Her mind jumps to Carnage instantly, a reflex that she is sure most raised in Beqanna have developed, though hers might be sharper considering how often her mother found herself with him. She had, after all, initially blamed him for her mother’s disappearance before the truth had finally been uncovered.
As if suddenly remembering herself, she blinks and shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, the apology not only on her tongue but also clouding her usually clear blue eyes. “I didn’t mean to pry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”