08-25-2024, 05:40 PM
I L I A N A
“You sleep like a corpse,” she tells him, disguising any type of concern she might feel behind her typical dry humor. She had always been far more empathetic than she wished to be; her father had mastered the art of not caring (or at least maintaining that he does not care) but Iliana had taken more so after her mother in this aspect. She simply didn’t know how to not care — not even when it’s a stranger lying in a heap on the ground that she could have easily walked away from and he would have been none the wiser.
She remains where she stood, even though she is tempted to step closer, to inspect whatever wounds he might have. There is more to him than his physical state, she thinks; there is something else that he is fighting, something else that has worn away at his mind and energy. She does not know if it is concern or curiosity that makes her want to learn more, but whichever it is, it keeps her here.
Her rose-gold eyes lift to the bird that he calls Rune, and her lips quirk into a small smile. “Rune has no reason to be jealous. I was just making sure you weren’t dead.” She wants to ask him what happened, and a younger, less tactful version of herself would have done just that. But her younger self was far less jaded and closed off; her younger self would have demanded he stayed here while she fetched her mother to heal him, would have maybe insisted he stay with them in Hyaline until it was proven he was strong enough.
But Hyaline is gone; though small pieces of it live on in the Dale, all she can see when she looks at that place is how different it is from the land in which she had been born. And she has not seen her mother in weeks, perhaps months, but that is not so strange; Ryatah was prone to disappearing, following whatever reckless whim she felt like, and reappearing with new scars and ghosts in her eyes as if nothing had happened.
“I’m Iliana,” she offers him, thinking an introduction would be a good place to start since she was doing this — whatever this is — on her own.
She remains where she stood, even though she is tempted to step closer, to inspect whatever wounds he might have. There is more to him than his physical state, she thinks; there is something else that he is fighting, something else that has worn away at his mind and energy. She does not know if it is concern or curiosity that makes her want to learn more, but whichever it is, it keeps her here.
Her rose-gold eyes lift to the bird that he calls Rune, and her lips quirk into a small smile. “Rune has no reason to be jealous. I was just making sure you weren’t dead.” She wants to ask him what happened, and a younger, less tactful version of herself would have done just that. But her younger self was far less jaded and closed off; her younger self would have demanded he stayed here while she fetched her mother to heal him, would have maybe insisted he stay with them in Hyaline until it was proven he was strong enough.
But Hyaline is gone; though small pieces of it live on in the Dale, all she can see when she looks at that place is how different it is from the land in which she had been born. And she has not seen her mother in weeks, perhaps months, but that is not so strange; Ryatah was prone to disappearing, following whatever reckless whim she felt like, and reappearing with new scars and ghosts in her eyes as if nothing had happened.
“I’m Iliana,” she offers him, thinking an introduction would be a good place to start since she was doing this — whatever this is — on her own.
-- the shadow is mine, and so is the valley
@Reave