02-05-2016, 03:49 AM
is crowded w/ lovers & searchers
& leavers so eager to please & forget.
He watches the girl, a mixture of amusement and concern bubbling up his throat.
He realizes he does not know children at all, though he feels a kind of tender spot for them (his ilk is prone to having youth cling to them like bad odors – symptomatic of shared, and yet different, childhood trauma). He does not know how to handle her image of him – her storybook image that makes him feel both charmed and small all at once. He does not know how to entertain her captivation, so when she slips past her mother’s hold he stays very still, letting her waft air at him. He smiles, dipping his head a bit to meet between their levels.
But he can tell Merope is uneasy with it all.
He is lucky he has been allowed this close at all. But then, he knows little about parenthood. Only that she treasures this girl and he is a stranger still.
“No,” he says, backing away to allow her more space to corral her daughter. “It’s fine. I am interested in being so interesting,” by all accounts, he is relatively plain. Kept safe and sound to himself, his mind-reading does not show and it is incredibly dull compared to what walks around them (drawn from nightmares or soft, starry dreams). His colour no more wild – tame, in fact.
He knows, of course, that he is man made semi-myth to Kidd; she knows too, of course, being the weaver of those same yarns. “I’d like to see myself through those eyes,” he says, nodding.
It could not be more true. That chivalry and that purity. The shine of white armour, unhindered by the worries and history that weigh him down so mightily.
He looks at the girl for a moment, his brows furrowing slightly. She sees the man he’s trying to fashion out of new memories and company – she sees a fiction. A thing that ‘doesn’t happen in real life’, and a kind of man that ‘doesn’t really exist’. He reads it from her, hungry; ripping pages from her books of princesses and knights and stashing them away to agonize over when he is alone.
Pollock would strike him for this inane little indulgence of someone else’s fantasy. Two-fold if he ever found out it was Chessur’s, too. Foolishness. He’d prefer to see his little brother wallow in his own misfortune until it coats and protects him like rusty and blood-spattered chainmaille.
He prefers the girl’s approach.
“I meant what I said,” he continues, looking back to Merope, “I’m not too familiar with all of this, but I’m a good bodyguard. I’m a good judge of character, and I have a weird way of knowing other’s intentions, sometimes before they even act on them. Very useful to have around.” He smiles, and there is a slyness in it, “I have a home, just past the Dale. Gemstone Ridge. You are welcome to come. Please, it could use some brightening.”
Trashlip and Phina's
BASE BY BRONZEHALO