He triggers a laugh form her that she has not heard in years. The ice around her heart melts just a little more, her face brightening underneath his gaze and humor. ”What they don’t know won’t kill them,” no one knows the truth of her age, except not Magnus. She has never boasted the immortality that courses through her veins or repels the signs of aging. No one has pieced together how young she was in the Jungle versus how youthful she appears over a decade later. ”At least I make the throne look good,” she jests with a casual toss of her head. Somehow, Magnus has been able to see a side that no one has before. The amiability that resonates from her is a cherished rarity that even she struggles to grasp and understand in these moments as they stare curiously out across the ocean.
”If 20 still seems young to you then I can only imagine how many years you have seen in this life?” Nayl almost doesn’t expect an answer, letting the words suspend idly between them, but the curiosity rings in the tone of her voice as she realizes that he, too, is enveloped by the same immortality that saves her from an impending death. Somehow, she finds reassurance in the realization she isn’t alone, and that together they can watch the world turn and change around them. Decades from now, she thinks, they could cross paths again with the same youthful glint in their eyes but with far more wisdom than they already have. It’s a reassuring thought, really, that perhaps there will be someone that doesn’t die or wither away like so many others that she has known.
Finding comfort in this – in him – Nayl sighs easily and pleasurably with eyes lit by both memories and thoughts of the future. She listens closely to Magnus, her attention never straying although her gaze rarely tips away from the rolling waves. The snippets of his past fascinate her and she latches onto the bits of his life that she can, hoarding them away deep in the crevices of her fortified mind. ”You have good taste if your first love is the Jungle,” the smile slips easily across her face this time, the gesture becoming more familiar as they stand with the sun settling across their backs. ”I can’t imagine you’ve made many mistakes, Magnus. We all make them – it’s life – but we learn from them. I doubt yours were so huge or your memories so dark.” She pauses as she draws in the salty air, relaxed by the sounds of the waves and the metronome of his breaths next to her. ”You at least seem content with your life now and where it has led you.”
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