now and then there's a light in the darkness;
feel around 'til you find where your heart went.
The bleak sunlight settles across his golden skin, highlighting the muscle and precisely shaped bone of his masculine frame, as it drapes across the bristling, finely preened dark feathers tucked closely along his flank. His gold-flecked eyes follow the gentle curve of her cheek as her head leans to the left, as her dark tresses frame the soft, feminine line of her jaw and the bridge of her nose. His heart presses firmly against the confining restriction of his rib cage, thumping powerfully against the hardened bone beneath his breast. His breath is shallow, then – caught, trapped within the tightness of his throat – for a moment.
Her voice, a crooning hum, is laced with taunting jest, and he himself cannot stifle the rumbling of laughter from within his chest. ”You caught me,” he says, amusement hanging on the edge of his every spoken word. ”I’ve been discovered. Romantic, it is – at least, I hoped that you would think so.”
There is a light shining in the dark depths of his eyes; his words honest and not veiled with any riddle of falsehood. He had no reason to lie to her; no reason but the pounding ache of his heart that threatens to give him away – but he does not shy away. Should she hear it (should she feel it), as her body presses against his shoulder and thus his chest, she would know the truth in his words.
She is seemingly caught within the grasp of her own thoughts, her dark eyes trailing across his pallid skin, but soon her soft, whiskered lips are pressing against his skin with the gentle whisper of a kiss and he can focus on nothing else. It is momentary, and fleeting, but a moment he would replay many times in the days to come.
He could come to crave her soft, faint caresses, and the warmth of her skin against his – he could come to love her, a certainty that causes his heartbeat to quicken and his blood to grow hot.
As their bodies emerge from the dense thicket into a vast, broad clearing, the refreshing mist of a wayward yet powerful waterfall descends upon them, blanketing their skin in its sheen. Her voice barely rises above the thundering roar of the falling water, and his mouth turns with a faint but genuine grin – one that reaches the shadow of his gaze, and even the taut tension of his jaw. She is gone away from him, then, and his eyes watch as she reaches out to the touch the crystalline, rippling water.
His long legs carry him across the clearing, and gently the velvet of his nose presses against her shoulder, his smile becoming coy as he moves past her – submerging the faint russet stain of his legs into the clear, frigid water, before using a sudden gust of wind by his own urging to lightly splash it against her breastplate and along her forelegs.
”You have no ideas the secrets I keep, Circinae,” he utters then with a crooked smile, his voice rising just enough over the dull rumble of the cascading water. ”but in time I will share them all with you. Come, join me!”
