06-15-2017, 11:33 AM
Polaris
She makes no effort to join them, is content to stand quietly on her own and observe them from what feels like a safe distance. It isn’t that she is afraid of them, of the man who had become her father, of the woman he had in turn made her sister - it’s that she is so used to Ruan’s use of body language, of physical conversation. There is some wariness, yes, and it deepens when her eyes land on Jinju, but it is not because she thinks the woman to be dangerous in some way, it is because she is unsure how to communicate with her, unsure of what a stranger would expect from her. Would she want words? Or was she like daddy, content with touch and indistinct sound, the curve of a smile and the flash of quiet eyes.
The hum of their voices sounds like a murmur from so far away, and it draws her closer until she has halved the distance between them and paused again. Her head tilts gently to one side, those liquid amber eyes soft and uncertain in the teal of her translucent face. But then both pairs of eyes turn from her, and the black mare settles to the ground gracefully beside Ruan, relieving some of the pressure. She reads the ease in their smiles, in the lack of furrows in their cheeks and across their brows, in the soft way their ears flick idly from the tangles of equally unruly manes.
It is enough to coax her forward again, to draw her first to Ruan with the soft chiming of her glass legs where she pauses near his head to touch her mouth to his face and his forelock, tugging his attention to her even as her own amber eyes fall shyly on Jinju’s face. “Hi,” she says to this sister-woman, shocked by her own bashfulness as she struggles to know what to say, “you’re Jinju.” But then the teal glass girl frowns in concentration because, no, that didn’t seem quite right. She was though, this was Jinju, she wasn’t wrong. Except - oh. She blushed (invisible in the teal of her cheeks and with no heat to mark its passing) she was supposed to let others introduce themselves probably.
She thrusts her nose beneath Ruan’s jaw to lift his head so she can fold up beneath it and against his chest, needing the weight of his neck across her withers to still the uncertain flurry of wings thrumming in her belly. Her legs crumple beneath her, none too silently as glass found glass and clinked together like old pottery. When her eyes left again to seek out Jinju’s face, they are so soft and so molten with uncertainty that she can hardly stand to hold that gem-bright ruby gaze. “I am Polaris.”
The hum of their voices sounds like a murmur from so far away, and it draws her closer until she has halved the distance between them and paused again. Her head tilts gently to one side, those liquid amber eyes soft and uncertain in the teal of her translucent face. But then both pairs of eyes turn from her, and the black mare settles to the ground gracefully beside Ruan, relieving some of the pressure. She reads the ease in their smiles, in the lack of furrows in their cheeks and across their brows, in the soft way their ears flick idly from the tangles of equally unruly manes.
It is enough to coax her forward again, to draw her first to Ruan with the soft chiming of her glass legs where she pauses near his head to touch her mouth to his face and his forelock, tugging his attention to her even as her own amber eyes fall shyly on Jinju’s face. “Hi,” she says to this sister-woman, shocked by her own bashfulness as she struggles to know what to say, “you’re Jinju.” But then the teal glass girl frowns in concentration because, no, that didn’t seem quite right. She was though, this was Jinju, she wasn’t wrong. Except - oh. She blushed (invisible in the teal of her cheeks and with no heat to mark its passing) she was supposed to let others introduce themselves probably.
She thrusts her nose beneath Ruan’s jaw to lift his head so she can fold up beneath it and against his chest, needing the weight of his neck across her withers to still the uncertain flurry of wings thrumming in her belly. Her legs crumple beneath her, none too silently as glass found glass and clinked together like old pottery. When her eyes left again to seek out Jinju’s face, they are so soft and so molten with uncertainty that she can hardly stand to hold that gem-bright ruby gaze. “I am Polaris.”
though i never needed any proof to trust the heart that beats inside of you