maybe you were the ocean
Magnus melts into the background like noise, like static.
Wane hasn’t come for casual small talk, or to exchange quick witticisms that veil vaguely passive aggressions. Or, he hasn’t today. The truth is that in another time or place he might have found Magnus a sort of kindred spirit, he might have laughed at the roguish grin in spite of himself, but today he has come to collect Wax, to bring her ‘home’ after years of her absence.
Only something isn’t right, and he learns it almost as soon as she spins on her heels to smile widely at him. Because she presses her cheek against his neck first, and when she pulls away she chides him easily about the lack of time they’d been apart. As though years were hours, and he were teasing her again. At first she laughs, but he watches it soften and die when she studies the lines of his face and finds those missing years there in his expression. Wax was the same as he’d left her, as though she’d been pulled straight out of a photograph; like time forgot her.
Wane’s brows furrow in concern, but Wax doesn’t seem to linger on the obvious abnormality for long. He watches her spin gracefully back to face Magnus, and obviously distressed, Wane has little left in him to be snarky about it. Instead, he loses himself in the twang of her voice when she speaks, draws it out and plays it over and over because it reminds him of home. He’d worked diligently after he’d left home to erase that little bit of music from him, but Wax had embraced it. It suited her.
Most things did.
As he looks up from his thoughts, Wane notes Magnus grinning at him, head aslant, and determines he’s said something sarcastic that Wane is meant to be unnerved about but he hasn’t been listening. He cocks a heel, lamely, and lets his ears fall flat against his forelock but says nothing. He isn’t in the mood today.
Not that it matters, because they come like flies to a carcass.
“Boys, please give a lady some space to breathe?”
A second stranger finds them then, and instinctively Wane reels his head backwards with his irritation however is quickly settled when his eyes scope out first the lengths of her legs, and then the smooth arc of her hips. He decides, generously, that he will be less hostile with this one, and as she smiles brightly Wane’s head bobs upwards and his ears pivot ahead, suddenly attentive. He only had Texas to blame, and who was he to attempt to outrun genetics? So, instead of a flash of his teeth and a snarky rebuttal, Wane only casts his sister a sideways glance and snorts delightedly at the phrasing.
“Lady?” He questions, while his lips curl up at their ends in a clever, sardonic smile.
He is only mildly disappointed to find his joke glossed over, as Ilma introduces herself and goes on to explain about the recruiters here. Wane finds himself flinching inwardly at the reminder of monarchs and boundaries. It wasn’t suiting him, he didn’t care for it, and he certainly didn’t care to have his reunion with his twin sister interrupted again and again.
“Well, you’re obviously coming with me to Nerine. There’s a coastline, and the ocean.” He says then, biting his tongue to keep from explaining the logistics of his accidentally chosen loyalties. If she knew more about its politics she might be swayed elsewhere.
“You’re going to be an aunt. There’s…” He pauses a moment, thinking about the giant egg in the cave that Khuma had littered with assorted collectibles (bones, pearls, and shells) and looking for an easy way to word their explanation. No stranger to the throes of passion, Khuma had not been Wane’s first encounter. In all likeliness, Wax had become an aunt many times over. Wane, however, had never been around for long enough to know the children before this time. Coming up with nothing, he finishes weakly with:
“An egg.”
@[Wax]
@[magnus]
@[Ilma]