[private] Time cast a spell on you but you won't forget me [Oceane]

[Oceane]

a little white light in a
sea gone black

≋

There was a time in Oceane's distant past that the power of observation was the only weapon she could wield. Though not omnipotent, it had saved her hide - and her life - time and time again. It's a skill she has continued to foster since then, taking special care to avoid growing lazy despite the comfort and illusion of safety Loess could offer.

But these finely honed skills are not imperative to spot the flash of panic that arrives upon the chestnut's face just as plain as the newly returned sun in Beqanna's bright sky. At the hiss of his exhale through clenched teeth, Oceane takes a tentative step backward but does not retract, nor apologize for, her intrusive question. Instead, her pointed ears press forward curiously and her own breath lodges itself expectantly in her slim chest as she gives the peculiar stallion a few moments to collect himself.

When he finally does so, or gives the illusion that he has, his singular eye seems drawn to her opaline wings. For a brief moment, Oceane's thoughts turn to Fiorina and the way the xenomorph's face will twist itself up with fleeting disdain whenever she finds herself faced with airworthy wings. But the stallion's averted gaze, flecked with gold, feels different.

It feels pained.

But the stranger answers, quite gruff, the question she had greeted him with, thus saving himself from a secondary meddlesome question regarding his aversion to her presence. “Good,” she offers succinctly in response, appeased now that she can be sure the shadow beasts have disappeared with the return of their closest star, though she remains regrettably unaware that her own rebuttal could be perceived as rude.

As they both fall to momentary silence, the molten amber of her eyes watches as the stranger continues to avoid her gaze. He even goes as far as tossing the tousled tendrils of his flaxen forelock over the space where his second eye should be, prompting the quietest chuckle from the opaline Queen. Unlike the stranger's, it holds amiable warmth. “I've seen much worse than your scars,” she offers him, dismissively, the opportunity to continue their conversation without the need to hide himself behind tresses or beneath tree boughs, before adjusting the lavender and azure feathers at her sides and turning her gaze to the Meadow.

It appears they have the place to themselves today, Oceane and this branded stranger. Only when she has finished examining the brightly lit meadow and its sorrowful grass does she realize, so out of practice is she, that she could use this opportunity for recruiting. “Do you have a home?” she inquires without preamble, subjecting the flaxen stranger once more to her ability to cut right to the chase.

—
@[Ledger]
“”

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