10-29-2019, 09:35 AM
“Oh, you couldn’t deprive me of that if you tried,” she laughed, and it was not the pastry in her hand she was talking about. Dark eyes glittered, sun-starved, as she offered up a bite. The welcoming smile of an invitation tugged her lips, none too subtle.
He was perfectly edible.
Around them it was not yet dark, but the shadows had begun to pool in the deeper crevices, aided by the bright lights of stalls and music. Some might say they were darker in the flood beneath Nhysa’s feet, though it was probably a trick of the eye. It wasn’t until she first left the pits of the Facility that she had truly learned she saw the world through different eyes. All the broken and scuttling things even an Atharim like Li might be surprised to learn existed; the things that hid and slunk and lived in the periphery, rarely bothering humanity. Like the dark currently purring around her ankles and urging her feet to move.
Yes, yes, dear one.
Normal was a novelty, but not something she particularly cherished. It was the dichotomy that lured her, that knife-edge balance between light and dark like a lover’s tangle. Watching the merriment around them was cute as a button, but not a world she had any desire to truly live in. He offered an arm like the precious thing he was, and Nhysa’s slipped through, amused. It was an excuse for touch as anything else; to slide her hand along the hard muscles of his arm, and absorb the heat radiating from his body. Darkness possessed what it touched. Though maybe he ought to beware she did not swallow him whole.
She led the way, watching the adorable throngs of people as much as the entertainment laid on for their benefit. Or rather to say the dark led, for it nipped every now and then at her ankles like it suspected she had forgotten why they were here. “Do you know what happened to the wolf at the club?” A job had intervened last they met, and she had not sought an answer to that. It was the handler she was truly interested in, of course, but the wolf formed the crux of Li’s philosophical conflict that night -- the true nature of her query now. Whether the thorny questions of their conversation pulled him from his sunlit path, or if he strode on unchanged.
He was perfectly edible.
Around them it was not yet dark, but the shadows had begun to pool in the deeper crevices, aided by the bright lights of stalls and music. Some might say they were darker in the flood beneath Nhysa’s feet, though it was probably a trick of the eye. It wasn’t until she first left the pits of the Facility that she had truly learned she saw the world through different eyes. All the broken and scuttling things even an Atharim like Li might be surprised to learn existed; the things that hid and slunk and lived in the periphery, rarely bothering humanity. Like the dark currently purring around her ankles and urging her feet to move.
Yes, yes, dear one.
Normal was a novelty, but not something she particularly cherished. It was the dichotomy that lured her, that knife-edge balance between light and dark like a lover’s tangle. Watching the merriment around them was cute as a button, but not a world she had any desire to truly live in. He offered an arm like the precious thing he was, and Nhysa’s slipped through, amused. It was an excuse for touch as anything else; to slide her hand along the hard muscles of his arm, and absorb the heat radiating from his body. Darkness possessed what it touched. Though maybe he ought to beware she did not swallow him whole.
She led the way, watching the adorable throngs of people as much as the entertainment laid on for their benefit. Or rather to say the dark led, for it nipped every now and then at her ankles like it suspected she had forgotten why they were here. “Do you know what happened to the wolf at the club?” A job had intervened last they met, and she had not sought an answer to that. It was the handler she was truly interested in, of course, but the wolf formed the crux of Li’s philosophical conflict that night -- the true nature of her query now. Whether the thorny questions of their conversation pulled him from his sunlit path, or if he strode on unchanged.