Leth-Faces (Seven)

[Runas]

Dusk, Summer 29th, 511 AV


The sound of the Suvan was one of the calmest. The waves whispered over the sand in an undulating motion, hypnotizing to behold. The sound was endless, a cacophony of the most soothing variety, if that was possible with cacophonous noises. No gull screeched while seeking little fish for its own belly, and no loud group of humans screamed and laughed as the cold water tickled the legs that had darted into its grasp in a childish game of run-and-catch.

This was one reason why Runas so loved visiting the Sea every year since her rebirth; the surreal calm and majestic quality of the Suvan Sea under Leth's pale light.

Runas was in her Ethaefal form, but she didn't care. She doubted most people were out when the distant sky warned of rain. Her long raven hair was plaited in a side braid along the left side of her moon-pale face. Paint from her morning artistic splurges still streaked her hair in its braid; deep blue painted hair joined in the braid.

A dark emerald horn was curled in a graceful spiral from each of Runas' temples, one of the first qualities that marked her out as something other than a human woman blessed with ethereal beauty. Her eyes were another such quality. They were the pure colour of molten silver, and if the light of Leth struck them full on they would shine luminously, as her skin did anyway in the evening hours.

If Runas were in this form permanently, she would have found living among mortals much more manageable. Since that was not possible, she had to constantly mind her time when out and about in daily life in Syliras. She'd cause such a scene if she transformed from Eypharian to Ethaefal in a crowd of simple, enviable mortals. Poor them for missing out on a life that is both blessing and curse.

Runas sighed abruptly, the sound breaking the calm. Her thoughts were becoming bitter. She'd spent the whole day amusing herself with human trivialities to be getting bitter now. That was no way to repay her patron for the visage she still kept after her fall.

With that so positive thought, Runas chuckled and reached into her satchel to draw out a bottle of wine she'd purchased that afternoon in the Dragon. Wine was not something Runas found to be comforting in the least, but she drank anyway. If anyone ever did ask why, she wasn't sure how to explain her need to do so. How does one who was truly dead and among the gods tell a mortal that she drank to honour the memory of the Symenestra whom she had loved and eventually died for? She'd probably get odd looks and a few whispers.

Runas opened the wine and sighed, then reached out to her left and dumped out about a decent cupful on to the sand before she raised the dark bottle to her lips and drank. She recorked the bottle after a while and returned to her silent vigil over the waters she'd crawled from eighteen years before.

[Seven Xu]

The Suvan Sea lapped at the shoreline hungrily as dark, looming clouds cut off the sight of beautiful stars at the horizon. They were steadily growing closer with the wind, eating up the twinkling jewels in their wake. The approaching storm was not something the halfblood that pressed a barefoot trail in the wet sand had concerned himself with. Pale hands hung limp at his sides, plucking at the thick cotton of his light dun pants that had been rolled up to his knees to keep them dry if the approaching surf reached him or he absently dipped too close to the sea.

Meditation - at least some form of it - was the reasoning behind his absence in the small apartment deep within the citadel. The pursuit of concentration and well-trained thought was impossible when the unrelenting noise of a city and the deliberate but well-meaning distractions of a lover filled the senses. White lids grew heavy with blonde lashes aflutter as his world grew dark and vision tunneled and strides shortened to a crawling pace. Seven inhaled deeply, relishing the salty air before clearing his mind of the goings-on of Syliras, the unfinished instruments he worked tirelessly over, and the perky Ravokian that would likely be nipping at his heels had he not slipped out straight from work - not that he minded the company. Ends justify means and this was all for a reason, after all; Seven had kept the hours of practice a secret, wanting to impress his companion once he had become competent in the new skill.

Seven relinquished the borrowed air from his lungs in a long exhale before lifting an arm, palm facing skyward as he murmured to himself. A faint shimmer of djed spanned his wrist before it crawled slowly, but surely, up the length of his forearm. After five chimes of absent trudging through sand and concentration, Seven’s lips tightened into an approving smile as the fingers on his opposite hand pressed to the shielded arm. The uneven, clunky shield did little to prevent Seven’s fingers from passing along the barrier; the purple haze of the djed twinkled around his arm, visible only to less skilled eyes where his pale digits dared to slip through it. The shield would do little but block other djed as it was tasked to do, and within chimes would likely decay and wash away in the whipping current of wind that howled off of the vast expanse of the Suvan’s surface.

A figure was caught in his fleeting glance and he blinked himself out of a vapid haze to focus on just what it was that sat in the sand ahead of him. Despite a number of skittish protestations in the back of his mind, Seven approached what he had identified in the darkness as the likeness of a young woman. When he was close enough to speak and have himself heard, the outline of a glassy jade horn caught his eye and he suppressed a gasp – the nature of their race was unmistakable; despite never having met an Ethaefal it was obvious he was now in the presence of such a creature.

The pale human face painted in the imitation of a Symenestra opened its lips to break the drumming sound of waves on shoreline. “Drinking alone?”

[Runas]

Runas would not have paid heed to the sound of approaching footsteps had they not turned into a gasp. She hadn't planned on someone coming across her out here, but since it was unlikely he would know of her other form, she felt no qualm in turning her porcelain face to look up at him. She would have gasped as well, really, had she taken to such a childish way of expressing herself. As it was, her eyes began to glitter with true, visible amusement before it faded into surreal calm with only a hint of the former mirth.

She'd not expected to see a Symenestra wandering the beach.

It took her a few moments to realize he'd asked about her drinking. Was he dull? Didn't he notice that Leth was with her, drinking for her lover when she was truly alive? Maybe he just didn't believe in such superstitious thoughts, not that they truly were superstition. She should lecture him.

"Drinking alone? Hardly." A smile graced her lips as she lifted the bottle and held it out to him. She was offering him, a perfect stranger, a drink. If anyone knew Runas enough, they could complain about how free she was with herself and her trust. She'd say she didn't offer him a drink because she trusted him; indeed, she trusted very few people on a personal level. She offered him a drink because she wanted him to sit down with her and have one. "Leth is here, isn't he? And Zintila." Makath, on the other hand, was probably busy elsewhere. She had too much to do to share a drink with an Ethaefal.

Whether the Symenestra took the drink or not, Runas' smile would flash across her lips again. Her eyes remained distant from her smiles, from her world. They only focused on the male because he looked so... different from a pure blood.

Another smile curved her lips, this one sticking as she brought her silver eyes to his ruby ones. He truly was a painted little spider, she thought to herself before she spoke. "How curious that a Symenestra chooses to speak Common and not Symenos. You must not be from Kalinor, little spider. You speak with no accent. You're voice is too rough."

She patted the ground next to her. If he resisted her, for he took her words as an insult, she would begin to bleed Djed into her eyes and voice to lull him into agreeing to sit with her. It wasn't like she was Dhani or anything; she didn't bite.

[Seven Xu]

Little spider, Seven’s smile faltered. The venom-tongued nomenclature that surrounded those of mixed blood was certainly not lost with distance from the hanging city of the Symenestra. Seven had a mind to continue down his path; to forget the abrupt woman, as beautiful as she was, and resume his practice. Something in his mind had guided him to sit before he realized he had not turned from the woman and he seemed surprised at the cool feeling of dry sand beneath him. Seven pulled the bottom end of the glass bottle from her proffering hand and huffed; if he had not ignored her insistence on not being alone as she drowned herself in the depths of bitter green glass, he had simply failed to register it.

“Yes, it’s a wonder you’re drinking alone, as charming as you are.” Seven mumbled with a candid smirk, the effects of the Ethaefal’s hypnosis wearing thin as he broke their gaze. The bottle was lifted to white lips as he tested the wine in fleeting uncertainty. An apology nearly escaped his lips – he was not the type to be intentionally rude, even to the gorgeous stone face of someone so bereft of tact. There was a moment of silence as Seven gathered his thoughts and the bottle was passed back to the possession of the woman. He had initially been excited to have stumbled upon such a rarity, someone that could teach him more of the stars but the excitement soon faded when she lashed out with her silver glare and sharp tongue.

The glaring realization that hypnotism was likely a culprit of his current situation wafted to the forefront of his mind. Not only was Seven a pragmatic observer, he was no stranger to the draw of suggestion; Dhalvasha had used it to lure him from a buzzing crowd weeks before. Narrowing those crimson pools that had a tendency to broadcast his every emotion, he kept them pointed towards the flat horizon of the sea in a defiant stare. If he could help it, they would not pour back into the silver platters that were now burning a hole in the side of his face.

“My name is Seven,” he said finally, slumping forward and digging his bare toes into the sand. The sleeves of his linen shirt bunched above his elbows and exposed thin forearms to the silvery light of Leth’s moon. Long white digits grasped at the bottoms of his calves where the cotton of his pants hung. “And you’re right: I am not from Kalinor, I’m from Lhavit. You know, where Zintila resides.” His brows rose, and his white-crowned head listed to one side as the playful smile returned to a mind that was his own again. “So there’s that.”

[Runas]

Runas wondered at the first hesitation before her hypnotism had lured him to sit next to her. He was not pleased with being called 'little', and that alone was enough to give her what she guessed without asking it in an even cruder method. This human had spunk. He was sure of himself.

She almost laughed at the abrupt lie of her charm. Wasn't his reaction to her words enough to garnish 'charming' as a far reach into the wrong direction? It was nice how he tried to say otherwise though, even with the barb of being called 'little' by something not even belonging to this earth.

"You do not need to lie to me, you know." She said softly, her eyes narrowing when he turned away his face. She sighed and turned her eyes to glance out over the waters towards the stormy clouds. "I do not mean to drag your title through the mud, so to speak. I once knew a Symenestra who told me about the sub-race you supposedly belong to. I did not find the title suitable. Something much more better would have been 'other' instead of 'little'." She turned her eyes back to his face, the silver irises scanning his profile as it was turned from her. Since he wasn't meeting her eyes, Djed would be useless in them. She cut the source of and laced it only in her voice.

"Ah.. Lhavit." Runas smiled brightly with memories of that fair city whenever she had found a home there for a season or two. It was the only city even remotely reminiscent of her home with Leth and the others of her fair race. "I've been to Lhavit... I envy you for a family there. I've visited the city. Many times. I'll always love Lhavit as Zintila's home."

She reached to take back the wine after his playful smirk, returning one of her own, and once again dumped out another mouthful into the sand. It stained the silk of the world even after the sand had devoured it hungrily. She'd be done pouring wine into the sand now. He never drank more than two glasses when he was with her... The Symenestra that was. He just couldn't digest it right.

"My name is Runas, Seven." Runas smiled as she looked back at him again. She placed the bottle between them in the sand where he could take from it if he pleased. Her use of Djed had faded fully. She didn't feel like cornering the poor boy with Hypnotism and ruin a possible short-term companion.

"Will you tell me something? Why would you leave Lhavit for this city?"

[Seven Xu]

“I wouldn’t call it a lie, per se.” Seven’s hard gaze remained on the point where sea met sky. Despite his appearance of fragility, the halfblood had a strong will – and after having caught on to the djed-laden stare of the unearthly woman, it would be difficult for her to draw him back with her charismatic attempts at suggestion.

After a pause of hesitation, his porcelain white lips curved into a crooked smile and he rocked forward, pressing his heels further into the sand to bury both feet beneath the cool surface of the earth. Perhaps his blatant sarcasm fell on ignorance; either way, he was a bit disappointed that his witty response had been misinterpreted as an attempt to compliment the woman. It was then that he allowed himself to turn his head to stare at her; to inspect the braided and paint-stained hair and glassy horns that told an unfortunate tale of being dropped from the heavens. And finally those eyes: as silver as the glittering jewellery sold by merchants at the Great Bazaar, stingy and rigid in their haggling.

“I would prefer no title at all.” He argued; if the woman were to attempt to lull him in again with her hypnotism, she would have to work for it. Glistening pools of crimson suitable for an altar in the name of Viratas bled thin around large black pupils. If she looked closely enough she would find that the halfblood’s eyes explained everything he did not voice aloud. Seven understood the assumptions of his kin – they were certainly not new to him, but to say they weren’t at least a little irritating would be a blatant lie.

Her questions bothered him. She was bold, insulting him only to respond with veiled apologies and immediately begin asking him about such things – personal things! “Runas.” Seven repeated her name, and then dropped his face to examine the stain that the wine had left in the sand between them. Pressing his index finger to the dark wet mark, eyes flickered upwards beneath heavy lids and Seven replied as calmly and politely as he could with that same impersonal smile. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Runas.”

And with that, he turned his attention back to the Suvan Sea. The storm clouds had advanced further, and a smoky sheet of what he could only assume was rain connected them to the water below. “Storm’s coming.” He stated flatly. Something was souring his insides. Seven had yearned to meet the likes of an Ethaefal, to draw information from them of the cosmos and of the Ukalas; he had fantasized the meeting to the point where anything but a pleasant exchange in the name of furthering his own knowledge was an unacceptable disappointment. A thought crossed his mind: a thought clever enough to garner a playful smirk and raise his brows to obscure them beneath silver-white bangs.

“Tell me what you know of the stars,” he said, “every time I learn something new, I will answer a question of yours in return.”

[Runas]

Runas' eyes, her voice, were untouched by Djed. He was not becoming the way she had wanted. If she knew better, she'd say his will of mind defeated her, but as she did know better she'd have to say that his will as well as the realization he'd been hypnotized had disillusioned him. Instead of a sense of loss, she felt exilherated. Here was someone she wanted to speak to, and he wanted nothing to do with her!

A teasing smile brought real emotion to her eyes at his blatant response, but she inclined her head and turned her silver eyes to the Sea. Despite her lack of tact, she knew when she'd been rude enough to garner alienating the first person who hadn't gaped at her like a stupid cow startled out of its cud-munching. Could she reel him back in? Not unless she wanted him to be kicking and screaming as she did. This, this was exactly why she went alone. Mortals couldn't be bothered to take the distant teasing of someone who didn't understand the necessity of scowling at said teasing. These people were poor substitutes for the divine brethren, but they would have to do unless she planned to take her life...

That option, in her opinion, was not an option. Unlike the most desperate of her kind, she did not believe dying would return her to the cycle of life or death or would drop her in Leth's region. She believed that, since the Ethaefal already had existed there and had been removed from the cycle, death would only be a means to end. The spirit would be split and cast all over the earth, and the dead Ethaefal would be uncaring as to what happens next. She, Runas, would never bring herself to that no matter how lonely she'd get over eternity. In a hundred years maybe she'd find a half-blood who didn't gape at her and didn't turn from her. But that'd be in a hundred years. She had this one here now.

"Have I ruined your evening, Seven?" She said very softly. She leaned from him only long enough to fold her legs to her body and wrap her arms around them. She looked at him closely, examining his actions to remember. She suspected he'd forget her after this, and would never wish to meet her again. "I am greatly sorry if I have. I did not mean to do so, and if it suits you, you can leave and I will let you go. Thank you for your company, though."

A half smile curved her lips and she looked up at the sky above them. She heard his offer and smiled to herself. Maybe she could interest him enough to stay and keep her company. If she couldn't, then she'd just find him another day and try to interest him as an Eypharian.

"Is that even a fair trade, Seven?" She said with a trickle of amusement shown in her voice. It was almost rhetorical, but she'd not asked to bother him. Before he answered, she flopped backwards on the sand and looked up at the sky. For some reason, this view of Leth filled her chest with an overwhelming sense of loss. She lifted a pale hand to reach for him and, after a few chimes, let it drop with a mutter of an apology. Fate was cruel to her, she knew, placing her in sight of Leth but forever out of reach. Her mind came back to earth with her hand and she looked to Seven, trying to hood her sadness. "Lie down, if you wish to know. I'll tell you some other things, too. I don't want you to not trust me, Seven. I do not look down on you for your blood nor your race. I used to love one once, a pure blood, and I was to die for him." She closed her mouth before speaking too much. Her mind scrambled for a moment before she came up with a pathetic change of subject. "I'll tell you what you ask, if you ask it, whether it be names of dots in the heavens, their patterns, or some things about my race... Just point and ask, how about that?" A smile glimmered in her silver eyes as her tone turned slightly playful at the end.

[Seven Xu]

Seven turned again from the draw of the ocean. “Ruined my evening? No.” A fringe of white hair grazed ashy cheeks as he replied with an abrupt head shake and a forced, but assuring smile. “You said yourself that you meant no offense.” The offer stood. If Seven wanted, he could have gotten up there and returned to the city. There was still something off about the woman; something he found as interesting as it was unsettling, but it was forced to the back of his mind as she continued to speak. Seven had turned when Runas lay back against the sand to stare ruefully at the moon – what it must feel like to have been cast from her own realm – he frowned at the thought. A thought lingered on his sharp tongue but fizzled before he had a chance to voice it. For all it was worth, pity seemed like an unreasonable reaction to her beauty.

Seven would have laughed, had she given him a chance to respond to her question of fairness. He had never said he was going to be fair – but if he seemed interesting enough for her to expend djed on luring him in, well ... fairness is all relative.

“You were a surrogate,” he accused, back meeting the cool hug of night-kissed sand as the black dome above them littered with clouds and stars became far more interesting than unending water. Seven had become bold in his mumbled response, brow furrowing as his left hand gathered and released sand between thin fingers. “That is unfortunate.” It was true that he had largely alienated himself from those that came to be called Widows – he was not one of them; he felt he deserved to be held under a different light. In truth, he would be perfectly happy under the assumption of an awkward-looking human with a color deficiency and strange teeth. And he was, to most that were ignorant of the willowy harvesters from Kalea.

A luminous smile seemed out of place after such a comment but it persisted on his airy countenance as he lifted a finger to point towards a particularly bright body in the sky. Seven knew little more than its coordinates and peculiar name – Fyrden. If one was keen enough to see in low light, a red haze overcame the steady point of light it reflected at them. “What can you tell me about that world?”

The encroaching weather had moved in around them, allowing compromised visibility of the starry night and obscuring the face of Runas’ celestial father. Seven felt something cool and wet shock his outstretched arm, a taste of the rain to come.

[Runas]

A smile tilted Runas' lips again. She scanned the celestial bodies as Seven reassured her that she had not ruined his evening and then turned her face to flash one of her smiles at him again. She wasn't minding of sand coating her back or getting into her hair. She couldn't be bothered for physical vanity like that. "I'm glad Seven. You're a very nice person."

For a moment, her smile faded. So, he knew what she was, but he pitied her for it. She pitied herself for losing it. His words were almost accusing, but she couldn't resent him for them. She'd known full well what having a pure blood's child would entail for her and her mortality, but she'd done as much as she could to make sure that the child and its father would not forget who she was and what she'd given to keep them. "Yes, I was." She said softly, the silver becoming subdued as she spoke. She couldn't let anger take her for the manner of her untimely death, and the death of the spider that would have killed her anyway. "I was glad to be a surrogate, Seven. There was no misfortune or unfortune involved. I wanted that child. I'd wholly agreed to it, unlike most other mortals who are seduced to it You are luckier than you know for your blood. You're painted in their seeming, but if you remain far from any of them, you'll never have to be despised for the way you continue to exist."

A small, quiet smile danced across her lips again. She then turned to look back at the stars and felt an even greater sense of loss now that he'd made her think of everything that had befallen her mortal seeming's life. If she had come without those memories, she could not have felt this way.

With Seven's point, Runas' eyes glimmered again with life. For a brief flash, she realized that he was probably a child when she was first in Lhavit. She'd have remembered encountering a truly little spider in a city that held suspicion for the caves of Kalinor. If she'd met him, perhaps she would have removed him from human society and brought him with her to Kalinor, keeping him under the protection of being her companion, so he could see that the race of his mother's kin were not as bad as the stories whispered. She'd loved a spider when she was an Eypharian, so why couldn't a half blood love them too? She was aware they thought low of their half brothers and sisters, but that was the result of females being unable to mate with the males without the untimely death of pregnancy.

What she'd have done with Seven after could be questionable. Maybe she'd have brought him to Mura, or left him in Ravok with one of the aging companions she'd once had. She didn't wish to leave him, if she'd actually met him and taken him, but there would have been no choice. He was mortal, she was not. If she kept him after removing him, she have to give him away or end up watching him grow old and die.

So, she was glad she'd not stolen him or met him in Lhavit.

A chuckle floated past her lips as the thought of the could-have-been past was shoved aside for a half-blood's curiousity. She followed his finger and looked at the planet of Fyrden. One of the homes of the Familiars. Seven sure had a curious nature. Was he planning to study Familiary? She'd have to dissuade him or he'd be a slave to a little runt creature.

"Fyrden," She said quietly, a small smile glimmering on lips that rarely gave way to frowns or glowers. She was prone to bouts of misery, longing, and darkness, but she rarely submitted to them. She'd never take her life, even if she lived for a thousand years and became as lonely as the sun in the sky... A chuckle, brought on by a thought completely irrelevant to the current topic, erupted past her white lips. The sun, Syna. She looked at Seven and made an imperious face at him. "Syna has a half-blood's name." She said shortly. Another smile tickled her lips before she returned to the topic at hand and looked back up at Fyrden.

"Fyrden is... Well... Incredibly painful, I've heard." Luckily, very, very luckily, she knew a few mages that were now probably old, impotent geezers or insane, screaming lunatics. The latter were more likely to be the way they are due to Familiar interference, while the former were more likely due to the form of Hypnotism, Reimancy, and Morphing that they had practiced. Personal magic was a dangerous toy, they'd always told her, and Familiary was just as bad, just as dangerous. But that was a digressing thought. She had to focus on the Fyrden Familiar she'd met and bickered with. The Sarawanki, named Hapless by his Mage, had spoken of extreme heat and a terrible existence that was still so soothing to him.

"Fyrden is not in any way like Mizahar except in terms of djed. It does not rotate. One half is always facing the sun, the other always facing the black space around it." Her nose wrinkled in thought. Hapless was a Lightface Familiar, therefore he knew very little about what the Darkface was like, except that he'd die if he tried to cross into it. "The half facing the sun has seas of molten rock while the half facing space supposedly has mountains of ice. The only way to survive Fyrden is to survive off djed, which sounds very painful if you ever should meet a Fyrden Familiar and ask."

When the first drops of rain struck her bare arms and face, a startled laugh escaped her. It was raining! A natural phenomenon just as magical as snow, rain was something Runas enjoyed greatly. Sure, snow was much more fun to play with, but rain smelled so good.

She licked a drop of the moisture off her lips before looking at Seven, real laughter and enjoyment in her eyes and in her voice when she spoke. "We can continue talking indoors somewhere if you do not like the rain, but if you wish to ask of planets that can not be pointed at from inside a building, you'll have to name them. Of course, you can come and enjoy a meal on my behalf while we talk." Almost subconsciously, djed was returned to her eyes. She wanted him to stay in her company, if only for a bell or two. She really would buy his meal, if he wanted to eat, and then she'd continue to try to satiate his obvious hunger for knowledge of the heavens. He'd probably make a good Ethaefal if he were unfortunate enough to be one.

[Seven Xu]

“It is hard for them to despise me, I suppose,” Seven agreed, knees bending and toes curling and digging back into the soft sand beneath him. “That doesn’t stop everyone else.” An apology for seeming to unnerve the woman by taking an accusing tone and a wrinkled brow would never come – he felt no regret in it. The surrogates assimilated by the harvest were thought as little more than subhuman, and while they were treated relatively well in their captivity, the chilling reality of their shortened lifespan turned Seven’s stomach. The calm, accented voice of the silver-haired Symenestra he met years ago rang in his head – so shocked by Seven’s former ignorance, but so willing to outline even his biased point of view.

“Fyrden,” he repeated with a nod and an assuring tone, glad to be off of the subject of the harvest and his obvious difference in opinion. As Runas explained its stationary state, the light and dark sides of the world, and the odd creatures that lived there – familiars, he’d heard of such creatures in passing at the Plaza – fingers drummed on his lower stomach and he seemed to sink comfortably into the sand. “Sounds like a terrible place.” He finally replied after mulling over and processing the state of the two-faced world in his head.

When the skies opened up and rain began to fall in large droplets from the dark clouds, splashing across Seven’s clothing and fluttering his blond eyelashes when water would come too close to his eyes, he simply laid there, staring up at the offending weather with a thin smile carved into his calm face. When Runas offered to feed him and to accompany him and find a place out of the way of the storm, Seven laughed and sat up to eye her with a teasing grin. “It’s just rain.” Sand clung to his clothing and the back of his pale arms where the linen shirt had been rolled up. The swirling, unnatural feeling the djed-laden silver insisted encroached on his mind again. Eyes narrowed, the smile turned crooked and insincere. “I’m not going to run away from you,” he assured her with a voice colder than the usual light and airy tone his voice carried, “Please stop that.”

“Besides,” Seven continued – whether the hypnosis was the result of the expression that softened him again he wouldn’t know to admit –, “I don’t melt in the rain. Do Ethaefal?” The rain was falling harder now, tiny percussions against the sand and nearby surf against the fresh smell of new air filling the space between them. Silvery strands of hair clung to pale cheeks and his bangs were pushed away to expose more of his face than the mop of hair often afforded when it was dry. “Unless you’re hungry,” he paused – did Ethaefal get hungry? He felt he heard once that they did not, but he was not positive – then the smile evolved into a grin, “I’m perfectly happy taking my chances in the rain.”