[ Bastien accepts the distance easily, smiles easily, and does not look any less at ease at at all when her message is received through the winter layers on his chest—save the twitch of his eyebrow, just a hint quizzical furrow. Even here?
Curiosity, not resistance. Even here, there was Fitcher. Up goes his guard against everyone, everything. Alexandrie included, for completion’s sake. ]
Of course.
[ Perhaps Byerly mentioned—he said that he wrote to her after their visit to Arlathan Forest, when a bastard of a spirit leeched the color from his vision down to sunset hues. Perhaps he also mentioned Bastien’s hearing was cleaved down the middle. Or perhaps not. Either way, there is a touch of care and deliberateness—of a sort that’s uncommon for him, the way he masks his poise behind leans and slouches and hair that is never perfectly neat, and of a sort that normal people would never notice—that hasn’t yet been fully smoothed out of the way he positions himself specifically to her left.
Once there, he offers his arm. A cheeky, affectionate pantomime of chivalrous manners between class-divided friends, and an opportunity for her to keep any future taps of her fingers hidden safe against his arm. ]
Wherever you are headed, I’ll walk with you. You have to tell me everything. How is your father?
[ Surely he’s alive. Word of a Comte’s death would have reached them long before Alexandrie herself, however she hurried. ]
no subject
Curiosity, not resistance. Even here, there was Fitcher. Up goes his guard against everyone, everything. Alexandrie included, for completion’s sake. ]
Of course.
[ Perhaps Byerly mentioned—he said that he wrote to her after their visit to Arlathan Forest, when a bastard of a spirit leeched the color from his vision down to sunset hues. Perhaps he also mentioned Bastien’s hearing was cleaved down the middle. Or perhaps not. Either way, there is a touch of care and deliberateness—of a sort that’s uncommon for him, the way he masks his poise behind leans and slouches and hair that is never perfectly neat, and of a sort that normal people would never notice—that hasn’t yet been fully smoothed out of the way he positions himself specifically to her left.
Once there, he offers his arm. A cheeky, affectionate pantomime of chivalrous manners between class-divided friends, and an opportunity for her to keep any future taps of her fingers hidden safe against his arm. ]
Wherever you are headed, I’ll walk with you. You have to tell me everything. How is your father?
[ Surely he’s alive. Word of a Comte’s death would have reached them long before Alexandrie herself, however she hurried. ]