Ocean's Breath Plateau little w[o/a]rri[e/o]r

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So enraptured was the boy that he noticed not the approach of another — a voluptuous creature cloaked in a purer white than his own, drawn finely with the exaggerated and stylized lines of a forest nymph. The soft, embarrassed laugh that spilled from her innocent lips lit Szymon like a live wire — his reaction was wholly instinctive. Shoulders hunkered down, back arching in the center like a guilty gravestone, as his twitching tail nested firmly betwixt his crouched hocks. White fur. It was the first thing he saw, and his previous meeting with Ksenia had him wholly on edge. Canting his muzzle low to the ground, he peered obliquely up at the creature — the woman, too finely sculpted to be real; too otherworldly to be merely wolf — and noticed something very, very important.

Green eyes.

Living green, not deadly mercury.

It must be stated that Szymon frankly stared, far ruder than Deirdre thought herself to be, not making eye contact but fixing upon some middle ground while he groped futilely for words that hovered out of his grasp and disappeared into the horizon like so many balloons on greased strings. “There was something about you, it seemed so familiar to me!” Familiar. Was it possible? Could it be possible? Skellige was inky-black where Szymon was pale; Skellige was large in stature where Szymon just barely managed to keep himself out of being deemed “small” — if there was one similar thing between them, it was the rib cage markings that blazed down his narrow flank. And if that was something the girl found familiar, it had to mean —

Was he dreaming? Szymon couldn’t tell.

The seraph shifted, turning to go, and Szymon couldn’t help the instinctive motion to waylay her. Like a man halfheartedly hailing a taxi — a man who believes his chance has already passed but is merely going through the motions — he stepped forward with one paw, his golden eyes beseeching her with a certain childish desperation. “W-W-W-W — ” he stammered out, the syllables dancing with torturous ease away from his stumbling tongue. Please don’t go! Wait! Squeezing his eyes shut, he grasped again for speech: “P-P-Pleassssse,” he managed, the deep, rolling timbre trailing off into a sibilant hiss. Shaking his head at his failure, Szymon uttered a low, dejected whine. Please don’t go. Stay.

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