Shadewood that's not my name

She does not shy away from it, and the vespertine lets out a low noise akin to a softened but mighty feline’s purr. Tacita allows it, briefly, but like the infernal nymph he has named her for she is flighty, he thinks as she lets out a quiet rumble and turns her head away slightly. For a small moment Nero wonders if he should feel jilted: like a lover whose face has slipped from betwixt his hands that only seek assurance that they are real with gentle and sensual caresses. For a moment the would-be-Emperor does feel jilted: scorned and torn between pursuit and demand as King Peleus demanded the ocean sprite Thetis and of her womb bore him Achilles but with great reluctance. No, Nero thinks: he does not want that. It is in his nature, surely, for the scales of good and evil cannot balance without the other but such is not his wish. That is not the kind of man he is.

She turns her back to him and walks away a few steps, her tail curling over her back. Imperial, jade gaze watches her with a billion questions that he refuses to give voice to — besides what good would it do for him to voice them aloud? — and she looks back at him with a blank expression but with invitation in her gaze. She darts off into the foliage. A chase! She invites him to chase her but for what premise? What awaits at the end of the chase? The umbra jaguar is long-legged and sleek, built for speed as opposed to brute force and he thinks that even with her head start he can catch her. He lunges forward allowing her the game, following her scent trail for the that infernal plague of curiosity would not allow him anything else.