Northstar Vale a grin as sharp as a knife (mtr.)

“Rather, you are ze maker of distress,”
impling glimmer coming to prance within somnolent eyes,  “who keeps us off of our feet, all ze same,”
and with a hitch in hurting dead gone inkheart, she might have delved deeper; might have simpered at how, once upon a time, she had so very nearly knocked Wintersbane o'er from his own footing. How he had tormented her; plagued himself; a flicker within thinskinned hip at the reminiscence of his glutting, his giving; and the vulnerable varmint guided her gaze to the make of him  —  the truth of the warwelded, bloodhewn northron majesty of the male before her  —  and the traitorous figure of her quivers; he is as boreal, as uncharted as she;
it was good that he was not knight.

But! it is what he proposes to her that has her quiet; list her eyes from the roguish and reasoning of his own. Whether the enquiry is rhetorical or no, the fairylight is helpless in the consideration of it ... and she cannot continue, lest he be—  “Melkor,”  and henceforth she crept lambthing ever toward the stone's edge; lips weighted with some manner of telling that she could not, could not yet entrust to his ears entire:  “If I have ze means of giving sanctuary and stronghold to those impoverished, then ... what worth there is will be found in ze perseverance of it.”

Such a leap, taken for the faith of what kuunheku had felt she had had to become and to part from;
she rests her chin to ruddy rock, silenced; the pink of nose wriggling absently at the steamed waters.