Moonspear one night the clock struck twelve

She was soft-spoken, so very different from the other girls he knew. Mira was rough, Sialuk was bubbly, Mintaka had a certain airy lilt to her voice even, but Ciri? There was a timidness beneath the tension of her voice, a wavering note here and there that made him doubt for a moment if she truly wanted to come. Uncertainty was something that Altair did not know a lot of; he eked confidence. He may have even been a little too self-assured for his own good in the right company.

“Well, c’mon then,” he said decisively, flicking his head over his shoulder.

If she wanted to go though, at least for real, then he would oblige and take up the company.

He didn’t look to see if she was going to follow as he turned back, setting his sights for the trail that he had abandoned in the middle of its own forging by his hand. It was better that they stayed off the main paths anyway—he didn’t want to get caught, not at least before he even hit the edge of where he wanted to be.

“You’ll have to be quiet, well, we’ll have to be quiet,” he went on, his voice dropping low into a whisper. “If we get caught my mom’s gonna be real mad. Probably my dad too,” though perhaps in not so many words. He knew his father would be disappointed, and the look of such would be warning enough. His mother, however, would be far more stern and desire to ground the rules in.

The rules never seemed to end at that.

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