Stillness. A sole sharp movement - in moments after the stuttering beginning dies. After the justification is stifled on the pink lips. Quelled. All by a dying god himself. The one, who would be but a man. The motion - a burst of color. Violet from beneath the embrace of the cloak. Refraction of the setting sun. Felassan’s eyes rise - level with the face of the Wolf. A first meeting.
The Slow Arrow stands a little taller. A little bolder. Greater. Their chest rises tenaciously. Heels stay planted where they were - in the decay of the indifferent groves, so vibrant with life. For a moment instinct held his ribs in the halting clutches of terror.
“ Of course not, “ is given in an easy murmur, voice curling coldly around the trace of the hindered meaning. So scarcely amused, so very close. Almost familiar cadence. Then, they listen.
A springy step. Moss consumes the noise. “ Ah, see? That’s a bit better. Something to figure the logistics of, later. Revas will be thrilled. “
Another step. Weary hands slip into the folds. Under the light returns the simple blade, so very close to the soft, vulnerable belly only clad in clothes. Felassan twirls it, hilt first. A hum, deep in the slender throat. Never once had they looked away, now.
“ And — that … You can carve the next one, “ like the rest of us. “ I’ll show you how. “
He does not quail before the watchful eyes. The elf is still a stranger to him, for all the time spent traveling together, he knows so little of they whom he hunts beside. The Slow Arrow is a creature stitched of inconsistencies, a composite of memories that Fen’Harel knows will not be his to claim. Felassan bears enough through the ink on his skin, a memory he refuses to have taken from him, to be made undone. Some things, Fen’Harel has learned, cannot be not be scourged, even long after the scar has faded. Felassan, he thinks, wishes to show that. To make it his.
Still, Fen’Harel cannot help but recall another pair of eyes looking back at him, hungry, hunter’s eyes, and a fleet step far quieter even than his.
This time he holds his tongue, humbled now by the outburst that almost was. It cuts him more to know its coldness. Its pride.
He watches the chill glint of the knife, the deft brown digits, and takes the proferred tool, fingers closing around the solid grain of the hilt.
