Rough fingers hesitated, then turned their palms skyward to cradle Ceana's hands when she offered them. Brown eyes watched the solemn changeling as he examined her palms, knowing her digits were scuffed by leather tackle, striped by fishing wire, and roughened by many a prick from a hook or two dozen.
Amos ran his fingers along this calloused landscape and tried rough terrain with light prods and probes of questioning fingertips. Ceana bit her bottom lip as she watched him, fidgeting slightly in place and removing one hand briefly to tuck loose chestnut curls behind an ear.
"Yer silence isn't exactly reassuring," she teased softly, trying to catch Mossy's dark eye as the changeling frowned faintly to himself, running his index finger across her lifeline--like a scholar doing his best to follow a text he wasn't yet familiarly-acquainted with.
"Well--y'ave a long life," Amos said seriously--so seriously that Ceana knew he was joking, and she laughed. Amos felt his stomach flip and flutter; suddenly full of moths. Too nervous to be butterflies; for anxiety was an ugly emotion at all times. There was nothing of whimsy to be found with moths; only chaos and a sense of disorientation, old age, and emptiness.
But Ceana didn't need to know that.
Ceana made Amos believe he could pin down a moth and paint its wings with colors and give himself a couple of butterflies to go along with the glass menagerie that was the core of his being.
He smiled faintly at long last as he touched each mark on her hand, walking his index and middle finger across her palm like a wanderer lost in a desert of flesh. Ceana curled her fingers around his softly, watching him with amusement still evident on her heart-shaped face.
"Lots'uv wee ones--" He caught her arched eyebrow and quailed, smiling sheepishly. "Orrrr not, I could've read that wrong, I've been known to fib the truth now an' again..."
"Amos..." Ceana's gently-chiding tone made a few of those moths in his middle do backflips and pirouettes. Ridiculously acrobatic, they were. And surprisingly in-sync with his wild emotions. He met the selkie's dual gaze--human and seal; woman and spirit, and sighed softly. She smelled like the sea and the freedom he found fathomless and fearful as he did wonderful and miraculous.
Drawing her hands up, Amos kissed Ceana's knuckles, still staring at her. The way her brow furrowed and nose crinkled when she laughed. The way she watched him; with eyes that blinked just enough, but remained watchful.
"I was just kidding before," he uttered shyly, though his lips curled mischievously at the corners. "I can't actually read palms." Ceana snorted, leaning forward to reciprocate the kisses he dealt to her hands on his own. Her lips burned with the warmth of sunshine on water.
"I knew it was just an excuse t'get close t'me," Ceana jested, eyes twinkling. Amos caught her mirth with no intention of curing anything so infectiously joyous. He squeezed her hands and their fingers twined, each thinking themselves unworthy of touch in their own way, but finding a happy middle ground of support through their netted hands.
"Ye see right through me," Amos protested, smile wide.
It was nice, to be seen, for a changeling.
