@whxrlwxnd
The marble walls and buildings have always felt wrong to him, too sterile for something meant to be soaked in tradition, but up here, overlooking the waves, he thinks he can understand the appeal. Cole breathes with the swell of the tides, taking salt-soaked air into his lungs as the wind brushes past him to sway the branches he’s perched on in a soothing, rocking rhythm.
He is still as he watches the man-malak-seraph in the makeshift cradle a level below him, careful not to disturb him so long as he clings to sleep. Perhaps the sun and the wind are helping him, because his dreams today are warm and vague; no sharp-tipped nightmares plague him this time, which Cole is glad for.
He will be careful, this time. He has learned from previous mistakes that those who hide pain behind smiles and laughter do not give their secrets up easily, even if they’re already known. He had made himself not be noticed when he climbed up here, and he will do his best to dance around the topic at first, though it is a dance he cannot understand the reasons for. He does not want the Oathkeeper to run as others have before.
His chest aches, suddenly, at the memory of the Iron Bull; diamond-hard beneath a boisterous exterior, but soft, too, and kind. Kind, even, to a strange spirit who dug in my head like it’s nothing, uncovering shit that needs to stay buried: weird, squirrelly kid instead of demon, monster, Fade-thing lurking -
Oh - Cole has wandered again, and in the meantime Zaveid the Oathkeeper has woken. He reveals himself slowly, slipping from the shadows into sight, reaching out a hand to reassure the inquisitive winds that swirl around his body.
(Winds are playful things, and Cole likes them; he is glad that there is someone to guide them who is kind.)
“Is it right to use the name that I know, if I shouldn’t know it?” he asks, crouched just above his target’s branches. “If it is a gift meant to be given, but I have it anyway, would you prefer if I used it, or called you as others do? And if I did, would it be in this language, or the other?”
