He doesn't reveal his face—he never does, not unless there's a high chance that the person seeing his face won't be able to recount it later. Instead, he uses the shadows to his advantage-after all, that's what he's born from. Still sitting perched prettily, the demon has a sense to… establish something.
This is the longest that anyone's spoken to him before.
Granted, this is the only time anyone has spoken to him. Others have cried. Many have screamed. No one's held a conversation with him.
"It's unfortunate he's not available to speak to."
Who's he? Him. The other him. The one who's a great conversationalist and can turn any small talk into riveting stories. The demon, while being him, doesn't seem to possess the skill. Perhaps he intentionally doesn't wish to.
He who is the obvious question — is on the tip of her tongue — but if it was a slip of his then maybe she shouldn't, at once, draw his attention to having done so. So,
instead,
“It isn't that I don't wish to speak to you.”
Although she is inclined to think she'd be well within her rights if it were.
Her shoulder aches where she'd landed on the stairs. She is tired, and it is dark, and cold, and she is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Maybe to leave her own clawmarks behind, I was here, even if she's remembered most of all as an inconvenience. At least, she cannot be ignored.
"You expected an abandoned castle to be abandoned." He doesn't ask it as a question. The demon doesn't even know why he does. Perhaps it's Nikolai coming through, his insatiable need to fill the silence with speaking—to talk about shit and not shit, and anything found in between—and his desire to connect. The demon rolls his shoulders. He doesn't like that one bit.
The floor creaks. He's lifted up and off of where he is and lands on the loose wooden panels of the floor—still shaded in shadow. The demon thrives in it.
Footsteps echo. The wooden floor is both empty and full. He doesn't move toward her, staying far away, knowing it's better for his survival… even though he knows he can attack. This sudden birth of a conscience prompts him to scratch at his arm.
Lightning slashes soundlessly against the dark, gloomy sky. The demon's human-like shadow (his wings are the only inhuman part about him) casts along the wall.
"The east wing's floors are caving in." He has no idea why he says it.
Probably if he intended her to go tumbling through those (as well), then he wouldn't have said it, so Gwenaëlle decides that whatever else he might have meant and why he might have said it, she can add to the things about him that she has observed: that he does not wish her to unwarily step through a crumbling floor. It's a low threshold, but a threshold all the same, and she decides to take her victories where she can get them. Better than to be ungrateful, and miss any altogether.
“I'll bear that in mind,” she says, gathering her composure and her dignity about her, tattered things but essential all the same.
Her life hasn't gone the way she envisioned it. None of the ways, even; her worst fears came to pass and she'd had to invent new ones. She has persevered, and persevered, and persevered, and now she is here and when she looks behind her every step had made sense and the sum of them all is—
clutching everything she'd managed to carry, alone with a monster in a storm.
Or: still here. With someone who had rather she not fall through a floor. If you don't like a story, tell a different one. She tacks on, “Thank you,”
and when she is relatively certain that she's oriented east and west, starts to move again, quietly determined. At the very least, she can wait out the night.
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no subject
He doesn't reveal his face—he never does, not unless there's a high chance that the person seeing his face won't be able to recount it later. Instead, he uses the shadows to his advantage-after all, that's what he's born from. Still sitting perched prettily, the demon has a sense to… establish something.
This is the longest that anyone's spoken to him before.
Granted, this is the only time anyone has spoken to him. Others have cried. Many have screamed. No one's held a conversation with him.
"It's unfortunate he's not available to speak to."
Who's he? Him. The other him. The one who's a great conversationalist and can turn any small talk into riveting stories. The demon, while being him, doesn't seem to possess the skill. Perhaps he intentionally doesn't wish to.
no subject
instead,
“It isn't that I don't wish to speak to you.”
Although she is inclined to think she'd be well within her rights if it were.
Her shoulder aches where she'd landed on the stairs. She is tired, and it is dark, and cold, and she is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Maybe to leave her own clawmarks behind, I was here, even if she's remembered most of all as an inconvenience. At least, she cannot be ignored.
“I wasn't expecting company either.”
no subject
The floor creaks. He's lifted up and off of where he is and lands on the loose wooden panels of the floor—still shaded in shadow. The demon thrives in it.
Footsteps echo. The wooden floor is both empty and full. He doesn't move toward her, staying far away, knowing it's better for his survival… even though he knows he can attack. This sudden birth of a conscience prompts him to scratch at his arm.
Lightning slashes soundlessly against the dark, gloomy sky. The demon's human-like shadow (his wings are the only inhuman part about him) casts along the wall.
"The east wing's floors are caving in." He has no idea why he says it.
He intends to leave.
no subject
“I'll bear that in mind,” she says, gathering her composure and her dignity about her, tattered things but essential all the same.
Her life hasn't gone the way she envisioned it. None of the ways, even; her worst fears came to pass and she'd had to invent new ones. She has persevered, and persevered, and persevered, and now she is here and when she looks behind her every step had made sense and the sum of them all is—
clutching everything she'd managed to carry, alone with a monster in a storm.
Or: still here. With someone who had rather she not fall through a floor. If you don't like a story, tell a different one. She tacks on, “Thank you,”
and when she is relatively certain that she's oriented east and west, starts to move again, quietly determined. At the very least, she can wait out the night.