[Astarion's narrow world: not so narrow any longer.
If years in Thedas didn't do much to weld shut the vulgar, abject cracks in his half-maddened personality (it did. Oh, trust that it did— the hollows buried deep still shudder at the press of every cross-cut breeze, but the shadows that once prowled beneath his eyes are gone, the socketed gauntness in his cheeks has for months now given way to something that brings him closer to the living noble Cazador drew in that fateful night. Closer to the adolescent heart beside him, caught between his cinching fingers), he stands here closer to a life he never lived yet grasps the warmth of just the same: that suffusing smell of day-touched dust and light and heat and life, so vibrant that he bends to it on instinct, pitching like a plant along a sill.
It sets him apart from his false siblings. Makes him unrecognizable to those who knew him best, including the fretful shadow of his own past self. It straightened the bow in his spine; raised the sunken angle of his chin.
Granted him something he'd risk anything to keep safe.
He lingers on that anger first— his red eyes shut for just a moment— familiar as a fine, harsh vintage, and ends with the overlaid reflection of catching one low-set dwarven smile in the bottom of a wine glass, its image upside down amidst a mess of coin and cards.
And like a tide it roams. Recedes.]
You'll enjoy speaking of Kirkwall till the questions turn endless, you mean. [Wry, and insincere for all its teasing, his voice is thready. Stays angled off elsewhere, towards the city's risen spires, and how brightly gold and terra-cotta mix in the hottest swells of the afternoon's glare.
no subject
If years in Thedas didn't do much to weld shut the vulgar, abject cracks in his half-maddened personality (it did. Oh, trust that it did— the hollows buried deep still shudder at the press of every cross-cut breeze, but the shadows that once prowled beneath his eyes are gone, the socketed gauntness in his cheeks has for months now given way to something that brings him closer to the living noble Cazador drew in that fateful night. Closer to the adolescent heart beside him, caught between his cinching fingers), he stands here closer to a life he never lived yet grasps the warmth of just the same: that suffusing smell of day-touched dust and light and heat and life, so vibrant that he bends to it on instinct, pitching like a plant along a sill.
It sets him apart from his false siblings. Makes him unrecognizable to those who knew him best, including the fretful shadow of his own past self. It straightened the bow in his spine; raised the sunken angle of his chin.
Granted him something he'd risk anything to keep safe.
He lingers on that anger first— his red eyes shut for just a moment— familiar as a fine, harsh vintage, and ends with the overlaid reflection of catching one low-set dwarven smile in the bottom of a wine glass, its image upside down amidst a mess of coin and cards.
And like a tide it roams. Recedes.]
You'll enjoy speaking of Kirkwall till the questions turn endless, you mean. [Wry, and insincere for all its teasing, his voice is thready. Stays angled off elsewhere, towards the city's risen spires, and how brightly gold and terra-cotta mix in the hottest swells of the afternoon's glare.
It's beautiful. He'd missed it.]