Eleanor did her best to ignore how Calyx manor scowled at her from the hill overlooking the town, but despite her best efforts, it bore into her like an inanimate gargoyle. And try as she might, the sense that it would come to life and smite her was one she couldn't shake. She refused to feel guilty for rejecting her uncle's invitation to go home for winter break. After all, it was he who had cast the first stone by naming Mutt after a beloved servant; he shouldn't have been surprised by her reaction and ensuing distance. So why did she feel like there was something else afoot? She wasn't able to inspect those thoughts any further as her shoulder knocked against someone else's. |
STOCK➤ Dawnthieves ART ➤AMPHI |
Eleanor felt uncomfortable under the intense scrutiny of his gaze. But she did not waver, lifting her chin to meet it directly. Look, the coiling tension in her body language warned, but see me unafraid. Those pristine mannerisms cultivated in the last year and a half since Cecil took her in, assimilating her into this life rich with culture and prestige, showed just how fragile they were as the slightest pressure formed deep cracks. She gave up trying to bridge their connection in her memory. While it was likely they'd conversed before, and he may have been another pair of lips to have caressed her paw, she wouldn't lose sleep over forgetting his certifiably unattractive face, rugged muscles, or creepy stare. Better still - her antagonism roused Cecil's voice in her mind, sending him into a well-deserved frenzy. By burning this bridge she was also getting one up on her uncle. And that notion was enough to make her smile, though it was a sharp and bitter thing still. |
STOCK➤ Dawnthieves ART ➤AMPHI |
Her insult landed square against his chest… and fell to the ground between their feet. Eleanor realized too late that what she presumed were flecks of rust was actually burnished armor, impenetrable by words alone, as the hulking beast transformed into a colossal creature that eclipsed the sun, and his adjusted posture cast shadows broad enough to swallow her whole. She at least had the decency to look unnerved by the transformation, taking a small step away to follow the new height of his eyes, which were somehow more discerning with his spirit revived. Eleanor had always hated how her paws betrayed her by trembling, hated even more that her traitorous toes wouldn’t curl into the gravel to secure her. Most of all she hated that a dumb hulking stranger had this effect on her at all. Her mouth opened fire off again… And found that all of the available fire was consumed by his lungs and unleashed back into her face, cruel words that singed her cheeks and left burns everywhere they touched. You’re that impoverished. little. bumpkin. A life so long ago it felt like a bad dream suddenly became a solid, crushing weight on her chest. Eleanor’s tears, glittering in the sunlit shafts escaping around his inclined head, were impossible to miss. Trembling on the thin line between fight and flight, she started to put distance between them – moving subtly toward flight. She’d fought before: Fought and fought and fought, against Mutt, against Cecil, and where had it gotten her in the end? All those careful incisions to cut the infection out of the Calyx household, only to find that the organs were damaged beyond repair. It was futile, and this would be too… A weight against her flank expelled the strangled breath from Eleanor’s lungs, lurching forward to stabilize herself. Two rabid gulps replenished the air in them, and with it she regained enough tension in her muscles to subdue her shaking paws, the studs of silver ore in her tearful gaze hardening into diamonds. |