Who knows where things changed and fell apart. Maybe it was when they realized they'd likely have to watch their own Convocation die again and again. It wouldn't do to get too attached.
But time and absence makes it awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe not physically, the weight leaned against him is negligible and hardly full of sharp objects, but it all just seems so ... utterly intimate, so completely opposite of what had been comfortable centuries of habit and pattern. The uncertainty of it keeps instability bubbling up into anything truly concrete, just little sparks of annoyance at every shift and move that inevitably settles itself back down in short order.
It fights two very different sets of behavior, neither of which is overly keen on it - but it is necessary.
And it doesn't feel bad, to feel someone else's breath against his body, the muted pulse of another, or fingers working their way through his feathers. It felt better than solitude, it felt appropriate and right, which meant of course it wasn't, and he should be careful.
"I'm not sure it's the moons." Can he be sure? Not at all. "It's ... distinctly different, now versus a few minutes ago." How was it different? Lahabrea wasn't exactly sure, it wasn't something he could get his teeth around. That it seemed easier in turn seemed like an inexact explanation, and his inability to formulate anything ELSE spiked his annoyance significantly. Language defined thought, and if he couldn't find a word for it, him of all people--
But the seething monster beneath his skin lingers, chewing away at the edges of alert consciousness constantly. It's a little strange, how it's both distinct and utterly the same as Lahabrea, less as if someone had simply dropped a dragon in the back of his mind and more simply added a few elements to reshape what had already been. There's no immediate response to Elidibus' question as to what he feels in return, for this takes stillness and reflection. This takes pushing aside the endless storm of turmoil and trying to find a focus point instead.
His hands itched to continue the work he'd set himself to earlier, simply to continue to direct his thoughts. He leans forward slightly, more flexible than he usually gets to enjoy in a hyur body, blond hair and feathers a pale curtain easily long enough to dangle to the point of touching Elidibus' own dark hair. A not unuseful thing, it traps scent a little better and he was still getting used to adjusted senses. "Very little." The free hand rise, cookie not forgotten but still left where it was on his knee, to gently run a clawtip through that dark hair, not hard enough to even leave a line in its wake. "Not ..."
Frustration again, a quick, hot surge almost felt in skin and breath as much as emotion, a brief temperature spike. Eloquence eludes him, and it shouldn't. "Not a sense of nothingness, as if there were no tug on the other end of a chain. A sense of thought, of consideration and contemplation, of awareness and intelligence, but there is no impression... that you feel." This last is a soft exhalation of heat and faintly minty scent.
"At all. No pain. No fear. No joy or happiness, or rage or sorrow, a presence but little to fill it, an image of a soul and not the passions that motivate one. Like staring at an endless sky through glass, unable to feel the wind or sun, or smell the air."
Touch helped him, redirected the animal that shared his mind whether he wished it or not, but what did it do for a witch? Did they suffer any turmoil? He could pick up nothing that felt like a constant disruption. "Do you feel? Can I make you feel, I wonder."
no subject
But time and absence makes it awkward and uncomfortable. Maybe not physically, the weight leaned against him is negligible and hardly full of sharp objects, but it all just seems so ... utterly intimate, so completely opposite of what had been comfortable centuries of habit and pattern. The uncertainty of it keeps instability bubbling up into anything truly concrete, just little sparks of annoyance at every shift and move that inevitably settles itself back down in short order.
It fights two very different sets of behavior, neither of which is overly keen on it - but it is necessary.
And it doesn't feel bad, to feel someone else's breath against his body, the muted pulse of another, or fingers working their way through his feathers. It felt better than solitude, it felt appropriate and right, which meant of course it wasn't, and he should be careful.
"I'm not sure it's the moons." Can he be sure? Not at all. "It's ... distinctly different, now versus a few minutes ago." How was it different? Lahabrea wasn't exactly sure, it wasn't something he could get his teeth around. That it seemed easier in turn seemed like an inexact explanation, and his inability to formulate anything ELSE spiked his annoyance significantly. Language defined thought, and if he couldn't find a word for it, him of all people--
But the seething monster beneath his skin lingers, chewing away at the edges of alert consciousness constantly. It's a little strange, how it's both distinct and utterly the same as Lahabrea, less as if someone had simply dropped a dragon in the back of his mind and more simply added a few elements to reshape what had already been. There's no immediate response to Elidibus' question as to what he feels in return, for this takes stillness and reflection. This takes pushing aside the endless storm of turmoil and trying to find a focus point instead.
His hands itched to continue the work he'd set himself to earlier, simply to continue to direct his thoughts. He leans forward slightly, more flexible than he usually gets to enjoy in a hyur body, blond hair and feathers a pale curtain easily long enough to dangle to the point of touching Elidibus' own dark hair. A not unuseful thing, it traps scent a little better and he was still getting used to adjusted senses. "Very little." The free hand rise, cookie not forgotten but still left where it was on his knee, to gently run a clawtip through that dark hair, not hard enough to even leave a line in its wake. "Not ..."
Frustration again, a quick, hot surge almost felt in skin and breath as much as emotion, a brief temperature spike. Eloquence eludes him, and it shouldn't. "Not a sense of nothingness, as if there were no tug on the other end of a chain. A sense of thought, of consideration and contemplation, of awareness and intelligence, but there is no impression... that you feel." This last is a soft exhalation of heat and faintly minty scent.
"At all. No pain. No fear. No joy or happiness, or rage or sorrow, a presence but little to fill it, an image of a soul and not the passions that motivate one. Like staring at an endless sky through glass, unable to feel the wind or sun, or smell the air."
Touch helped him, redirected the animal that shared his mind whether he wished it or not, but what did it do for a witch? Did they suffer any turmoil? He could pick up nothing that felt like a constant disruption. "Do you feel? Can I make you feel, I wonder."