#{ so i don't know blazing blade at all forgive me LOL

[hosannan]

Occhiolism!!!!

(obscure feelings) meme— drabbles. Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

               "Princess." He starts.

               "Nanna, if you're so inclined."

               "Kid." He finishes.

               Nobles. The lot of 'em weaving a cursory set of rules only to have 'em strewn on the floor—he doesn't really get the way they mount themselves on titles and the low beat of a distant drum. Mighty fuckin' convenient if you asked him. (But he's a sellsword— a mercenary. He'll march to this bedlam if there's a long enough pocket-string attached.) But, sure. Yeah. Fine. If she's Nanna, she's Nanna. Linus thinks the lass needs a second stool; she's so petite, he wonders if girls like her were made in the same place Nino was.

               (You know.)

               "Mister Reed." She makes him swallow on his finish with the way her smile reaches her eyes.

               (Where they crushed common sage and lemon balm and made girls of the same ilk as the sun.)

               "Ah, that ain't even how my ol' man would want to go by! Come on, kid, you're killin' me here!" His mug meets the unpolished table with a banal thud, the weight of his words notwithstanding that gaze of olive and emerald. She has no business with him, no, but sticks around thinking he's got enough bedrock to be shaken. "I'm usually the one hitting rounds 'round here. Talky sort, and th' like. And sure, right. We may have been strung int'a the typical pickpocket bullshit that comes with the turf, but I hardly think that's conversation worthy."

               Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. When a fiddlin' thief tried to slip his hands into Linus' coat, it was a test to see which finger got the firecracker treatment first. Except. That time mercy came with a swift twist of a wrist, and a cinnamon girl lifting the stranger's whole arm skyward in the middle of a busy street.

               "Hey! Is someone missing a hand? I found it in another man's pocket." She ends the fiend before he begins, enacting a will that felt so radically different from Linus' own. Piece of shit went flying by the seat of his pants, away from prying eyes and the saltiest condemnation à la judge, jury, and fanged execution.

               While Linus had had the best laugh of the day back when, now was different. Now was not some extraordinary day, just a card from the same ol' mundane. What could a princess make of the mundane?

               "I don't see why you're so opposed, but if it displeases you, I'm off then."

               Was she even old enough to drink? He doesn't mean to, but halts her by the heels with a question that's been boggling him to hell and back.

               "Listen, kid. What's there to talk about? What are you going to get from it?"

               "Do I need to get something from it to get to know you?"

               "You're never gonna get me, even if you tried."

               "You make yourself out to be a myth." She bats.

               "And you, a sage." He bats back.

               She releases an airy scoff from her nose. "Hardly. I would love that worldliness, but all I have is what I know."

               "And what do you know?"

               "That it's men like you living from day to day that make our world wider. You cannot bear witness to the horizon if you cannot listen to the pulse of the people."

               A snort. "Ah, so that's it, is it? I'm a pulse? You're the hand from above, trying to feel for me?"

               "I was born of flesh and grew up by the coast—with not much to come by besides my makeshift family. Reformed bandits, struggling off the lands because of the tariffs of my forefathers." There's a fondness, a regret, a nostalgia tinging her voice like a spritz of sea salt. It's that look in her eyes that makes even a distant memory feel so close he could share it. He sifts through the same sort of memory, as Bern's common folk made even a mad dog honorable. "There's no reaching from above when I was already at sea level to begin with."

               "Huh."

               "Huh." She smiles, matching his beat.

               In the back of his mind, he hears the low beat of a distant drum. And wonders if, of all people, it's actually his.

               He raises a hand to the barkeep, with a toothy grin gradually growing in peculiar amusement. Fangs and all.

               "Can we get this girl a drink? I wanna hear what she's got t'say."

—End.