#naavarre

[ryhdian]

𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧  ...  evening      𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞  …  on the balcony of private chambers overlooking the sea      𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡  …  navarre  (  @naavarre  )

The dusk is brisk,      the weather of cold winter months augmented by an evening gale as he steps out to haunt the air.      He needs solitude,      an elf’s touch of sleep that hadn’t truly shown its full body since he’d arrived from the road.      He is skin and bone,      like the white husks left in the valley they now pursue.      And stifled,      he finds himself set apart.     He listens to the stillness that sits heavy before the storm,      the occasional sounds of a salty wind slapping banners like ripped sails      —      one with a starry emblem that tears and glides into the lead-dark sea,      the night sky soaked black and unrecognisable.      On the balcony where he waits,      he watches the standard slip from Vinnesse,      but his stare does not linger.      His palms come to rest atop the balustrade,      pale eyes studying the clouding atmosphere as the surf belts the shore.      It is another place far from Elendim,      a sore reminder that he has not seen the expanse of stars above him,      twined like the rime in Alensier pines for quite some time.

Tonight,      the ranger of him has been stripped bare,      riding leathers,       armoured baldric and grimed boot all exchanged for garments befitting noble birth      ( a keen set of knives still lined beneath the fabric ).      It is a role he’s learned to wear,      but not wholly fit.      An impostor to the discerning,      the stern set of his jaw and muscle,      the war-weary nature of his body,      the calculated glint of his eye all divides him from the youth of a spoilt,      spoon-fed prince.      And for all his play at finery,      his raven crown remained mussed and wild,      the thick of it windblown and tousled.     A heavy exhale bleeds tension from dual shoulders when the silence suddenly turns kinetic,      like air that seems to ripple when solitude is distorted by another’s presence,      his refined hearing first distinguishing the paladin’s steps from the hall several levels beneath him.      Navarre.      He tears his stare from the water,      setting the quiet,      inquisitive weight of his attention upon the figure who come to move from the shade of the doorway.      The slant of his cranium permits a single dark strand slip into the line of his sharp vision,      the collar of his black tunic shifting with the action.

[graverelic]

who? @naavarre where? on a balcony high up in the citadel, vinnesse when? the day before the departure

Nature is overwhelming on it's beauty, cruel on it's disposition, and there is no better place to witness both at their full glory than in one of the towers at the very top of the Citadel. Standing in a balcony that loomed over the cliffside, Graciela takes a deep breath as she leans upon the banister, eyes wide and unseeing as she loses herself to the crash of the waves against each other and the stone.

The cold does not touch her, her clothes enchanted against the weather to allow for maximum enjoyment, and yet she is not quite comfortable. There is no definitive reason as to why, no other than the lingering whispers of the gauntlet that even now tries to temp her, despite being locked away until they depart the very next day. It's a heavy weight, to know that even locked away for their safety, it is powerful enough to whisper on the minds of all who are close. It is a fearful thing, to know that she will be the last line of defense between it and the warriors that will protect her from harm.

Enraptured on her thoughts as she is, she does not hear the approaching steps until the door leading to the balcony opened before her. It's enough to disrupt her from her musings, and she turns to face the interloper, looking up to meet his eyes. And up, and up, and further up to meet the eyes of the tall behemoth that had been introduced as one Navarre of the Ashen Dawn on the chambers that had held the gauntlet.

"Sir Navarre," she greets with a bobbing nod as she begins tapping her fingers against the stone and offers him a welcoming smile. "Here to enjoy the view as well? Or is it the peace and quiet that calls you?"