The smile deepens, the prominent threat it suggests widens.

He waits, patiently and with a queer gleam in his eyes – it could be precious amusement, it could be scorn. As his face remains unmoving, save for the brutality of that slow smile on his lips, it is hard to discern just exactly what pointed thoughts his mind brush against. Surely, it cannot be pleasantries.

“Seele,” the tone in which he chooses to acknowledge her is laced with well-harnessed civility, he looks at her for a moment, offering her a curt nod in exchange for his name. Then, his wintry eyes return to the milk-white ghost in front of him, but Skywalker refrains from speaking, as if the meek and fallow slights thrown did not exist. And for a long while he remains in the grasp of a sepulchral quiet, with austerity cradled in the dark lines of his face. He does not speak yet but he moves. Slow and soft he takes a step, and then another – still his face is unmoving, still his eyes refuse to betray even the slightest wisp of sentiment therein. Skywalker, black as an oilspill, is a master of thespian antics and a ventriloquist of suspense; what to make with poor Arlo, he has long since decided but for the sake of entertainment he will keep his secrets a little longer. “It does not surprise me that you are unsure,” there his lips form into a whisper and he stops, nose to nose with Arlo, like night bleeding into a washed out dawn, “all pry and wonder you do strike me as someone of certain… insecurities?”

Crooked and askew the question hangs between them and Skywalker is careful to keep his allusive smile lopsided and the muscles in his shoulders relaxed. Magically, the flies have dispersed, shattered like glass and spread to the wind like cremated ash.

“Perhaps, cream-nose, that is exactly what you have to do,” his voice is honeyed but wears the viscous sheen of tar nonetheless, slipping between them on its own accord. Skywalker blinks and assumes the guise of mortar on stone, wondering how much he will erode on the seemingly short temper of his company. “But I digress. I was not a part of the Asylum during the invasion, so why should I cater to its needs before being deemed worthy?” He tilts his head ever so slightly and exhales gingerly, letting his breath crawl up the ridge of Arlo’s nose. There exists nothing of the harsh or chiding in him but the passiveness he has chosen to uphold before the white stallion is pregnant with threat and provocation no less. But let the milk-white boy make his own assumptions – let him stumble on the roots of his own mistakes. “It is admirable, indeed, that you did heed the call of your commanders – but forgive me if I do not applaud you. Obeying orders is what is expected of a pawn, after all.”

Glancing back at Seele he wonders how much she knows of a certain agreement. Little, at best, he thinks amusedly, contemplating who has the shortest shadow of influence, Eris or Seele?

“Do you know what happens to children who play at the games of adults?”

They fail.

S K Y W A L K E R.

OOC: Sorry for the awful post.