That he could so quickly understand her was something that simple Illynx would be slow to catch onto, so used to others only seeing her as whatever preconceived image they had contrived from rumors and hear-say that she rarely expected one clever enough to read the book before relying on previews. It was not that she assumed him to be stupid; she never assumed such things. She simply assumed him to be ordinary, like all the rest, just with a much more attractive physical arrangement than most of them could boast.

After all, he was a soldier, potentially only muscle and an athlete’s delectable build, a stoic exterior disguising a plain and lifeless thought pattern.

But no soldier held such fire in the depths of their eyes as he did, and while she reserved the notion that some men had learned tricks to mislead (for surely, it was taking an effect on her, gazing deep into those oceans of his) and most men were unworthy of a second glance. He reminded her, in ways, of Ulrik, a hint of savagery tamed by an icy persona, and in other ways, of the moon flower stallion, Ciceron.

Ciceron was no Ulrik. He was a gentleman, a man of kind words and simple truths, few and far between in this hate ridden world. That Torleik had landed himself somewhere in between and was strikingly attractive was intriguing enough to lure her into any conversation he desired of her, no matter if his head was full of gleaming brilliance or goose down.

A girl had to have some standards, after all.

She laughs at the jest thrown at the Engineer, a soft and delicate thing that is true and dampened by her sadness. Casting him a playful glance she retorts. "Staring at bits of metal on the ground?" she draws from her own memory, an added gleam reaching her eyes as she remembers the outcome of that meeting; he had scurried away from her as soon as they’d reached her cave, as if entering the moss gateway into her abode would curse him.

Looking away and gaining a more serious expression to her features, she is drawn back by tender promises that tug at her broken soul.

Even as she slips into Torleik’s gaze, longing for his words of eternal companionship to be true at least in the smallest form, she desires to see him walk away. She does not believe that he is as she is, or that he ever will be. Moon flower could not be as wretched a creature in his worst hour as she in her greatest, and the gentle depths of those eyes sold the dual horned man before her out.

He was not hard, and brittle as she was. He was steel, unbreakable and flexing with the blows of time. She would only leave rust along his blade.

His next words leave her knees feeling bloodless and weak, though she does not fall and they do not tremble and somehow manages to hold his eyes with her own with minimal reaction. It isn’t the first time she’d been wooed by words (Tolio, Deodat, Ciceron, how many others that she cannot immediately name?), and its perhaps the only reason that holds her, for she is deep in a well of pity and abandonment and is so easily manipulated by such wit and charm blended with the consolation she had found in his company. Silently, she thanks the Gods as he changes the subject, her hormonally blitzed mind taking a moment to process what it was that he had said.

Her eyes grow wide, her smile quick to follow suit once she grasps that he is serious.

"Then let’s go," she says, quickly, a blur of a syllables in the wintry air, "as we walk I can tell you more of your chosen home." She pauses, eyes growing broad once more, but for a secondary reason, her ears flitting back atop her head and smile wry as she apologizes for her immediate desire to go. "Or… whenever you’re ready to go. I don’t mean to rush you."