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A faint yell startles Nasreen out of her daydreams, and she looks up to find that she is not alone. Above, a dark figure plummets and twirls in a series of acrobatic acts that take the mare’s breath away. Fascinated, she looks on from below. It reminds her of a performance she saw in the Th’orquian court as a filly—then, she had been too young to fly, but the memories of the dancers’ intricate movements have never left her. She can’t help but giggle in delight at the surprise corkscrew and gasp in awe as the stranger flies upside-down. How does one work up the nerve to do it? She’d been practicing her flying on her own, and her efforts had been rewarded, but still—she’d never dared to try anything more dangerous than speeding along and around the steep and cloudy cliffs of the Heavenly Fields.
Nasreen is so caught up in watching that when the stranger lands, it takes her a moment to realize that he is not a stranger after all. “Enjoying the weather, Nasreen?” he calls out, and suddenly, she feels as if she’s the one dropping into a dive: her belly swoops dramatically, and her breath catches in her throat. Bucephalus. Of course the dancer from the Rotunda would take his cavorting to the sky, she thinks, a shy smile spreading unbidden across her face. It’s funny; last year she would have fled from the boy, but today…well, perhaps it is because she knows him, she reasons, that she does not find him so frightening as all of the others. Still, he is intimidating somehow. The princess does not feel as if he is dangerous per se; she has little fear of him chasing or harming her, but there is something…Perhaps it is the feeling that he is watching somehow, the sensation that every little thing she does or says in some way holds more weight when she is with him. It makes her nervous, yet strangely, she doesn’t want him to go away. It’s all a most curious thing.
Oh, but he asked her a question! How stupid and dull she must look, standing there just staring at him with her half-parted lips like some court jester—no, worse than a jester, for at least jesters weren’t as boring as she must seem. “Oh, yes! You’re—that was—I mean, it’s beautiful today,” she chirps awkwardly, words all in a rush. But misfortune isn’t finished with her yet, for she has the bad luck to time her delayed reply with his next comment. What did he say about winter? “My apologies; I didn’t mean to interrupt!” she sputters, looking to him anxiously. What a fool he must think her!
@[Bucephalus]
"speech"
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