Achaius’s face smiled in an understanding sort of way, nodding a little as she tried to clarify her explanation. Behind his well-placed, convivial expression Achaius was watching Nasreen with piqued interest. She held herself self-consciously; a little too tense like she was unaware of how many muscle groups were active. A little shy in the way that she looked away, trying to lose her gaze in the surrounding shadows as though that might also shadow the words she had spoken out loud. There was definitely something picturesque about her stance, the chaste way she came off, the delicacy of her femininity. These were aspects of a so-called higher breeding; a system and a time that put well-bred women on impossible pedestals and taught them pretty behaviours both overtly and covertly. And at the same time she was too shy, and though he invited her to the shared dialogue of double-meaning which was the only real game between young people of her… well, their class, she didn’t pick it up. Something had happened to her, in the time before Helovia, before Dragon’s Throat. Something that made her more interesting, more poignant, more real to him.
He shared her opinion of Ilios, and was glad to see that he was known to her. He was certainly a promising young man, and likely would make interesting, if noble, things of himself. “Thank you,” he said, to her first statement. “I have walked much farther, even as recently as a few weeks ago… Though I have heard that there are present Gods in this land, so I admit that it made me a little apprehensive in my travel, but it seems they have more important things to do than harass travellers.” He laughed a little, an easy falsetto that fell from his lips, mostly to convey that he was not too serious about his concerns. And he wasn’t – Gods were Gods and would do what they did. He had no fear of the uncontrollable aspects of life, he would meet whatever came. He always had.
“I think I know what you mean, Nasreen.” His smile was encouraging, or so he meant it to be. “I was raised in a forested place too and there is still something special about the wind in the leaves overhead, the quiet, softened darkness surrounded by silent gray trees older than all of us.” He looked away too at this point, back the way he had come, though his attention remained on the painted Pegasus across from him. His face turned in the direction of the forest he had left behind, some distance ago. There was a beat of silence, where he mostly tried not to remember the truth of his own statement, and then he turned his gray, friendly but reserved gaze back into her face. “But most good things are better in our memories than in reality – For instance it has been a long time since I felt warm sand gently swallow up my feet.” He glanced down as he spoke, and again for the hundredth or maybe the thousandth time that day something tried to grab his attention from his memory, poking him but not hard enough to pinpoint where the jab was coming from. “Or heard the lulling crash of the surf…” He raised an eyebrow as he spoke again, a soft but not forceful question; “I’m sure the desert has its advantages too?”' He had seen plenty of deserts, though they all tended to be different in some way. Why did the desert remind him of someone? Someone, or something? He was curious to hear what she had to say about it, interested in her experiences.
Achaius.
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[O] We build too many walls (Knock, knock?)
