"There's Gold in Our Eyes" [Open]

[Destyn]

"There's Gold in Our Eyes"
14 Searing 124
A Patch of Woods

► Show Spoiler

On the outskirts of Kalzasi, not far off a a road leading into the city, a young Fae was passing the hours by terrorising the insect population. The loud, telltale call of cicadas beckoned him to fly on far larger wings to snap them up where they buzzed and pop them into his mouth with a satisfying crunch.

"An-bhlasta!" Destyn exclaimed to no one in particular as he munched on a particularly bulbous specimen, which was on the verge of shedded its shell, but hadn't which lent a particularly satisfying quality to the crunchy texture. Far away in Sol'Valen, his friends had been invited to some fancy function from which he'd been excluded. It wouldn't occur to him to be offended, but he was irritated that he had no access to them on a day when he had nothing else in particular to do.

Having now spent a bit of time in the Hytori capital which had birthed two of his favourite people, Destyn had subconsciously begun to adopt a particular elven feature that he did not typically wear. His once rounded ears had pinched their tips to points over the course of a gradual process that took place while he slept over the course of two weeks. At this point, at least while clothed, he looked like an Hytori with wings. He already had a lot of similar features, given his flaxen hair and sunkissed skin, so the addition of elven ears was hardly a stretch. Well, perhaps in a literal sense they'd stretched, but that was beside the point.

In the meantime, the sun was setting and the sounds of cicadas were beginning to give way to the song of crickets. If the woodlands were Destyn's restaurant, then it seemed the lunch hour was passing over into dinnertime. He alighted on a patch of grass, and perked his newly pointed ears to listen for more snacks, but it was not insect song that caught his attention straight away, but the snapping of twigs caused by the footfalls of a much larger creature. His wide eyes turned to fall upon the interloper, and he tilted his head at them, looking as though he'd just been caught at some sort of mischief.

[Hilana Chenzira]

Athalia didn't even bother asking Hilana if she was certain of the way that she had been going. But what she had reminded her, over an hour ago, was that if they weren't back soon, then they should likely use the Ring to return to Maze manor lest someone there send a search party for them. However, her younger sister was still foraging and gathering - not just for her, but for their friends here and at home. There were a number of plants that Vasilei had told her to look for while they were up north and this was one of the better times to be doing it. The weather was cooperative - certainly not as warm as Atraxia, but nothing truly was - and the featherlight satchels that both of them had were getting steadily filled with bags and sacks of plants. Everything from lamb's ears to gelsemium, calamus to witch hazel, pewterworts to horsetails. But her biggest prize was the lily aletris... true unicorn root. She had collected a number of them.

Medicinal plants weren't the only thing - they had come across a couple berry patches, and deemed safe, Lia was enjoying a few of them as they walked on. Hilana's brown eyes were searching for more goodies, more plants to pluck and take home. The Vastiana sisters were steadily making their way back towards the city, especially now that Hilana had brought them back to the road. The pair might have seemed an easy target if someone had a mind to do it, but fortunately, it hadn't come to that.

"Lia, here. A few more," Hilana stepped off of the road, heading into the foliage again. Her long, multicoloured jewel-toned skirts had been tied with a hip scarf in order to keep the hems off of the ground, giving her a little more freedom of movement. Lia knew she was going to have to push her to get some less full ones if she wanted to keep exploring places like this. There were endless amounts of branches and brambles, sticks and twigs and stones and such skirts got caught far more easily than they did on the wind-swept sands.

The two foreign women blinked at the winged Fae in the forest, and Hilana offered one of her usual sunny smiles. "Oh, hello, sorry to interrupt you," she greeted him in Common. She hadn't expected to see anyone here, much less a Fae. And as far as she knew, this was her first time seeing a proper one - not counting the horned hybrid that had kicked the bucket and left the mortal coil.

[Destyn]

The Fae who stood, or rather crouched poised to flee, before the sisters Chenzira was a far cry from Æros. He looked like a different species entirely, which may have been less surprising had they known that he was from the opposite court. Æros had been a child of winter, whereas Destyn was summer born and his sunny tones broadcast as much. Ironically, for all the deceased half-breed sought to beseem the Platinum elves so honoured in Solunarium, Destyn effortlessly bore far greater resemblance to an elf than the fallen senatorial delegate. Were it not for that set of translucent double-wings on his back, he looked, for all intents and purposes, like a Golden Elf. It seemed winged elves came in many varieties these days, with draconic, feathered and now insectoid wings represented.

Still frozen and seeming poised to flee at any moment, Destyn offered a tense greeting in response to Hilana:

"Um. Hullo." He said looking from one Vastiana to the other back and forth repeatedly, as if either one might seize upon him at any moment. He hadn't always been so tense around strangers, but he did know that he was close to a roadway and that such passages were haunted by highwaymen and their dastardly ilk. Besides, he'd lost his clan to strange humans and he didn't know the ways of those who stood before him, though they did not resemble the Zaichaeri he'd seen in the past.

"You did not, um... interrupt me. I was not really, you know, doing anything." Although Destyn replied in Common, he had a marked accent. A few of his vowels were rounded where they oughtn't have been, but it was more the lilt and cadence of his speech than the pronunciation that distinguished it.