(continued from here @duskrecluse )
Destiney didn’t show any sign of being afraid of him. Her hands were folded behind her back casually as she looked at him. Daisy fluttered off her shoulder to go plop her sparkly butt onto a nearby rock. Almost as if the fairy was giving the two of them space.
“Because I want to.” She said it casually as she looked up at the night sky and closed her eyes for a moment. She looks down at the water before crouching down to pick up a pebble. She plunks it into the water. “Do I need a reason to want to help someone or be their friend?“ Another pebble and another plunk into the water. Her voice dropping softly. “I know what it is like to want to be alone and isolated. The guilt and pain that eats away at the cracks in your soul. It’s in your behavior tonight. I can see the storm in your eyes.”
She blows out a sigh as she dusts her hands off on her pants as she stands up and looks at him with a smile. “Then again maybe I assume too much. Besides! Maybe I just have a weakness for beautiful music. Maybe I’m just jealous the woods get to hear it so purely and unaffected.”
‘I can see the storm in your eyes,’ Destiney says, and the rest of the world turns to white noise. The aforementioned eyes widen and Bast stumbles a half-step backward. It must be an inadvertently accurate turn of phrase. There’s no way she could know.
She keeps talking- as if her words have not already set him reeling. Basteaux struggles to comprehend her continuing speech, to cudgel his mind into properly hearing and translating sounds into words. He’s better than this. He can hold a proper conversation without going to pieces. Even intoxicated, he can do this.
“You may have some understanding of being alone,” he finally agrees, his smooth baritone cracked and jagged. “But this is not nearly so simple. Trust me when I say that I am not the man you seem to think I am. You’d do better to stay away from me, and I should know better than to allow you to have gotten this far. Especially if you see the storm in my eyes. That should be your direst indicator to run.”
A slight tilt of her head, a curious look in her gaze. Still no hint of fear or that she might turn and run away. Too stubborn for her own good maybe. Yet playing with other dangerous predators had seemed to numb her fear. Or maybe she didn’t really fear her own death. It was hard to say. Something she hadn’t really giving a lot of thought to.
“Basteaux… Nothing in life is simple. I’d be a fool if I thought that way. I have seen and been through so much in the last eight years. I appreciate your concern for my well being however… I don’t scare that easily. But…” She holds her arms out wide, her expression as calm as her voice. “Do not decide for me what is best for me. If you are such a danger then prove it. I think you don’t give yourself enough credit.” She moves a arm forward, almost extending the hand towards Bast as if to offer him her hand. Soft icy blue aether flickering at her fingertips. “I can protect myself.”
“The Basteaux I met… The Basteaux I see… Is strong. Yet I see something wrong as well. I just want to help. Because I care.”
“It is better for everyone that I do not ‘prove it’,” Basteaux replies. “It is not a lure I give into by choice.” As Destiney reaches toward him, the aether dancing on her fingertips, Bast actually recoils and takes several more steps away from her.
After a moment of watching the play of light on her hand, Basteaux lifts his gaze to meet Destiney’s. When he speaks it’s with more stability, although there’s a brittle aspect like they’re both walking a fine line. “What is magic to you, Destiney? Is it a tool? A means to an end? A drug that you need to keep getting a fix of to survive?” The change of subject is abrupt and the questions are anything but shy or tentative. Yet he still appears to be the one feeling fear.
Destiney hadn’t missed that recoil at her aether use. Her hand closed and the sparkling light vanished. His questions making her contemplative. Her hand opens again as she glances off towards Daisy on the rock. The sparkling fairy flutters over to the waiting hand, spinning about like a dancer.
“Magic is not a drug. Nor is it entirely a tool or a means to an end. Magic for me is life. It is not good nor is it evil. It is all in how one decides to use it. I am still breathing after I tried to kill myself because of the very magic I can now preform.” She smiles at Daisy as the fairy stops spinning to sit down on her hand, little feet dangling over the side of her hand and kicking in the air. “Daisy once worked alongside my Uncle and together they saved my life.” A small, soft smile as she moved her gaze from her companion to the duskwight. “I use it to heal. To save lives as mine was saved. I might still at times work with a bow as that day that we met. But my main profession now is as a healer. Yet Daisy is a product of that magic and I would never consider her a tool. She has her own personality. She is her own being. Much like the elementals that call the Twelveswood home.”
Spirit of the Warlock 