Falls

The ebb and flow of flirtation have been his first language for so long that he doesn't immediately understand her reticence to acknowledge the vulnerability he'd offered. The moment passes without comment - positive or negative - and she moves the conversation smoothly onward, rebuffing his advances easily without offering a single word of protest. It would have amused him if he'd understood it for what it was at the time.

As it was, his eyes raked her expression for clues. He noted the way her lashes caught the faint glimmers of moonlight, and the way her lips cradled the words she offered, almost as if they were a gift meant for someone other than him. Her question is rhetorical, and he offers no answer in response. A part of him wonders if his life would have been easier without a propensity to stalk the nighttime hours. Entire portions of his herd and many of his children would never have come into being if he was as rested as easily under the stars as most other creatures.

Her repetition of his name brings him back, and that same roguish smile spreads slowly across his freckled lips. He liked hearing her say his name. He liked the intimacy of hearing each familiar syllable roll from her mouth as she contemplated it, even if the tone of her voice was not the least bit flirtatious. A memory rises in his mind, of the time he'd woken in the Harbor after confronting Marzanna. He didn't know why he had awoken. Perhaps it was premonition, perhaps luck. Either way, he remembered waking and meeting the gaze of a dark feline in the shadows, her gold eyes glaring into his green. He'd had little experience with the carnivorous fauna of Atlantis then, but he remembered the chill that raced down his spine as he lay prone before her.

He remembered the feeling of being - not helpless, not quite - but vulnerable. Prey. And as the shecat turned away from him to slip deeper into the darkness, he was left with a strange feeling of inadequacy. As if the shecat had judged him not too difficult to take on, but unworthy of her time.

He got the same feeling from Rim.

The spicy little mare cuts him off before the petname can gain traction in their conversation, once again stalling his attempt to build a bridge of familiarity. His lips press together as he works to conceal his agitation, but almost immediately soften into an amused grin. Fine, if she wanted to play it that way, he would join in. "Rim," he said, letting her single syllable roll around in his mouth for a moment before letting his lips crack wider. "It fits."

Offering no further explanation, Solomon falls quiet to listen to her confirm his earlier assumption that she was new to the islands. It wasn't that she seemed unconfident in anyway, but there was always a sense of otherness that seemed to linger on new arrivals. He still caught whiffs of it on his own coat at strange times, despite how long he'd spent cocooned in the Cove.

"This place, well," he mused, his gaze drifting from her to survey the dark shadows of the treeline and the waterfall beyond. "Its nothing like where I came from." Memories flicker through his faraway gaze but he does not linger long in the past; with a flick of his tail his gaze cuts back to hers. "The problems are the same, though. Are you running from something, Rim? Or to it?"

Solomon