The peasantry's reception of her looks had not struck her as an overly dissolute affair. Though Big Boss and she coincide in the contemporary world Eli's formative years (before her clock stopped still) were spent under an archaic sensibility. Rectitude was prescribed by religion or else the precarious wills of lords who generally left the welfare of children to their families. No wrong could be said to a child that was not markedly explicit, ergo his disapproval surprises her; Eli is, ironically, too old.
Perhaps the storybook motifs in her tale amuse him, in a manner of speaking, because while despots never ceased to thrive the Swedish Empire has faded into the mysticism of antiquity — is material for fiction, and by that virtue echos fiction once revived in her telling.
He looks restless with her hair no longer a tactile focus. Like he might have prolonged the simple act if he could. She places her hand to his chest and nudges — then a bit more forcefully (he's hard to topple). He occupies much of the bed and she crawls to lie on his ribs.
"How did it happen...?" she quietly asks, touching a fingertip to her forehead in respect to the onyx ridge protruding from his skull. "Your arm." She inches closer and her features loom pale above him. "Your eye...."
Thanks, the worst of it is over.
The peasantry's reception of her looks had not struck her as an overly dissolute affair. Though Big Boss and she coincide in the contemporary world Eli's formative years (before her clock stopped still) were spent under an archaic sensibility. Rectitude was prescribed by religion or else the precarious wills of lords who generally left the welfare of children to their families. No wrong could be said to a child that was not markedly explicit, ergo his disapproval surprises her; Eli is, ironically, too old.
Perhaps the storybook motifs in her tale amuse him, in a manner of speaking, because while despots never ceased to thrive the Swedish Empire has faded into the mysticism of antiquity — is material for fiction, and by that virtue echos fiction once revived in her telling.
He looks restless with her hair no longer a tactile focus. Like he might have prolonged the simple act if he could. She places her hand to his chest and nudges — then a bit more forcefully (he's hard to topple). He occupies much of the bed and she crawls to lie on his ribs.
"How did it happen...?" she quietly asks, touching a fingertip to her forehead in respect to the onyx ridge protruding from his skull. "Your arm." She inches closer and her features loom pale above him. "Your eye...."