There she was...
That comely face peering through the crowds of the late morning rush of the markets of Bree, a setting that Dagramir himself had began to frequent with much more tenacity of late. It was this exact moment he had been preparing for, his inevitable encounter with the woman he loved. The ash to the proverbial phoenix he was once audacious enough to believe he embodied. The Raven that still plagued his being like the shadow that lay to his yore, cast across the setting til darkness would lay claim to all it very well could. A meeting he had envisioned within his mind. The bold shouts of how his irreverent distaste for her prior actions had fueled a state of almost hermit quality, for a time he still could not determine, and how, ultimately, the blackened heart he had entrusted into her pure, slender fingers had been crushed beneath her callous grip. Instead, he froze.
While coiled the Viper might well have been, what he was not quite prepared for was the overwhelming flood of emotion that blasted through whatever makeshift dam he had constructed at the gates of his mind. Archaic in her beauty, so he, himself, thought, enough to shatter any pre-existing notions he had spent a considerable amount of time concocting. What made him dart into the shade of a few stacked crates aside a less-than-notable fishmonger, aside from the horrifically delightful smell, of course, was the second item his eyes had laid their stake upon. The arching curves of her turned frame. The blossoming bump that had began to neatly crease into her dark, elegant clothing. Suddenly the base of his throat no longer tasted of honeysuckle and sugar from the sweets he had purchased from the youthful, brown-locked child on his entrance to the markets, but instead lay an overwhelming sickness. A sickness that flooded down his esophagus to rest unsteadily at the apex of his gut. He was no fool, in spite of the docile excuses that attempted to steady his already racing thoughts. The demure siren was blooming, with a babe developing neatly in her abdomen. A babe that, once upon a time, could very well have been his own spawn, from his very own seed-...
Could it be?
"Ú." Preposterous. How could she be carrying such an offspring? Suddenly the Gondorian's mind fired alight with mathematic equations that went a little too quick for his own dulled comprehension. The lack of a time-frame upon his self-imposed exile troubled him greatly. While his mind wracked to figure out solutions to problems he couldn't hope to fathom, the fair Ashaia continued to peruse the stalls in front of him, thankfully heading steadily in the opposite direction. Accompanied by the curving figure of a woman he could only presume to be a friend. That particular face laying continuously absent from his view, he found himself dissatisfied. While he lacked the iron in his loins to so brazenly approach the duo now, he could not adequately satiate his curiousity, and so, he smoothly slicked back into the hustle and bustle, blending amongst the strepitous calls of merchants and traders, amongst housewives and mercenaries alike, to follow the siren's call. The game of cat and mouse began, an amusement that stemmed all the way from his youth, as Dagramir pressed on with his obtuse quest for answers.
With each pause in their motions, carried a pause of his own. Each action expertly matched with a seemingly aimless set of gestures by his own frame. His features always kept blanketed by the cover of bodies, of wood and cloth, of anything he could utilize to keep his presence unbeknownst. The slow-burning courage to finally break forwards and call out her name being ebbed by doubts of his own creation. If the bump in her stomach was not of his design, then of whom is it addressed from? And why did he feel such a putrid desire to imprint the lining of their jaw with his calloused knuckles? This woman broke him down, to the best of his knowledge, for her own benefit. Yet he had a knack for finding love for those who might not have deserved it, at the best times of their meager lives. A knack for loving the unlovables, in spite of its, at times, unrequited nature. Married to the daughter of a glorified man-whore who's desire for attention was hereditary, before following star-crossed nobles into unspoken affairs, and failing to captivate the forever flowing desire of a young huntress, who could still very well be frolicking with unsavoury men of unsavoury origin. Nay, not even the faux perusing of woodwork could still the rippling pools of disgust that littered the back-alleys of his psyche.
How could she? Why would she? Too many items that did not make any form of coherent sense, at least not to he, and too many unanswered queries that would leave him in a horrible self-imposed limbo. For even in spite of his unsettled mind, and the beautifully calculated motions of her, and her compatriot's, bodies, he could not bring his voice to speak. Even if he could have, would he have entertained the answers she may have given him, through whatever means they defined necessary? Yet another question causing his eyes to agitate, and within a few blinks of blurry visage, the black-clothed figure had disappeared within the crowds. Funny. It was always a woman that blunted his guile. He sighed breathily with thoughts of what might have been, and what might well be, before turning his own body around, and heading back the way he had stalked prior. Knowing full well that the next time his azure orbs laid their stake upon her frame, that his mouth could not stay shut. That his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, could no longer remain buried beneath a few shoddy walls of contempt.
Besides, there was more confectionary to buy, and an economy to fuel.
The evocative emotion that gracefully kindled in his core, the very same he had once thought wetted, had just climbed to the top of his list of things to ignore. At least, until fate deemed otherwise.
