*For context, this is a conceptual piece for what I'd imagine Arthur would turn out to be.*
Foolish it would be to assume that the expression of Arthur Audun would not be one of perpetual annoyance. Frozen like marble in a grimace of distaste, as though he had drunk deep from a chalice of something most sour.
His mother had bestowed the frowning crease between his eyebrows. Yet his father had given him the laugh lines around his mouth.
His jaw was strong, chiselled, to juxtapose the effeminate nature of his eyes which were lined with long, dark lashes that matched the notable tresses of black hair hanging in effortless waves around the sharp angles of his face.
His eyes were heavy-lidded to blend the dissatisfaction of his expression to something of an allure. Yet they were darkened by the lack of much rest, branding him almost sickly-looking. The boy, shamelessly so, was handsome despite this; to the point of near infatuation when in the presence of doe-eyed girls to whom he paid no mind.
At a glance, he was eighteen or nineteen - young enough to be shadowed by an entourage of his mother's most trusted, albeit old enough to obtain the glimmering stares of a town's most naive young women, many of whom bore a wider display of ribbon-strung plaits than brains.
Attracting the rather dim-witted crowd of lustful women had been a trait inherited from his father.
Often times, a book was poised in his hand. Spindly, white fingers, one adorned with the family crest upon a dull ring, clutched around a rich leather-bound spine which seemed to match, quite perfectly, with the clothes hanging from his thin frame.
A further note about his hands, however, for the palms were red, raw and peeling. A result of excessive hand washing and indicative of obsessively probing thoughts that would not leave him for mere more than a second to rest.
He was tall, slim. With an aristocratic paleness to lay favour to the sickliness of his pallor. Collarbones protruded absurdly from the white skin, weighted under a delicate silver chain - the amulet hidden beneath the front of his luxe shirt. He had once before been captured in an oil painting, hung with majesty above the mantle in a large manor house so to find him now, in such a regular setting, was striking. He was illusive, exclusive. A world away from the general riff-raff and even then, he did not seem to notice the fact that he stuck out like a sore thumb. For he was often consumed by the pages of a book, gifted so lovingly by his mother.
