Dorian sees the glow and he's not sure what to make of it at first. Does she have a light in bed with her? Some clever lamp that does not burn? His own house has gaslight, which makes it more sophisticated than many houses in London, but his Grandfather is traditional and still burns lamps, but they are hot to the touch and would not make for a comfortable bedfellow.
He is lost, but when she stands up he can't bring himself to reply. He has never seen anyone so beautiful, so shining; he has never seen someone who is more like a dream. If he is dead, and it would not surprise him, considering his grandfather's affections towards him, he would imagine this being heaven. She seems worried about him, a gesture that Dorian is not at all used to from anyone, particularly pretty women like this one.
On one level he feels guilty for waking her up, and he wants to apologize, because he does not like to be awoken before he is ready, although Grandfather insists on trim tidy mornings at seven or earlier. He opens his mouth to say something, but all he can manage, almost embarrassingly for a boy his age, is, "Are you an angel?"
His response stuns her, but she recognizes something in his eyes as much as anyone can, and this too grabs her attention, stripping her of words for the first time in quite a long while.
"No, I'm....no, definitely not," she laughs, but not at him so much as to cover how silly she feels for being somewhat flattered by it. Oddly or not oddly at all, she would not feel as pleased about it if it came from someone who was not a child. There is, with his query, a youth's innocence about it, traced in white lines of soft wonder that she almost finds kin with, and she feels an almost confusing sense of affection for him in that kinship of wide-eyed and brightness in the dark. It's lovely on him, and she thinks she knows who he is now, though his older self is an austere departure from the boy she sees now. "I'm Yvaine," she says and her smile has her all alight as he hasn't been since she was in the sky, home and far away from the strangeness of dream-fettered realities all thick with a boy from Wall and what he means for her future.
Dorian steps in a little closer, shyly, because he really wants to be near this beautiful person. She makes him feel better about everything he is and everything that his grandfather says, so in that way she is like an angel, even if she claims not to be one. His eyes are a little wide as he tucks his hands respectfully at his sides.
"Hello, Miss Yvaine," he says in his most formal voice, although he is still in awe and it likely shows. "My name is Dorian Gray, and it is very nice to meet you." He pauses.
"You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen," he adds a moment later, spontaneous, his face burning all the way to the tips of his ears. He doesn't know if that's impolite, and he ducks his head after saying it. He hasn't developed his way with words or his gracious manner yet, as slick and false as it may be later in life. "If that's all right to say."
When he steps closer, the star makes no qualms about simply sitting on the ground--appalling no doubt for the women of Dorian's era, boy or otherwise, but even a wooden floor hearkens back to the earth and she minds that not the least bit either.
"Just call me Yvaine," she encourages, hands folding in her lap, all silver and gold and a smile she can feel in her heartbeat. Watching him watch her is most fascinating, and she cannot help but wonder: what changed you? It does not feel, for all that she knows very little of Dorian at present, as if it was simply a matter of growing up. Something changed. She would like to know what, but she tucks that curiosity away for another day, or night, rather. Though Dorian's words on any other day would bring her faster to a quiet sort of uncertainty, as a boy he charms her utterly, almost to the point that she feels foolish for it, but her heart is warmed and she feels no bridle upon her as far as wanting to hide or tone herself back. There is a light in his eyes she thinks she had when she was younger, looking down at the earthspace below like some fantastical land of impossible things. Am I an impossible thing? In some worlds, she knows the answer is yes, but she tries not to think too hard on this, instead pressing a wide smile to something softer at the boy's end qualifier. She shrugs.
"Well, I'm," not a person....she pauses and rethinks that one, "Very flattered," she informs him, deciding against turning the child's world upside down too quickly, even if it might be something children tend to be more compatible with than adults. "And it's quite all right to say. Don't worry," she tells him this because she senses an anxiousness beneath his glow and she wishes to rid him of it. What manner of seriousness rests upon his shoulders, she cannot exactly place, but there is a respectful quality to the shyness that seems tempered by rules, and it is not that all rules are bad, but Yvaine is not one to pass up an opportunity to learn something more if she can, even if it may not be entirely fair when he is a child and does not know he may say things he would, in hindsight and as his normal self, rather have kept under tabs.
"It's nice to meet you," she adds and, thoughtlessly, reaches out to tuck some flyaway strands behind his ear.
It has been so long that someone, anyone, has been nice to Dorian that he does not even register that Yvaine does not act like a lady. It doesn't matter, because even if she says she's not an angel, she must be, one who can save him from his Grandfather, or at least take away the fear of him for a moment or two. He takes a moment before he decides to sit down across from her. She may be an impossible thing, but she is a kind impossible thing, at least for Dorian, who knows so little of kindness. At church the Bible speaks of being kind, of kindness, and maybe that is where Dorian learns it; in his heart he wants someone to love him like the Bible promises he should be loved.
He wonders if she lives here. He wonders if maybe she's been kidnapped as well, like Mara said he was, sort of. That wasn't precisely what Mara said, if Dorian is honest about it, but that is the only solution he can think of. "Do you live here, Mi-Yvaine?" he says, because she told him to call her that, and Dorian is attentive to what she might want. He smiles when she tucks his hair back; he has a memory of that, a far away memory - his mother, maybe, but more likely a nurse before he was breeched and his nurses sent away.
He wonders if he is very good, if she will keep him here. He does not want to return to his big, terrifying house in London, with the attic that his grandfather locks him in.
Every creature deserves love at one point or another, and while some people eventually grow out of that desert and into things too convoluted to chalk things up to black and whites of deserving or not, the star feels that children are generally beyond reproach. Young stars too are treated with the same softness, with sisters to care for missteps and elders to frame them in protection. It is only fair to give little souls the affection and time to become strong enough to withstand other things before all else. She knows nothing specifically of the Bible but she has seen religion in its throes of glory and terror both, the cause of great compassion and the cause of great strife alike and she cannot brook one particular opinion on it, not being of the practice, but that a book would tell the child he should be loved is something she can support.
"I do," she nods, her folded hands readjusting absently, overlapping rather than interlacing. "I didn't always, but I have been here for...quite some time actually," and her smile falters here in fractions but she tries to stave off the upset that edges in on her sudden happiness. "Where do you live?" she asks, because it matters to her quite abruptly that the boy not only feel welcome but as if he is worth asking questions at all. There is everything about a sense of worth in being inquired for and about, and whether a star or a human, a unicorn or even--in some worlds--a witch, this rings true, regardless of whether the individual admits it or not. The dark of the room and the growing night outside only emphasizes the starshine she cannot and will not stifle, but it does not seem to bother young Dorian, so her self-awareness minimizes to nothing at all, content to exist in the moment, star to child, heart to heart for as long as they might.
Dorian notices her glowing but in a typical child's way, he doesn't think anything of it. Or rather, he does; it's more proof that she is not a normal person, it makes her more beautiful, but he is not afraid by it. If she is not an angel, then she must be a star or a dream or something equally lovely. Nothing scary. He listens to her, attentively.
Where he lives; he thinks of London, of the streets and the cobblestones and the horses, of the smoke and the children on the street, of trains and rough hands. His grandfather wants to send him away soon, he knows because he heard the maids talk about it, to a country estate where he can learn to be a man; and Dorian would not mind going. The country is nicer, he thinks; cleaner and maybe a little lonely but pretty and quiet, and no one to hit him.
He thinks of his old townhouse. The house does not scare him, although the attic does - his room is small and warm and there's a piano where he practices every day. "I live in London," he explains. "In a big house, an old house, but it's very beautiful. With my grandfather."
Yvaine memorizes little marks of childhood that give her new interest in the regularly aged Dorian Gray, but this is nothing exceptional. A person's past is, if nothing else, something extra to readjust one's focus on, and even if the piqued thought does not last, the point is more that it was there at all. Where the star only thought of her host in passing and mild gratitude before, she now considers him with the somewhat tantalizing affect of curiosity, or rather, she will. At present she does not consider him at all, completely enthralled with this younger version, slight fear and wonder all tangled up together like a trick of the light.
She does not ask what of your mother, your father because she feels he would have mentioned them if they were relevant to his life in an active sense. As he does not, she gathers her own quiet conclusions and simply nods at his words--once, twice.
"And do you like it there?" she asks instead of prying about parents who no longer seem to be in the boy's tentative picture.
Dorian as an adult will not speak at length on his parents, except to get forgiveness from someone who he has injured, but the child might discuss how his parents are in heaven, how his mother loved him very much but she got ill and so did his father. He wishes that his parents were still alive, even though the house they lived in was small and cramped and always too cold or too hot. It was more home than his elegant home.
"Sometimes I do," Dorian begins honestly, and then the thoughts catch up with his words. "Although I would much prefer to live in the country, I think that I will go there once my grandfather finds a school that he feels is appropriate," he admits, his face pinking up. They are unkind thoughts of his only family, to the person who did not have to take him in but did. Lord Kelso does not let Dorian forget that. He is not a ward, he is a properly brought up member of the family, and Dorian knows he should feel lucky for that. Oliver Twist was not so lucky to have a family. Dorian knows what happens to poor orphans in London.
For a short while, again, the star says nothing, content to simply watch the boy Dorian with the glimmer of a smile. He is young, impossibly young to her at this point, and it intrigues and enchants her all at once, this softness that she thinks she has only seen in the blink of an eye before, and maybe not even then. By the time she speaks the quiet may be read as discomforting to most individuals, but quite at ease with silence herself, the star does not immediately notice the abruptness of her own speech.
"I hope that you get that opportunity," she tells him and she means it, her folded hands pushing together fingers that interlace in a perfect fit of light hued overlap. "Aren't you tired?" she asks, realizing the time and remembering that they are not of the same make, even if she misleads everyone enough for them to think so.
He is tired. He's so tired of being afraid, and that translates into him wanting to curl into her arms and not move for hours. He wouldn't even sleep. He would sit and let his heartbeat synchronize with hers and be quiet, if she would let him. He wonders if it would be rude to ask her.
He shuffles a little closer. "I am, but I don't know if it's safe to sleep here," he tells her, his eyes bright brown and a little shy, and unsure. He wants to be sure, and one day he will be.
She could tell him it's safe, but she does not entirely believe this to be true and she prefers not to lie in certain cases where in others she has exactly no scruples about it whatsoever. This falls into the former category, however, and rather than say all will be well or all may be well, neither of which she can be certain of short of becoming clairvoyant, neither of which she would be certain of anyway having seen the vague and distant young gentleman he becomes--always a healthy arm's length away--Yvaine lets her own heart thread through her actions. A hand rests on his shoulder and then reaches to run through his hair, a soothing gesture that says someone will care for you, and somehow she encourages him to shuffle a little more, closer until he might do as his unread thoughts deem him of wanting to. Her dress is not particularly warm, but the star herself is and within her own reach is a blanket she pulls with near silence from the bed.
The way she drapes it over and around the boy makes it seem artful and knowing, but she knows nothing at all of this, and the warmth she feels is almost frightening. It is the first time she has had that notion, that one she had been so sure of months ago she would never truly have: I will miss this. A gift or a curse or neither, she makes no judgment, but supposing Dorian is comfortable, supposing they stay like this, just a boy and a star and a space for two, that too new thought triggers something old and new all at once.
She has not sung in the way of her kind since falling, but she sings that way now. Perhaps it sets the other heart here dreaming of open distances, places that reach far enough to have the sky and sea kiss over sunrise and for the mountains and the moonlight to converse like old friends. Perhaps he stays right where he is. The song of stars, of each individual star especially, is not the same for every listener, but it accentuates itself in the midst of a quiet power. Pushing on with an absence of speech, even when the song whispers out, her thoughts too make themselves a quiet home in her heart.
Have heart and Thank you and I have never wanted to make someone else feel safe before.
All these things twine and twist into different lines and shapes, deep into the early morning, and when the star sleeps she thinks she dreams she is young again too, but as often is the case in this world between worlds, it is less a dream than a reality. A change in years or not, her slender arms stay softly around the bundled boy who she tries to commit to memory enough that she might recognize him better in the man that he becomes.
He is lost, but when she stands up he can't bring himself to reply. He has never seen anyone so beautiful, so shining; he has never seen someone who is more like a dream. If he is dead, and it would not surprise him, considering his grandfather's affections towards him, he would imagine this being heaven. She seems worried about him, a gesture that Dorian is not at all used to from anyone, particularly pretty women like this one.
On one level he feels guilty for waking her up, and he wants to apologize, because he does not like to be awoken before he is ready, although Grandfather insists on trim tidy mornings at seven or earlier. He opens his mouth to say something, but all he can manage, almost embarrassingly for a boy his age, is, "Are you an angel?"
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"No, I'm....no, definitely not," she laughs, but not at him so much as to cover how silly she feels for being somewhat flattered by it. Oddly or not oddly at all, she would not feel as pleased about it if it came from someone who was not a child. There is, with his query, a youth's innocence about it, traced in white lines of soft wonder that she almost finds kin with, and she feels an almost confusing sense of affection for him in that kinship of wide-eyed and brightness in the dark. It's lovely on him, and she thinks she knows who he is now, though his older self is an austere departure from the boy she sees now. "I'm Yvaine," she says and her smile has her all alight as he hasn't been since she was in the sky, home and far away from the strangeness of dream-fettered realities all thick with a boy from Wall and what he means for her future.
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"Hello, Miss Yvaine," he says in his most formal voice, although he is still in awe and it likely shows. "My name is Dorian Gray, and it is very nice to meet you." He pauses.
"You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen," he adds a moment later, spontaneous, his face burning all the way to the tips of his ears. He doesn't know if that's impolite, and he ducks his head after saying it. He hasn't developed his way with words or his gracious manner yet, as slick and false as it may be later in life. "If that's all right to say."
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"Just call me Yvaine," she encourages, hands folding in her lap, all silver and gold and a smile she can feel in her heartbeat. Watching him watch her is most fascinating, and she cannot help but wonder: what changed you? It does not feel, for all that she knows very little of Dorian at present, as if it was simply a matter of growing up. Something changed. She would like to know what, but she tucks that curiosity away for another day, or night, rather. Though Dorian's words on any other day would bring her faster to a quiet sort of uncertainty, as a boy he charms her utterly, almost to the point that she feels foolish for it, but her heart is warmed and she feels no bridle upon her as far as wanting to hide or tone herself back. There is a light in his eyes she thinks she had when she was younger, looking down at the earthspace below like some fantastical land of impossible things. Am I an impossible thing? In some worlds, she knows the answer is yes, but she tries not to think too hard on this, instead pressing a wide smile to something softer at the boy's end qualifier. She shrugs.
"Well, I'm," not a person....she pauses and rethinks that one, "Very flattered," she informs him, deciding against turning the child's world upside down too quickly, even if it might be something children tend to be more compatible with than adults. "And it's quite all right to say. Don't worry," she tells him this because she senses an anxiousness beneath his glow and she wishes to rid him of it. What manner of seriousness rests upon his shoulders, she cannot exactly place, but there is a respectful quality to the shyness that seems tempered by rules, and it is not that all rules are bad, but Yvaine is not one to pass up an opportunity to learn something more if she can, even if it may not be entirely fair when he is a child and does not know he may say things he would, in hindsight and as his normal self, rather have kept under tabs.
"It's nice to meet you," she adds and, thoughtlessly, reaches out to tuck some flyaway strands behind his ear.
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He wonders if she lives here. He wonders if maybe she's been kidnapped as well, like Mara said he was, sort of. That wasn't precisely what Mara said, if Dorian is honest about it, but that is the only solution he can think of. "Do you live here, Mi-Yvaine?" he says, because she told him to call her that, and Dorian is attentive to what she might want. He smiles when she tucks his hair back; he has a memory of that, a far away memory - his mother, maybe, but more likely a nurse before he was breeched and his nurses sent away.
He wonders if he is very good, if she will keep him here. He does not want to return to his big, terrifying house in London, with the attic that his grandfather locks him in.
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"I do," she nods, her folded hands readjusting absently, overlapping rather than interlacing. "I didn't always, but I have been here for...quite some time actually," and her smile falters here in fractions but she tries to stave off the upset that edges in on her sudden happiness. "Where do you live?" she asks, because it matters to her quite abruptly that the boy not only feel welcome but as if he is worth asking questions at all. There is everything about a sense of worth in being inquired for and about, and whether a star or a human, a unicorn or even--in some worlds--a witch, this rings true, regardless of whether the individual admits it or not. The dark of the room and the growing night outside only emphasizes the starshine she cannot and will not stifle, but it does not seem to bother young Dorian, so her self-awareness minimizes to nothing at all, content to exist in the moment, star to child, heart to heart for as long as they might.
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Where he lives; he thinks of London, of the streets and the cobblestones and the horses, of the smoke and the children on the street, of trains and rough hands. His grandfather wants to send him away soon, he knows because he heard the maids talk about it, to a country estate where he can learn to be a man; and Dorian would not mind going. The country is nicer, he thinks; cleaner and maybe a little lonely but pretty and quiet, and no one to hit him.
He thinks of his old townhouse. The house does not scare him, although the attic does - his room is small and warm and there's a piano where he practices every day. "I live in London," he explains. "In a big house, an old house, but it's very beautiful. With my grandfather."
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She does not ask what of your mother, your father because she feels he would have mentioned them if they were relevant to his life in an active sense. As he does not, she gathers her own quiet conclusions and simply nods at his words--once, twice.
"And do you like it there?" she asks instead of prying about parents who no longer seem to be in the boy's tentative picture.
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"Sometimes I do," Dorian begins honestly, and then the thoughts catch up with his words. "Although I would much prefer to live in the country, I think that I will go there once my grandfather finds a school that he feels is appropriate," he admits, his face pinking up. They are unkind thoughts of his only family, to the person who did not have to take him in but did. Lord Kelso does not let Dorian forget that. He is not a ward, he is a properly brought up member of the family, and Dorian knows he should feel lucky for that. Oliver Twist was not so lucky to have a family. Dorian knows what happens to poor orphans in London.
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"I hope that you get that opportunity," she tells him and she means it, her folded hands pushing together fingers that interlace in a perfect fit of light hued overlap. "Aren't you tired?" she asks, realizing the time and remembering that they are not of the same make, even if she misleads everyone enough for them to think so.
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He shuffles a little closer. "I am, but I don't know if it's safe to sleep here," he tells her, his eyes bright brown and a little shy, and unsure. He wants to be sure, and one day he will be.
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The way she drapes it over and around the boy makes it seem artful and knowing, but she knows nothing at all of this, and the warmth she feels is almost frightening. It is the first time she has had that notion, that one she had been so sure of months ago she would never truly have: I will miss this. A gift or a curse or neither, she makes no judgment, but supposing Dorian is comfortable, supposing they stay like this, just a boy and a star and a space for two, that too new thought triggers something old and new all at once.
She has not sung in the way of her kind since falling, but she sings that way now. Perhaps it sets the other heart here dreaming of open distances, places that reach far enough to have the sky and sea kiss over sunrise and for the mountains and the moonlight to converse like old friends. Perhaps he stays right where he is. The song of stars, of each individual star especially, is not the same for every listener, but it accentuates itself in the midst of a quiet power. Pushing on with an absence of speech, even when the song whispers out, her thoughts too make themselves a quiet home in her heart.
Have heart and Thank you and I have never wanted to make someone else feel safe before.
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