[She doesn't mean to laugh. It's not that funny a thing. But as a gust of relieved breath leaves her, there's laughter in it. Anxious emotions have to go somewhere, they have to take some shape.]
Thank the Twelve, I was worried that...
[Well. No need to say.
She follows him to the kitchen, but in all her lingering excitement and tension, she takes his gesture at the chair differently than how he likely intended it. Her shopping bag is set down upon it, and she instead is preparing to approach to look all that hair over.]
Those would be some very long fins... aah, is it still growing?
[ A little frown screws onto his face at that, but he can forgive her that entirely inappropriate levity since she is doing him a major favor. He had cut his own hair the first time; the results had been...unfortunate. ]
Yes, I know.
[ If she wants to stand, that's just as well.
He sits in the other chair, his back to her, letting her inspect him. ]
During my initial transformation, it grows to my ankles, then continues to grow slowly after that.
[Given their respective heights, him sitting while she continues to stand is probably the best arrangement available.]
To your ankles? That fast? All at once? Does it... does it tickle?
[A pause. That's a strange-sounding question. She needs to amend that.]
I... I grew feathers. It tickled.
[...that is probably too much information. She clears her throat, claps her hands together once, and then carefully reaches in to touch some of that lovely long hair. Just carefully bringing her fingers under a lock of it and lifting, getting a feel for the weight and thickness.]
How short would you like it? I don't think I have the skill to give you a properly... close haircut... but I could get it to more or less its usual length?
[ It is hard to describe the sensation. Close to pain, perhaps, but he isn't about to share. He keeps surprisingly still for a man that does not usually wish to be touched, his back straight and his head upright. His hair is more silken than soft, more smooth than fuzzed, but quick thick, and it flows over her fingers like water. ]
[She can accept that judgement. He answered her question, didn't he? He is truly a friend.]
To your shoulders, then.
[And with that decided, she reaches in with both of her hands, threading through his hair to gather it all up together behind him. Practical a task as it is, she can't say that she's not enjoying it. It's so smooth, and so lovely, and it's such a... a close thing, to be doing this for him...]
A box?
[Her hands still a moment.]
You're... going to keep the hair?
[...ah, she'd better go and get some of the hair ties that she purchased. In fact, best she bring over everything she bought. She slips away, leaving that gathered hair trailing behind him, and fetches both the bag and the chair it's resting on. She can use it as a surface to lay things out.]
[ He waits patiently, watching out the far window. Outside, the city gleams pleasantly, all white brightness and colored lights and patches of greenery. It helps to keep him calm; with Sanguis in the sky, even partially disguised by the sun, he is restless and he is not about to cause a scene with Dakki here.
Not that he doesn't think she can defend herself from him. ...although she is a healer, is she not?
...
That begs the question, if she as the Warrior of Light was a healer, then how did she slay Primals? Would she-- ] Hm?
[ He is pulled out of his spiral of inner rhetorical questions by her own more direct one. ]
No. I will give the hair away or sell it.
There is too much to fit in my automatic garbage bin and it will clog the mechanism.
[Perhaps she hits them very hard with her staff? A mystery to continue pondering on later.]
Oh. It... would make for nice hairpieces, I suppose. That's practical.
[And there is an awful lot of it. She'd almost respect him for his financial acumen, but... it's not really that, is it? He just wants to be rid of the stuff. At least there's the possibility of making a bit of profit from the whole mess.]
I'll try and keep it neatly together, then.
[A few more moments are taken to lay out the contents of the bag. There are scissors, combs and brushes, various clips and ties... it's a flat paddle brush that she goes for first, though. She wants to brush his hair out some before making that initial cut. Which is what she sets to doing, careful and slow at first so as not to pull unpleasantly on any small snags. And once she has disentangled the hair closest to his scalp, she starts with longer strokes to smooth out the rest.
It's pleasant work, really. It's nice to finally be able to fuss over him a little. Oh, how badly had she wanted to help clean him up, after all that time they'd spent slogging around in the Coerthan wilderness... this was like some long-realized (if slightly foolish) dream. Here and there through it all, she gives a pleased little 'hmm' or 'aah', happy with how it's turning out. Happy... just in general.]
[ This is all...very familiar. It brings to mind old, old memories, early mornings behind the house coming back to him by slow degrees. All winter, their hair would grow long, his own and Hamignant's, though his little brother's had a curl to its ends that matched the very distinctive waves that fell elegantly down his mother's back. He more resembled their father, each strand straight as a line, though he would have just as much hay stuck into after a night sleeping with the lambs in their winter shelter.
But when the snows melted and the bright green spring came to Coerthas, his mother would take a chair to the grass just shy of the back gate, and sit them both down to tame the heavy locks they weren't wont to brush if they didn't have to. Beyond the fence posts was a beaten soil and cobble street, where chocobos and carts leaden with wool would pass. Spring had always been a busy time.
The brush sounds the same now as it did then.
His lids lower slightly. He...relaxes. A little. ]
I will likely need a cut every Sanguis moon.
I can provide recompense. [ Meaning, if she could do it more than once. ]
[Her expertise in the regard is limited to having cut her own hair, and many a trip to the aesthetician after too much time out in the field... but you'd need good hair to make hairpieces, wouldn't you? It seems reasonable.
It's quite a lot of hair, and it takes quite a lot of brushing... and perhaps a bit more brushing than strictly needed, for she's enjoying the work of it and doesn't want to stop. But she can feel him relax that little bit, and it's not getting any smoother or straighter... so reluctantly she sets the brush aside, then gathers that hair back up together again.]
If it grows like this every time, yes, I imagine you...
[Oh. He'd already like her to do it again? Her hands still briefly. This sort of kind closeness, again....]
...I'm happy just to do it for it's own sake. No compensation needed!
[And she laughs softly as she reaches for an appropriately-large hair tie to keep everything together for that first cut. It seems like perhaps not quite the right way to do this... but it's so much hair, and she just wants to get rid of the better part of it without too much mess and fuss.]
But you should wait until I'm done before you make up your mind! I can't promise how good this will turn out...
[And she proceeds with tying up his hair into something of a ponytail, the knot of it resting somewhere near his shoulder blades.]
[ To be entirely frank, Estinien is relaxed enough to drift off to sleep. Sanguis has driven him to desire many base, instinctual things - food, combat, sex - and yet what instinct refers to could be very broad. When all his exertions are over with, the body requires rest and recuperation.
Granted, this body is urging him to rest in a pond, across a nice flat rock in the cool shadows away from the bank, but he is attempting not to dwell on that. ]
It will be an improvement over my first effort.
[ Estinien is not a vain man but he has some pride. ]
It's also somewhat difficult without a mirror.
[ He had had a mirror in his bathing room, but, before she asks - ]
Every time I look upon the bath I have an extremely powerful urge to be in it. I desire to be in water constantly.
[There's that hint of laughter in her tone again, but she'd like to think it's warm rather than mocking. She gives his hair one last bit of smoothing down, and then she sets to cutting. Quite a bit of cutting. She bought normal-sized hair-trimming scissors, and doing this in small snips seems like the way that will result in the least snurble-like unevenness.]
You... really?
[For all that she sounds perplexed and alarmed, the cutting doesn't stop.]
So you're not just looking fishlike but... oh.
[There really is a lot of cutting to do.]
If you had a very nice bathtub here, I suppose that wouldn't be so bad... it would be expensive, though, wouldn't it?
[So, so much cutting.]
...will you be alright? I mean, if you don't? If you're... you're feeling the need to do it, maybe you need to do it to be well?
[ To be frank, it had been very laughable. He is certain that somewhere some deity had been chuckling at him as he stood in front of the window, using the meager reflection to paw at fulms and fulms of hair, getting it everywhere, shoving it with hands and the heel of his boot.
This is much better.
Relaxing. Easier. Not quick, because there is so much, but there is definite value in asking for help. ]
My bathtub is plain.
And too small. [ There is a lot of Elezen to fit into a normal-sized tub. ]
I think I will be well, so long as I do not grow a tail again.
[ He doesn't move his head, but he does tap his thigh. ]
When last affected by the moon, I was almost more fish than man.
Ah. Mine's not very big, either. So I can imagine...
[Though the luxury of her own little bathtub, with plumbing and hot water flowing to it and a switch to turn it into a shower was something that she was still enjoying. But Estinien is an outsized person with outsized problems. Ones that she's going to have to think on to try and solve, she resolves there and then.]
A tail?
[One last snip finishes it, and in her surprise at the whole matter of the tail she almost drops the severed ponytail. A moment of fumbling and she catches it, and then is quick to set it aside.]
I'm going to need to check in on you next moon, aren't I? Just in case that happens again!
[ Ah, his head is abruptly much lighter. That much hair can weigh a great deal when not in the water; in the pool, it only flows, seeming to weigh nothing at all, but when out...
He moves his head back and forth, feeling a satisfying pop deep in his neck. ]
Yes. A fish tail.
I will be confined to a large body of water if afflicted with that change.
[While he shakes his hair out, she's fetching a comb and some clips. The worst of it is gone, but she's not done yet. But before she can start fussing at his hair or musing aloud about the possible location of the nearest large body of water, he is giving her a look.]
Of course.
[He gets a look in return, one of raised eyebrows and mild disapproval. It's brief, before she reaches in to start combing out and pinning up a few sections of his remaining hair. As far as she's concerned, he is now her affair to see to.]
I'll just be sure to stop by a little earlier, when the moon starts to turn...
[She trails off, her focus now on somehow evening out his hair so it hangs a bit more pleasantly.]
[ Estinien returns to sitting properly, his eyes forward and his shoulders still, listening to the quiet sounds of the scissors working so close against his skull.
He does not recall his own Warrior of Light...but his vague memories tell him such a look as she gave him was one that he would also receive from they. He ponders again the possibility that the shadow in his recollections might be she, for he has yet to meet another here that would take the title. Could it be...?
Maybe.
They may never know. ]
I have other urges during the height of the moon, especially in the waxing and full hours.
[Dakki doesn't sound particularly surprised by this. She was out on the street when all three moons were full, and had seen many examples of the effects firsthand. Or, at least, what she is presuming to be the effect that Estinien is most concerned about. She continues to snip away, her only hesitation due to the occasional moment of second-guessing her hair cutting skills.]
Violent ones? Why do you think I'd be worried about that?
[....did she cut that bit too short? Oh well, it'll be covered up by the rest of his hair... she's just going to unclip that and reclip that and adjust another attempt at a layer...]
I'm very good at conjury.
[And also, the Warrior of Light, but this seems like a moment that requires some additional specifics. Conjury heals, and summons earth and wind and water, and can also subdue... and she's quite confident she could subdue him if needed.]
[ He surely will not notice any mistakes; he cannot look at the back of his head and moreover, by tomorrow his hair will have grown again and filled in any gaps. And deeply annoyed him, to boot. ]
I feel some violent urges, but only briefly.
The sexual ones are much stronger.
[ A more delicate man might have put that a different way or introduced a more polite metaphor to get his point across. Estinien is not a delicate man. ]
I was unable to control myself when three moons were in the sky.
[ From the tightness in his tone, the memory of losing all sense is not a pleasant one, for all that the experience it heralded had not been...the worst. Far from it.
But the lack of control sticks in his throat like bile. ]
[Those blunt words are enough to briefly still her hands. His point, it has definitely been made. Here she had already resolved for herself that Estinien would never, or at least, would desperately avoid such a thing here if he could, and now...
...there are things left unsaid about how he spent that evening. And she is not sure that she wishes to pry into that. Carefully, no small amount avoidantly, she resumes cutting.]
You... weren't harmed, were you? And no one else was...?
[Dakki would like to consider herself a straightforward person, but she cannot bring herself to be any more blunt than that. The idea of having to subdue a violent Estinien, that was not so bad. Not all that unfamiliar a task. But to ponder him at his most aggressive, gripped by some sort of unshakable lust that he has turned towards her...
No. No, put that out of mind. That is too much to think on. She has a task to finish. She gives a quick breath in, then lets it out slowly, as though trying to expel the anxiety and discomfort and vague flush of heat that the concept had brought.]
[ A great irony, that. A wound would have given him something more comprehensible than the remainders of want and wanting; they drift in and out of his memory and his dreams, teasing him, and there are times when he does not know if it is the moon's doing or his own undiscovered nature. ]
Nor were they.
[ Implying he found a partner during that time. ] But I do not know what will happen the next time, how strong the drive will be or what position I will be in during that time.
[ His tone turns wry. ]
At my most bestial, I seem cursed to always possess the fish tail.
It at least restrains me. [ One can't go roving about the city like an animal when confined to a body of water. ]
[He wasn't harmed. No one else was. And although she is boggling at just who this someone else might possibly be, she can only boggle so much. The strangest visual image is trying and failing to form in her head. So there's him, and someone else, but he's a fish on the bottom, and...
No, she's not going to ask for details. Details will not improve this. She is quite nearly done cutting his hair, and that's what needs to matter right now.]
If that's the case, then, I can just check in, drop you in the bathtub, and leave you?
[There, a joke! Something to make light of the strange and dark situation. Another snip here, a few more there.... and then she pulls the clips from Estinien's hair and sets them aside. A moment later, she's working her fingers gently through his hair to shake it loose and let it settle naturally. Which seems to be what he usually does with it.]
He tries to imagine being trapped and just as desperate as he had been when Cehd'ra had found him. Would the need grow as the bells passed? Would he lose all sense? It might be wise to merely...satisfy the drive and be done with it. The alternative was a loss of control even he could not fathom.
Tellingly, he doesn't actually respond to her joke. ...he may also be slightly humorous as a person.
However, her fingers draw his attention - gooseflesh rises on his neck - and he gives a small shake of his head. ]
[He didn't dismiss the idea. That means it remains one of the possible plans for dealing with a angry, fishy Estinien come a bad turn of the moons. Though the other plans are 'cast Sleep on him and then jump out the window' and 'allow him to subject you to his urges' and... so really, the first plan seems like the best one.]
It's not too bad, I think.
[With that said, she watches him go... but also watches him from the corner of her eye for any reaction to how his hair looks. She'll put away her equipment and then go looking for a broom, but all the while she's keeping an ear and an eye on him.
It's definitely shorter. A little shorter than he normally keeps it, and the cut is fairly blunt in places, but it's mostly even. It would look fine enough tied back, surely.]
I don't doubt it is far better than what I attempted before.
[ And he finds, once he moves to the only mirror in his apartment, that his assumption is correct: he looks much, much better than he did earlier. She replicated his usual hairstyle to a decent degree and now he can turn his head and stand much more easily than before.
He brushes his shirt off one last time, then returns. ]
I'm satisfied.
Thank you, Dakki.
[ Estinien isn't a man that often thanks, but credit where credit is due. ]
[He'll return to find that she has almost finished sweeping the floor. She looks up from her task expectantly, eager to hear his thoughts... and oh. He's grateful. It was good!]
You're very welcome!
[Her face just lights up. He's happy! She's done her job well! There are few things more gratifying than that.]
You look very good!
[Because... he does. Much more himself, even if he's still a little scaley and such. In her delight, she can't quite keep herself from saying as much.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[She doesn't mean to laugh. It's not that funny a thing. But as a gust of relieved breath leaves her, there's laughter in it. Anxious emotions have to go somewhere, they have to take some shape.]
Thank the Twelve, I was worried that...
[Well. No need to say.
She follows him to the kitchen, but in all her lingering excitement and tension, she takes his gesture at the chair differently than how he likely intended it. Her shopping bag is set down upon it, and she instead is preparing to approach to look all that hair over.]
Those would be some very long fins... aah, is it still growing?
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Yes, I know.
[ If she wants to stand, that's just as well.
He sits in the other chair, his back to her, letting her inspect him. ]
During my initial transformation, it grows to my ankles, then continues to grow slowly after that.
[ Will it ever stop?
Not until the moon wanes, most likely. ]
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To your ankles? That fast? All at once? Does it... does it tickle?
[A pause. That's a strange-sounding question. She needs to amend that.]
I... I grew feathers. It tickled.
[...that is probably too much information. She clears her throat, claps her hands together once, and then carefully reaches in to touch some of that lovely long hair. Just carefully bringing her fingers under a lock of it and lifting, getting a feel for the weight and thickness.]
How short would you like it? I don't think I have the skill to give you a properly... close haircut... but I could get it to more or less its usual length?
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[ Estinien judges silently. ]
No, it did not tickle.
[ It is hard to describe the sensation. Close to pain, perhaps, but he isn't about to share. He keeps surprisingly still for a man that does not usually wish to be touched, his back straight and his head upright. His hair is more silken than soft, more smooth than fuzzed, but quick thick, and it flows over her fingers like water. ]
To my shoulders would be sufficient.
[ So yes.
About ordinary length. ]
I have a box for the hair.
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To your shoulders, then.
[And with that decided, she reaches in with both of her hands, threading through his hair to gather it all up together behind him. Practical a task as it is, she can't say that she's not enjoying it. It's so smooth, and so lovely, and it's such a... a close thing, to be doing this for him...]
A box?
[Her hands still a moment.]
You're... going to keep the hair?
[...ah, she'd better go and get some of the hair ties that she purchased. In fact, best she bring over everything she bought. She slips away, leaving that gathered hair trailing behind him, and fetches both the bag and the chair it's resting on. She can use it as a surface to lay things out.]
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Not that he doesn't think she can defend herself from him. ...although she is a healer, is she not?
...
That begs the question, if she as the Warrior of Light was a healer, then how did she slay Primals? Would she-- ] Hm?
[ He is pulled out of his spiral of inner rhetorical questions by her own more direct one. ]
No. I will give the hair away or sell it.
There is too much to fit in my automatic garbage bin and it will clog the mechanism.
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Oh. It... would make for nice hairpieces, I suppose. That's practical.
[And there is an awful lot of it. She'd almost respect him for his financial acumen, but... it's not really that, is it? He just wants to be rid of the stuff. At least there's the possibility of making a bit of profit from the whole mess.]
I'll try and keep it neatly together, then.
[A few more moments are taken to lay out the contents of the bag. There are scissors, combs and brushes, various clips and ties... it's a flat paddle brush that she goes for first, though. She wants to brush his hair out some before making that initial cut. Which is what she sets to doing, careful and slow at first so as not to pull unpleasantly on any small snags. And once she has disentangled the hair closest to his scalp, she starts with longer strokes to smooth out the rest.
It's pleasant work, really. It's nice to finally be able to fuss over him a little. Oh, how badly had she wanted to help clean him up, after all that time they'd spent slogging around in the Coerthan wilderness... this was like some long-realized (if slightly foolish) dream. Here and there through it all, she gives a pleased little 'hmm' or 'aah', happy with how it's turning out. Happy... just in general.]
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[ This is all...very familiar. It brings to mind old, old memories, early mornings behind the house coming back to him by slow degrees. All winter, their hair would grow long, his own and Hamignant's, though his little brother's had a curl to its ends that matched the very distinctive waves that fell elegantly down his mother's back. He more resembled their father, each strand straight as a line, though he would have just as much hay stuck into after a night sleeping with the lambs in their winter shelter.
But when the snows melted and the bright green spring came to Coerthas, his mother would take a chair to the grass just shy of the back gate, and sit them both down to tame the heavy locks they weren't wont to brush if they didn't have to. Beyond the fence posts was a beaten soil and cobble street, where chocobos and carts leaden with wool would pass. Spring had always been a busy time.
The brush sounds the same now as it did then.
His lids lower slightly. He...relaxes. A little. ]
I will likely need a cut every Sanguis moon.
I can provide recompense. [ Meaning, if she could do it more than once. ]
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[Her expertise in the regard is limited to having cut her own hair, and many a trip to the aesthetician after too much time out in the field... but you'd need good hair to make hairpieces, wouldn't you? It seems reasonable.
It's quite a lot of hair, and it takes quite a lot of brushing... and perhaps a bit more brushing than strictly needed, for she's enjoying the work of it and doesn't want to stop. But she can feel him relax that little bit, and it's not getting any smoother or straighter... so reluctantly she sets the brush aside, then gathers that hair back up together again.]
If it grows like this every time, yes, I imagine you...
[Oh. He'd already like her to do it again? Her hands still briefly. This sort of kind closeness, again....]
...I'm happy just to do it for it's own sake. No compensation needed!
[And she laughs softly as she reaches for an appropriately-large hair tie to keep everything together for that first cut. It seems like perhaps not quite the right way to do this... but it's so much hair, and she just wants to get rid of the better part of it without too much mess and fuss.]
But you should wait until I'm done before you make up your mind! I can't promise how good this will turn out...
[And she proceeds with tying up his hair into something of a ponytail, the knot of it resting somewhere near his shoulder blades.]
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Granted, this body is urging him to rest in a pond, across a nice flat rock in the cool shadows away from the bank, but he is attempting not to dwell on that. ]
It will be an improvement over my first effort.
[ Estinien is not a vain man but he has some pride. ]
It's also somewhat difficult without a mirror.
[ He had had a mirror in his bathing room, but, before she asks - ]
Every time I look upon the bath I have an extremely powerful urge to be in it. I desire to be in water constantly.
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[There's that hint of laughter in her tone again, but she'd like to think it's warm rather than mocking. She gives his hair one last bit of smoothing down, and then she sets to cutting. Quite a bit of cutting. She bought normal-sized hair-trimming scissors, and doing this in small snips seems like the way that will result in the least snurble-like unevenness.]
You... really?
[For all that she sounds perplexed and alarmed, the cutting doesn't stop.]
So you're not just looking fishlike but... oh.
[There really is a lot of cutting to do.]
If you had a very nice bathtub here, I suppose that wouldn't be so bad... it would be expensive, though, wouldn't it?
[So, so much cutting.]
...will you be alright? I mean, if you don't? If you're... you're feeling the need to do it, maybe you need to do it to be well?
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This is much better.
Relaxing. Easier. Not quick, because there is so much, but there is definite value in asking for help. ]
My bathtub is plain.
And too small. [ There is a lot of Elezen to fit into a normal-sized tub. ]
I think I will be well, so long as I do not grow a tail again.
[ He doesn't move his head, but he does tap his thigh. ]
When last affected by the moon, I was almost more fish than man.
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[Though the luxury of her own little bathtub, with plumbing and hot water flowing to it and a switch to turn it into a shower was something that she was still enjoying. But Estinien is an outsized person with outsized problems. Ones that she's going to have to think on to try and solve, she resolves there and then.]
A tail?
[One last snip finishes it, and in her surprise at the whole matter of the tail she almost drops the severed ponytail. A moment of fumbling and she catches it, and then is quick to set it aside.]
I'm going to need to check in on you next moon, aren't I? Just in case that happens again!
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He moves his head back and forth, feeling a satisfying pop deep in his neck. ]
Yes. A fish tail.
I will be confined to a large body of water if afflicted with that change.
[ He turns his head enough to meet her eye. ]
I can see to my own affairs.
[ Someone might have to check on him, yes. ]
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Of course.
[He gets a look in return, one of raised eyebrows and mild disapproval. It's brief, before she reaches in to start combing out and pinning up a few sections of his remaining hair. As far as she's concerned, he is now her affair to see to.]
I'll just be sure to stop by a little earlier, when the moon starts to turn...
[She trails off, her focus now on somehow evening out his hair so it hangs a bit more pleasantly.]
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He does not recall his own Warrior of Light...but his vague memories tell him such a look as she gave him was one that he would also receive from they. He ponders again the possibility that the shadow in his recollections might be she, for he has yet to meet another here that would take the title. Could it be...?
Maybe.
They may never know. ]
I have other urges during the height of the moon, especially in the waxing and full hours.
I would not subject you to them.
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[Dakki doesn't sound particularly surprised by this. She was out on the street when all three moons were full, and had seen many examples of the effects firsthand. Or, at least, what she is presuming to be the effect that Estinien is most concerned about. She continues to snip away, her only hesitation due to the occasional moment of second-guessing her hair cutting skills.]
Violent ones? Why do you think I'd be worried about that?
[....did she cut that bit too short? Oh well, it'll be covered up by the rest of his hair... she's just going to unclip that and reclip that and adjust another attempt at a layer...]
I'm very good at conjury.
[And also, the Warrior of Light, but this seems like a moment that requires some additional specifics. Conjury heals, and summons earth and wind and water, and can also subdue... and she's quite confident she could subdue him if needed.]
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I feel some violent urges, but only briefly.
The sexual ones are much stronger.
[ A more delicate man might have put that a different way or introduced a more polite metaphor to get his point across. Estinien is not a delicate man. ]
I was unable to control myself when three moons were in the sky.
[ From the tightness in his tone, the memory of losing all sense is not a pleasant one, for all that the experience it heralded had not been...the worst. Far from it.
But the lack of control sticks in his throat like bile. ]
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...there are things left unsaid about how he spent that evening. And she is not sure that she wishes to pry into that. Carefully, no small amount avoidantly, she resumes cutting.]
You... weren't harmed, were you? And no one else was...?
[Dakki would like to consider herself a straightforward person, but she cannot bring herself to be any more blunt than that. The idea of having to subdue a violent Estinien, that was not so bad. Not all that unfamiliar a task. But to ponder him at his most aggressive, gripped by some sort of unshakable lust that he has turned towards her...
No. No, put that out of mind. That is too much to think on. She has a task to finish. She gives a quick breath in, then lets it out slowly, as though trying to expel the anxiety and discomfort and vague flush of heat that the concept had brought.]
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[ A great irony, that. A wound would have given him something more comprehensible than the remainders of want and wanting; they drift in and out of his memory and his dreams, teasing him, and there are times when he does not know if it is the moon's doing or his own undiscovered nature. ]
Nor were they.
[ Implying he found a partner during that time. ] But I do not know what will happen the next time, how strong the drive will be or what position I will be in during that time.
[ His tone turns wry. ]
At my most bestial, I seem cursed to always possess the fish tail.
It at least restrains me. [ One can't go roving about the city like an animal when confined to a body of water. ]
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[He wasn't harmed. No one else was. And although she is boggling at just who this someone else might possibly be, she can only boggle so much. The strangest visual image is trying and failing to form in her head. So there's him, and someone else, but he's a fish on the bottom, and...
No, she's not going to ask for details. Details will not improve this. She is quite nearly done cutting his hair, and that's what needs to matter right now.]
If that's the case, then, I can just check in, drop you in the bathtub, and leave you?
[There, a joke! Something to make light of the strange and dark situation.
Another snip here, a few more there.... and then she pulls the clips from Estinien's hair and sets them aside. A moment later, she's working her fingers gently through his hair to shake it loose and let it settle naturally. Which seems to be what he usually does with it.]
And... I think that's it. I can get a mirror...?
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He tries to imagine being trapped and just as desperate as he had been when Cehd'ra had found him. Would the need grow as the bells passed? Would he lose all sense? It might be wise to merely...satisfy the drive and be done with it. The alternative was a loss of control even he could not fathom.
Tellingly, he doesn't actually respond to her joke. ...he may also be slightly humorous as a person.
However, her fingers draw his attention - gooseflesh rises on his neck - and he gives a small shake of his head. ]
The only mirror I have is in the bathroom.
I will check.
[ And so he stands, brushing off his shoulders. ]
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It's not too bad, I think.
[With that said, she watches him go... but also watches him from the corner of her eye for any reaction to how his hair looks. She'll put away her equipment and then go looking for a broom, but all the while she's keeping an ear and an eye on him.
It's definitely shorter. A little shorter than he normally keeps it, and the cut is fairly blunt in places, but it's mostly even. It would look fine enough tied back, surely.]
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[ And he finds, once he moves to the only mirror in his apartment, that his assumption is correct: he looks much, much better than he did earlier. She replicated his usual hairstyle to a decent degree and now he can turn his head and stand much more easily than before.
He brushes his shirt off one last time, then returns. ]
I'm satisfied.
Thank you, Dakki.
[ Estinien isn't a man that often thanks, but credit where credit is due. ]
those sparkles tho
You're very welcome!
[Her face just lights up. He's happy! She's done her job well! There are few things more gratifying than that.]
You look very good!
[Because... he does. Much more himself, even if he's still a little scaley and such. In her delight, she can't quite keep herself from saying as much.]
we otome game now
oh no how did we get on this route
it's because dakki's cute :3c
Shall we fade out?