follow me to the dark side

Something…. Raw about the stranger. Almost primitive. Seiji watches in cool silence as the great bald face rears up and back. High, higher — like some great leviathan rising from the deep. As if the stranger means to say, look at me. Watch this. But Seiji has encountered many creatures larger than himself in this land. Only a single dark ear flicks back, expressing uncertainty, as blue eyes meet black. Friend or foe? The stranger moves forward. Power in the stride — a kind of overbearing masculinity Seiji has experienced rarely but finds intrinsically distasteful. Seiji stands his ground. He may be small, but he is hardly inferior. He cannot be cowed with displays of strength like this one. His body is merely honed toward a different skillset. So he is calm, quiet, his features giving nothing away as the first foreign words roll off the stranger’s tongue. Oscurità Something ignites in Seiji’s dark eyes. His head jerks up; his body moves as if shocked. Just a little. Something riveted and curious. He forgets, for a time, his previous impression. Now his long face tilts to one side, and both his ears are up. He’s reminded of something — something familiar in the musical lilt of strange syllables. Not quite…. The same, but so similar, isn’t it? It punches through his heart without warning, like flame finding a dead tree. A sudden shortage of breathable air in his lungs. He is aware of being watched; he, too, watches. His eyes crawl almost hungrily across the scarred black flesh. Wondering. Then the voice, again. That voice, dancing teasingly. Not the same not the same but so close…. Seiji’s expression breaks. He’s grinning, his face lit up, and eagerly he nods. Ferro. Ferro. Iron. Something like sunlight spilling through his mind: some tenuous link to a happier past. He dances forward, forward and around, around the great winged figure, his steps light — almost playful. Light and gamboling in the dim light. He means to make a full circuit, stop again just before the man. He cannot speak, cannot tell his own name, cannot ask the questions burning on the tip of his tongue(who are you who are you where are you from?). He can only gesture excitedly at the scars, the scars themselves a question. Then he thinks of something — something maybe a little clearer. He puts his head down as if he sports horns and leaps in a mock-charge toward the stranger’s shoulder. Leaps away long before it appears a real threat. Stands, almost trembling. Head up. The depths of his flared nostrils pink. Do you understand?

img by Tildae @ flickr

ooc// In case you're curious and it's not clear: he's trying to ask if Ferro is a bullfighter. He doesn't know Italian but he knows a small amount of Portuguese.