[ To stand perfectly still as an arrow twangs past would ping as a strange reaction. Most don't weather friendly fire with the detached spectatorship J does, when he's spent nearly a thousand years unafraid of death, when he healed every wound and lived immune to all physical ails. So the demon wills his muscles and the illusion shimmering like a second skin around him to start. His massive structure jerking itself away from the explosion of steel into man-made rock, not out of some sniveling cowardice, but more muted instinct to side-step the debris that shoot off every which way.
Hands spring up to shield his face as broken pebbles from shattered stone ricochet off the opposite wall or the inside of a wrist. Only when the coast is clear and nothing threatens to poke out an eye, does he ease those arms into lowering from their defensive posture.
His is an artificial knee-jerk reaction to stimuli that he concocts by picking clear the bare bones of her story. The man named Matsukaze barely resorting to fright when his death came barreling into his arms. The shock and acceptance he resorted to in her memories bleeding from one to the next, just as he now does when the threat ebbs.
After leaning forward to spy the handiwork delivered to the fractured portion of a sturdy wall, his head and that shock of red hair turns to face her with an expression at first perplexed. As though the stallion's mind is industriously trying to piece together the reasoning for Hayame's ruthless welcome that had been cast his way. J knows. He understands how her retaliation isn't overblown when danger comes in many an insidious shape and form here.
Though, even an arrow loosed falls woefully short of what would cease his parading about in a dead man's skin. Not unless that projectile should have found its mark, buried deep within his heart or head. Or better yet, the shard nestled above J's eyes. That would have ended the monstrous creature set on torturing her, once and for all.
But it doesn't, so the show continues on.
The self-deprecating touch of a palm, pressing to the stallion's strong nape, is something he imagines a man might do when guilt rises up for a misstep now regretted. Though he takes them still, those slow paces forward that draw his considerable frame nearer to her. As though the hooves that are but an illusion cannot stop the inexorable pull that guides them on. ]
You... don't seem very happy to see me. [ His brows lift, easing together in an arch above eyes that attempt to catch hers. The false-stallion's apprehensive glimmer of hope so keen it writes itself across his face. An expression of vulnerability made all the more apparent as the yards between them vanish. ]
<3
Hands spring up to shield his face as broken pebbles from shattered stone ricochet off the opposite wall or the inside of a wrist. Only when the coast is clear and nothing threatens to poke out an eye, does he ease those arms into lowering from their defensive posture.
His is an artificial knee-jerk reaction to stimuli that he concocts by picking clear the bare bones of her story. The man named Matsukaze barely resorting to fright when his death came barreling into his arms. The shock and acceptance he resorted to in her memories bleeding from one to the next, just as he now does when the threat ebbs.
After leaning forward to spy the handiwork delivered to the fractured portion of a sturdy wall, his head and that shock of red hair turns to face her with an expression at first perplexed. As though the stallion's mind is industriously trying to piece together the reasoning for Hayame's ruthless welcome that had been cast his way. J knows. He understands how her retaliation isn't overblown when danger comes in many an insidious shape and form here.
Though, even an arrow loosed falls woefully short of what would cease his parading about in a dead man's skin. Not unless that projectile should have found its mark, buried deep within his heart or head. Or better yet, the shard nestled above J's eyes. That would have ended the monstrous creature set on torturing her, once and for all.
But it doesn't, so the show continues on.
The self-deprecating touch of a palm, pressing to the stallion's strong nape, is something he imagines a man might do when guilt rises up for a misstep now regretted. Though he takes them still, those slow paces forward that draw his considerable frame nearer to her. As though the hooves that are but an illusion cannot stop the inexorable pull that guides them on. ]
You... don't seem very happy to see me. [ His brows lift, easing together in an arch above eyes that attempt to catch hers. The false-stallion's apprehensive glimmer of hope so keen it writes itself across his face. An expression of vulnerability made all the more apparent as the yards between them vanish. ]