Sonora meets Raphael

Love is really a simple emotion, a clear and undeniable desire to possess the affection of another. But we in our humanity complicate it beyond recognition at times. I remember it so vividly the first time this feeling overwhelmed me. How difficult I found it to breathe, how loud the cadence of my heart felt in my ears, how my fingers trembled due only to his proximity to me. I could never forget it even though it has now been so many years since that day. I had only recently become free and the sensation of it, the reality of being let go was still so harsh and painful. I had sought to distance myself though I was very much under the care of the man who once not so very long ago, owned me. We had done a great deal of traveling as I learned for the first time in my existence a trade. He had paid heavily for that training and I was grateful, too grateful to part ways with him even though being with him still after the pain of the rejection I felt he had placed upon me was so fresh. We were at another fair, he insisted on paying for my booth as he always did but never would he accept even a tarsk in return. Night had begun to fall and as I usually did I closed up shop and ensconced myself near the heat of the central fires.



Every fair had such a gathering spot. Always at its heart, always there was a roaring fire around which furs and tables and often chairs were scattered. Oddly I found peace in the presence of others, people who hadn’t a clue that under the density of robes, the shadow of veils the neatly piled plume of crimson curls adorned as they always were with the gifted emeralds he had bought for me- there lying dormant, unfulfilled hid the mere once property of men. It amazed him but even more so myself how well I seemed to fall into that role. The cold and emotionally absent free woman I had so easily become. Looking back it doesn’t now seem so very strange to me that it fit me so well. I did feel robbed of my ability to feel anything. I was never even afraid in those days of being forced back into that life, for me it had now become a dream I had awoken from.



I never suspected that in this role, this life I was supposed to maneuver through unfeeling and distant from the world I loved, I would know what it truly was to love. Then as the cold evening air licked at the flames I was huddled near for warmth that never seemed to emerge. He walked into my world. At first I was only aware of him because of the sweet stench that pervaded his presence. It was musky, dense like the air had suddenly thickened with some unseen weight. I could smell the tarn and sweat that clung to his flesh and the alluring cologne that pulled at my innermost being, a draw that appealed to my basest senses against my will. A scent that was wholly and undeniably masculine.



I realized then that I hadn’t took a breath since that initial wave of smell had hit me. And I sucked up the cold air rapidly, almost gasping. I forced myself to look up but no higher than the soft clinking of what I knew to be tarn spurs. I studied the leather as it moved more fully into my field of vision. Tarn leather has an unmistakable appearance, red, nearly arterial in its depth and as long as I have lived I have never been able to control the emotion that wells within me when I see it. It is for lack of a better word beautiful.



I smiled, it was a gesture I knew he couldn’t fully appreciate even if he was looking at me, for the majority of my features were masked behind layers of thin wafting cloth. Only my eyes, a soft dull hazel could be seen. But they must have betrayed me because I heard the most lyrical; crooning laughter that ever graced my hearing it was nearly painful in its deep tone. I slowly lifted my chin so that I could see the full image of the man to whom that melody belonged. He was tall, he seemed a giant to me then, kneeling as I was, small, insignificant against this towering pillar of strength, his hair was dark, but where the flames light touched it appeared blue in its blackness. It was the perfect compliment I quickly realized to the intensity of eyes that were so cerulean that they seemed unreal. I must have gasped because the set of that gaze narrowed on me like a predator catching sight of prey after it had long been starved. I became aware that I was completely terrified and frozen in that terror, he stalked toward me and though ever fiber of my being screamed for me to run I found I couldn’t even draw breath.



In contrast he seemed utterly unaffected by me. I would have thought he hadn’t even noticed my presence if those ghostly orbs were not fixated on the shallow well of my own, if he wasn’t moving with that stalking gait straight toward me. A subtle movement caught my attention and thankful for the distraction I looked to the graceful length of his fingers, a simple copper tarn disk danced phantom like across the back of his knuckles. The motion was so effortless, so practiced that he never took his gaze from me and the coin never slowed or faltered in its track back and forth over the arch of his hand. My own hands began to shake and I tried to hide this by folding them in genteel fashion onto my lap but my eyes refused to give up the vision of the coin, still being passed from knuckle to knuckle as he lowered himself in casual disarray on the pile of fur directly next to me.



I was bewildered, why, why would this god like creature choose that particular spot to inhabit, there were very few people around the fire, surely there was space for him to be alone, surely he did not have to invade the space I was using. I think he must have sensed my sudden discomfort because as I leaned away, trying to distance myself without seeming rude he leaned even closer. Again I was graced by that deep crooning tone “Tal Lady”. I looked to my left because I was certain he couldn’t be addressing me he found that funny though and once more I was tortured with his soft laughter. I laughed at myself as I looked back at him and forced myself to utter that single soft syllable in return “Tal”. It was all I could manage, his closeness, his smell; his eyes that even though they frightened me I couldn’t bring myself to look away from, all of it was making my head swim. I couldn’t think straight and I silently cursed myself “Stop it Sonora, you are being a fool!” The sound of his voice pulled me from this inner struggle "I am Raphael of Treve" appropriate I thought, not that there were many choices, tarns were not beasts that just any man could master and Trevians were among the best of those. I stammered in that same hushed molto "S S Sonora", again it had been all I could manage, though and happily so, later it would prove to have been enough to seal my fate.