by Ryn » Sun Aug 27, 2023 7:09 pm
Ryn tenses again, her heart suddenly seeming to beat in her throat. This does feel very close to the unclear thing she'd been chasing, though she doesn't like that apparently at the end of the chase is a kind of vulnerability. On both ends, her sat in her seat, very much out of her depths and Cindy, barely clothed and leaning in so close she can feel her body heat. The hairs on the back of her neck rise and not out of any kind of sense of danger. It's the difference between being able to move like the women on stage, which is easy, and doing it for someone to see, which is very much not.
"And you are not afraid." she notes and Ryn isn't even sure what exactly she means. Afraid of Ryn? The performing? The leering people at the stage? Some unspoken threat that somehow only strikes at her heart?
She hadn't even noticed she'd closed her eyes at Cindy coming so close, as if her closeness would somehow transmit that vulnerability to the Deva. They snap open now as she forces herself to look at Cindy to try and find the source of her bravery, but all she sees is bare skin and toned muscle, covered here and there with earthen pigment to match the tone of her skin the same way the colors on her face highlight and draw attention. She doesn't command attention, she reads it, directs and molds it like water and that protects her.
The dancing, the whispers, the pigments, it's all part of it and Ryn feels very stupid all of a sudden. It's powerful enough to have fooled her, bend the Deva's attention inward and made her unsettle herself with her own gaze. But now she is looking, accepting that it still makes her stomach twinge with warmth because being aware of something does not make her immune to it. But she can let it pass through her because she's seen something more important than her own awkwardness. She reaches up to grab Cindy's wrist. Not encircling it harshly but with her fingers against the back of her palm and her thumb against the pulse on the inside of her wrist. She holds her arm still for a moment to look at the spot on the dancer's arm where the green-blue of bruised flesh shimmers beneath the concealer make-up.
"Not of this or of me." she corrects herself, quietly, calmly, looking up and into Cindy's eyes. Competent and mysterious. That she can do better than anyone.