(SNIPPET FROM AN AUDIO DRAMA)

Valdal asked "What about Tuuli?"

Tyvan's expression shifted into something harder to read. "Tuuli is... complicated."

"Tuuli is bizarre."

"She's not bizarre, she's —"

"She hid a goat's damned eyeball under Franziska's pillow."

"She thought it was good luck."

"Based on what? Who told her that? Where in any culture, on any continent, in ANY theological framework, is a goat eyeball under a pillow good luck?"

"I don't think anyone told her. I think she just... decided."

"She decided that a goat eyeball was good luck and then placed it under the pillow of the woman who already wants to throw her off a cliff. Tyvan. That's not eccentricity..."

"She's adjusting. She was raised in a cult. Never really allowed to be a person"

Tyvan rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Tuuli is... drawn to me. I know that. She's made that... abundantly clear."

"She threatened a barmaid back in Kelravn. For flirting with you. She told the girl she'd bend her fingers in ways they weren't meant to go."

"That was —"

"It was creative, I'll give her that."

"She doesn't understand how these things work. She was trained to — they taught her to —" He stopped, his jaw tightening. The topic of what the Congregation had trained Tuuli to do sat between them like something with teeth.

"She flirts the way someone uses a weapon they were issued but never chose. It's not... it's not what she actually feels, I don't think."

"Or maybe it is, but she doesn't have the framework to separate what's real from what she was programmed to perform."

"And what does she actually feel?"

Tyvan was quiet for a moment. "She told me once that being near me is like standing next to a bonfire. That I'm heavy — spiritually, in the way she perceives things. She can't see my face that well, Valdal, or any of this." He gestured vaguely at himself — the pointed ears, the golden eyes, the unsettling symmetry. "She sees weight. Presence. Spiritual heat. And she's attracted to it."

That landed heavily enough that neither of them spoke for a moment. A land crab — so it was a crab — clicked beneath the floorboards.

"She's beautiful, though," Valdal said, almost involuntarily. Then he closed his eyes like a man who'd accidentally said something out loud during a lecture.

"I mean — I know she can't see, and the head-tilting thing is like talking to a very pretty hawk, and her smile sometimes makes me feel like I'm being evaluated as prey — but she's —"

"She nearly gutted you."

"I'm aware."

"With her "Eshtalay". In the abdomen. You almost died."

"I remember, Tyvan, I was there, it was my abdomen —"

"And you still think she's beautiful."

"I think," he said carefully, "that she is a profoundly damaged person who was raised by absolute monsters and is trying very hard to be something other than what they made her.
And I think — I think — underneath all of the... the head-tilting and the dead animal gifts and the finger-bending threats — I think there's someone in there who just wants to be seen.
Not as a living weapon. Not as something to be manipulated. Just — seen."

He cleared his throat.

"Also, yes, she is extremely attractive, and I hate myself a little for noticing, given the attempted disembowelment."



(Snippet is done, thanks for reading)

A little thing I wrote for my audio drama, but also wanted it to accompany this commission I got from Miingies on Instagram/Fiverr of my OC Tuuli.

Tuuli is my OC in my Edwardian Fantasy setting, Wyvern Detachment.