A particularly experimental tidbit this week from the perspective of the love interest in my Nanowrimo 2021 project (and perhaps my Nanowrimo 2022 project as well if I decide I want to work on it two years running). Will this make it into the finished product? Who knows!
I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I want to have Salina’s point of view in the story proper. She’s a secretive person who Kry, the main character, has a hard time reading. I want to make sure that it doesn’t descend into, to quote Martin Billany, “She’s a mysterious character shrouded in mystery, which is just another way of saying she’s boring as all get out,” by being too cagey about her motivations.
Said motivations are: a) escape from the cruel system she’s been raised in using her skills and sheer force of will and b) maybe get together with that hot meathead coworker of hers. That second point is particularly obvious in this passage.
Kryoloth is a short-tempered, hulking mountain of a man five seconds away from a fight at any given time, sanctioned or otherwise. Just one of his meaty biceps is bigger around than Salina’s waist. What percentage of that is due to muscle versus fat remains to be seen. Regardless, he’s dangerous. She’s seen the damage he can do with all of that bulk, never mind his magic.
Still, there’s some level of appeal that comes with the danger. Like all of the red flags are just there to draw her attention. And once he has her interest, she can’t stop looking.
He stomps around, growling and snarling like a caged beast, all in the interest of keeping others away, even his own student. But every great once in a while she sees him dispirited, lost in thought as he smokes and worries at half-healed wounds. Without the anger to serve as a cover, it’s obvious just how lonely he is.
They’re not close enough for her to feel like she could get away with giving him a hug, but in those moments he looks like he needs one. That thought, altruistic on the surface, serves to cover up others that are more selfish: he’s more than strong enough to pick her up. Is he as cuddly as he looks? As warm?
She settles for just wrapping her arms around herself when she approaches him. He blushes when he notices her. She keeps her own face a smooth mask of indifference, the icy-cool to his fiery-hot. Secretly, she’s grateful when he puts out his cigarette; his smoking habit bothers her a lot more than his prickly personality.
In what she can only interpret as a subconscious effort to make himself smaller, he hunches forward. It doesn’t work at all, but she takes the opportunity to pat one of his broad shoulders while it’s more within her reach. They’re bare thanks to the tank top he’s wearing. His skin radiates heat like a furnace. He stares at her. She wonders when he last got any sort of touch that wasn’t mid-fight.
She thought at first that his eyes were dark, the same near-black as hers. As a matter of fact, they’re a lighter shade of brown, cinnamony. They clash with how pale his lashes and brows are, the same white-blond as his hair and beard. The discord should be off-putting, but like so much about him it makes her all the more entranced.
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