Roan was still living somewhere out in the world in his head. It's what she had liked about him from the beginning. But the streams of inspiration reflected a vengeful place, described. Feathers thrown, cutting through clouds of blood. Lips and teeth. Sacrilegious truth about god-things acting like earth's animals. In his mixed moments, he tried to reconcile the divine with its children. Humans were made to believe in greater things, and he'd felt the greater things act like earth's animals.<br/><br/>Roan didn't know what to say about his knowledge. He knew about heavenly slaughter like he'd known the round wooden brick went into the round hole in the wooden panel. Children know because they are innocent, and they're innocent because they are empty of both virtue and sin. He wasn't a child anymore, and erred largely in the way of wrath. Pride, there, lust, too. A honeycomb pattern of all the bad things. He'd wandered around perfectly fine, putting his truths on paper, or speaking them into thirsty microphones, while nurturing his own sins against other people as people do.<br/><br/>Then someone put a stray note in a gallery, and a gaggle of someones noticed it. The more people liked his expression of the truth, the more he was made to express. It was hard, living close to the galleries that wanted him, and he couldn't very well take responsibility from afar. It seemed important, somehow, to stay close to the site of impact. Some nights he stood in the streetlamp light until the sun came up. Artists who won't take bloated sums for their vision starve even after discovery.<br/><br/>She couldn't have that. She was pretty as a day. She understood something about the words he wrote that other's only sensed. Intrigue became a friendship that blossomed mostly in the dining area close to walls where his soul hung. She was his constant in the tides of transient discoverers. So he leaned on her when he doubted himself, and when the cold was too bitter to be chased away by the company of streetlight, he borrowed her roof when she offered. It was convenient. It became intimate. But when his troubles faded in his new domestic cosmos - her couch, her rooms, her scents - he was left alone with his inspirations and her admiration of it, of him.<br/><br/>It shone a light on the discrepancy of him and the vessel he ought to be. A good person, she thought, when all he'd been before his art was a cesspool of weaknesses - chemical, flesh, impulse. His temper had roiled today, missing the strife of surviving on the concrete, and reminiscing over the bodies it had gotten to let out on. But he'd learned to suffer in silence. Anger can be an inside treasure, too. In some ways, for a beast, a beauty is a shackle. He wore it well, his wrathful presence. It faded on his white skin and stayed around the darker roots of his light hair.<br/><br/>Today he'd tied it back, it was just barely the length. The prominent details of his face became almost severe, and softened only in the light, when his complexion smoothed out the shadows. Starving, as it was said, but not his lips. They'd been spoiled, somehow, lush flesh that stretched into knowing and demeaning smirks. He would go round her with his primal intelligence, and then assault her with words coming from behind his teeth. Like all poisonous things, his mouth was flamboyantly colored.<br/><br/>"Welcome home, queen of the castle." he said, tossing his jacket expertly to hang on a hook. The outwear eventually crumpled to the floor but for a few moments, he'd seemed formidable. His long arms flapped once in disappointment, theatrical, and then he laughed. Roan's mood was light, it seemed, when he channeled his brood into motion. He'd been particularly good on their little outing, his usual melancholy pretty left for a more dashing demeanor. Even the waiter had been charmed. All manner of energies lived inside Roan. The drinks had helped.