A deep purple gaze followed the young man’s movements as he rose, chuckling at her question. The slightest smile tugged at Ariella’s lips as his words seemed to suggest that inviting an uninvited guest to have a moonlit chat was basic manners. She couldn’t argue with his reasoning for being out here, though.<br/><br/>Music was a craft sometimes best enjoyed without unwanted disruptions, and a place such as this might typically provide an undisturbed stage on which one could play to the heavens. There certainly was a charm in that, whether you were the one playing, or an unexpected listener. It certainly didn’t hurt when the one playing was attractive in their own right, even without the beautiful music or enchanting moonlight. Not that she had any intention of admitting that.<br/><br/>A smirk soon replaced her smile when the man almost playfully asked if she made a habit of wandering the forests alone before recounting the dangers one might find in such a place. He wasn’t wrong about that; the forest was full of dangers, ripe with predators waiting for helpless prey to wander into their sights. Whether it was brave or foolish was, she thought, a matter of perspective.<br/><br/>“Sometimes,” she answered him with apparent nonchalance, although there was a hint of playfulness in her voice. “You forgot vampires,” she pointed out, although neither her voice nor her eyes gave away whether she was implying something or if this was simply a casual observation. It could be either. There were some subtle things that might make someone suspicious if they were paying attention. On the other hand, this kingdom had been at war with vampires for a long time now, so there were plenty of tales of vampires passed down in this area.<br/><br/>Armed with such knowledge, perhaps it was foolish of her to not wear silver, something that most humans made a habit of whenever they left their homes. She couldn’t really tell you why, but she’d never been fond of wearing it, despite the insistence of essentially everyone in the court. Most of the time she got away with it because she was not allowed to leave the walls that supposedly kept her safe without some significant escort.<br/><br/>What they didn’t know was that she often did it anyways. She was curious and inquisitive, perhaps more so than even most humans, so she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to go out and see the world beyond her walls, to experience things. Perhaps it was a fault, something that put her life in danger and might ultimately lead to her death, but even knowing this, she wouldn’t stop. Life was fragile, here one minute and gone the next. If she didn’t ever truly live her life, was it really a life at all?<br/><br/>Even so, she was not careless, so she did not wander alone entirely unprotected. She kept a small blade with her whenever she left the walls on her little adventures. She wouldn’t go so far as to call herself brave, but she was not a fool, either—at least, not completely so. “At any rate, there’s a fine line between bravery and foolishness, I think. If you walk that line, you’re bound to cross it on either side every now and then,” she suggested with a casual shrug.<br/><br/>“You can call me Aria, by the way,” she offered in that same light and airy tone, deciding it was rude to interrupt him and not even offer a name. Of course, she didn’t like to use her real name when she was out, for many reasons, and since he didn’t seem to immediately recognize who she was, she offered the name she tended to go by instead. “What shall I call you?” she asked with another curious tilt of her head.