Hi!
Can I request something fluffy for Aaravos with an elf reader, who really likes to sing and dance and just wery artsy? Maybe they are trapped togedher or something.
If you don't want to write this, that okay too. Have a nice day!
I LOVE THIS! I'm sorry I took a while to do it, but I wanted to do Aaravos justice ✨ (He's so ELOQUENT it makes him hard to write). I hope you like how it came out!!
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Curious.
That’s how it begins: he finds you a curious creature. When the silence of the library is disturbed by humming, he glances up from his book. His eyes find you tip toeing across the room, hands brushing the shelves as if they were your ballet bar, entranced in some secret dance that stole you far away from the world.
He would quirk his eyebrow at the curiosity, but return back to his reading, undisturbed.
Amusing.
The more he observes your idiosyncrasies, the more they begin to worm their way into his heart. He begins to expect the way you dance around the kitchen as you make breakfast, your toes just slightly touching the soft ground and prancing onto the next counter where you have your ingredients for baking. He comes to recognize the songs you hum, and the times you would invent new ones to your repertoire. And the days you pull out your paints and canvas and sit for hours by the skylight window, he would allow himself to simply observe your process: the way your hand guides the brush as if gliding across ice is, perhaps, its own sort of magic. And maybe, just maybe, his lips curl upward fondly at the thought.
Endearing.
As the days pass by, you find new creative and artistic ways to keep yourself occupied. Aaravos helped you pull all of his books on music and theory from his collection, which you’ve used to teach yourself how to play the lyre sitting otherwise alone on the shelf.
He again allows himself to watch your process as you learn– but, more and more, he begins noticing the softness of your fingers. The tenderness with which you treat the instrument, the gentle ministrations of your hands.
One day, as you sit hunched over the instrument, your hair falls in front of your face. With a small chuckle, Aaravos magicks it back behind your ear for you. Surprised, you glance to him across the room, and find him smiling back, eyes soft.
Enchanting.
One dusk, he finds you backlit against the light of the setting sun, staring at your canvas. Paints line the floor, but your brush does not move. Rather, your chin rests in your hand.
“Painting, are we?” He asks.
You don’t look up from the canvas, biting your lip. “More like trying,” you sigh. “I can’t seem to get this one right…”
Aaravos circles around you, glancing at your work over your shoulder. “What are you attempting to capture?”
You shake your head. “It’s… a little embarrassing. But, instead of a traditional painting, I wanted to try and make an abstract. I’m trying to capture the feeling of dreaming on canvas. I just… it’s still missing something, but I can’t figure out what.”
Aaravos tilts his head thoughtfully at the assortment of deep blues and purples that line your page. Then, he motions to the empty half of your painting bench, the silk fabrics of his robe glossing against your shoulder as he does so.
“May I?”
You nod, and he sits down with you. He’s close– his shoulder is pressed against yours, and you feel warmth from his entire body.
He contemplates the composition for a moment, then smiles. “I believe I may help. If I may?”
He reaches for your brush, and you move to hand it to him. But rather than take it, he gently clasps his hands around yours. You feel your cheeks grow hot.
He whispers the words of a spell, and guides your hand across the canvas. As the brush moves, it brings with it a swath of light and color to the page– as if the aurora borealis itself has illuminated the essence of your painting.
Your eyes grow wide at the sight, the dancing colors reflecting across your irises.
Aaravos smiles, admiring the beauty of not simply the painting.
Captivating.
He comes to enjoy your company more than his studies alone. Craves the sound of your laugh, resonating from deep within your throat. Adores the slight curve at the edge of your lips that reveals when you are about to break into a full smile. He helps you in your kitchen dance now, sometimes holding his hands gently above your waist to steady you in your spins or curtseys. His hands are soft and warm, and he always meets your gaze with soft and gentle eyes.
Except– your perceptions of time differ. This imprisonment is but a blip in the totality of his existence; for you, it is growing more and more arduous. And as his heart grows fonder and fonder of you, so is it more and more pained to watch a beautiful bird remain caged.
One night, he awakens and realizes you are not in the sleeping quarters. He finds you in the middle of the floor of the library, your hands wrapped around your knees, your chin tucked to your chest.
“Little star?” He calls to you. “Are you alright?”
You do not answer, for when you try to breathe, your lungs betray you and you hiccup for air.
He frowns and sinks to your eye level, watching as you frustratedly swipe at the tears on your face.
“Tell me,” he says softly, reaching forward to catch the tears with the pad of his thumb. His hand is warm on your clammy skin. “What is wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” you sniffle, using your hand to wipe at the tears on your opposite cheek. “I… I know you’re trying your best to get us out of here. But… I suppose I’ve had too much time to myself to think.”
“Ah,” he says, and begins brushing your hair from your eyes. “I understand all too well the dangers of being let alone to the machinations of one’s own mind.”
You nod, and he allows a comfortable silence to fall between you before probing more. “Please, little star. Would you share your burdens with me?”
You inhale a shaky breath and nod, bringing one hand up to his, still on your face. He is tall, and his hand engulfs your own small ones. The presence is warm and comforting.
“I began to wonder…” you begin, steadying your breath through tears. “I started to think about what I would do, once we are out of here. And I realized– I don’t think I truly have a place in this world. What value can I contribute outside of these walls?”
Aaravos frowns as you keep going, the words spilling out now.
“No one ever supported my hobbies the way you do. The world has no place for an artist, or a dancer, or a musician. What good is an artist to a world of practicians? Where do I even belong?”
You hiccup again, and his thumb strokes your face. His touch is tender.
“Is that truly what you think of yourself?”
You cast your eyes down and nod.
For a moment, the silence of the library is suffocating. But then Aaravos clucks his tongue and chuckles. You look up, shocked. He’s– he’s laughing at you?
No. His eyes are sparkling at you.
“Perhaps,” he says with a gentle smile, “I can put it into perspective for you.”
Then, with a swish of his hand, the library radiates to life.
He’s projected the stars of the night sky –no, the entire galaxy– into the air. You gasp as solar systems twinkling planets spin around you. You hold your hand up to one of the stars, and feel your expression lighten in spite of the tears on your cheeks when you brush a dancing star off its path, sending it twirling in another direction.
“Now,” Aaravos asks. “Which of these is the most important?”
You furrow your brow. In the time you’ve been here, you’ve come to know how Aaravos loves his riddles and trick questions. So the answer comes easily to you.
“None? They are all equally important?”
He smiles a sly grin, the expression that reveals he knows something you don’t, that the riddle answer is not what it seems.
“Not quite,” he says. “Consider: what would all the stars in the galaxy be, without the spaces between them?”
You are silent as you contemplate the thought.
He watches the gears in your mind turn, satisfied. He leans close to you, his nose practically brushing yours. You can see the stars dance in the reflection of his eyes.
“If all the people in this world are stars, you are as vast and pure as the spaces between them. Without people like you, the galaxy would be meaningless.”
You swallow, and feel his breath hot on your face.
“It is your creativity, your personality– the radiance of your very soul that allows the other stars to simply exist. Although not traditionally acknowledged as important, or beautiful… it is the spaces between the stars that I find most wondrous. Most–
Enrapturing.”
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