[center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/rFqmKNsx/Orion-Nightingale.png[/img][/center][hr][right][sub]Location: Frostmoon Lake -> Town Square
Interactions: Céline ([@Beard Dad])[/sub][/right][hr]
[indent]He did not interrupt, not when she spoke of Tingara, Gadez, the storm, or the spring. His expression remained inscrutable, but his stillness marked deep attention rather than detachment. And when she spoke of hunger—her hunger, that familiar feral undercurrent—his gloved fingers twitched faintly, recalling the fox’s fragile pulse beneath his palm. The creature’s trust had been a mirror, reflecting a version of himself Orion had long barricaded behind control: desperate, ravenous. 

[i]Weak.[/i] 

Her candour disarmed him more and more as she continued to speak. So, when Céline finally stopped speaking, he had no choice but to stand quietly for a moment longer, as though honouring what had just been laid between them. And then, at last, he nodded once.

“[color=#0054a6]Thank you for telling me. All of those things,[/color]” he said simply. “[color=#0054a6]Most wait until their truth has caused damage. You offered yours while it still cost you something. That matters.[/color]”

At her expressions of regret, however, Orion found himself frowning, not out of judgment, but weariness. He’d seen too many lie through polished smiles and perfect posture. People, blightborn or not, who spoke of duty with honeyed tongues, only to bare their teeth when power or pride was at stake.  Regret, real regret, was rarer than all of that. He’d learned to recognize it by what it wasn’t: not loud, not showy, not used as a shield. It lived in the small things—in the way someone returned to the same memory again and again, or how their voice broke only once and never on purpose. Céline had it. Not just the hunger. Not just the danger. But the weight of having lived through it and still wanting to be better.

“[color=#0054a6]I won’t reconsider my stance,[/color]” Orion declared in turn. “[color=#0054a6]We’ve had worse come through our gates pretending to be saints. At least you’re honest about the wolf at the door. That’s more than I can say for some.[/color]” Because Orion had vouched for him, too. Willis. Against his better judgment. [i]Foolish[/i], he’d thought then. Yet the man had steadied, his lies and rash episodes less frequent. A small redemption, perhaps. A bit of proof that some wolves could be leashed. 

But still, there were others, like Ayel, who’d never see anything more than a beast to be handled. It hadn’t even occurred to the nobleman before that Orion might not be the one holding the leash. That he wasn’t there to tame creatures, but to walk among them. Because he [i]was[/i] one of them. How could he consider himself anything else when “to tame” meant to have control over, and when that kind of control, that kind of power from someone of the same nature, required delusion. No, Orion’s truth was simpler than that. He wasn’t their keeper. He was kin to the creatures he guided. Strangely, irrevocably.

Blightborn, he’d eventually learned to accept.
Beast-tamer? That label stripped the name right off his back.

Besides…it’s just as he’d told Céline previously. Labels were cages. [i]Beast-tamer. Advisor. Monster.[/i] He’d let them clatter around him, meaningless as pebbles, so long as they obscured the deeper truth: he belonged nowhere, a shadow straddling the line between Dawnhaven’s new order and the wildness of the blight that surrounded it. 

Céline pulled him back once more, Orion finding himself pausing at her request.  The wind caught the hem of his coat, and then he gestured faintly with one hand for her to follow as he began to walk again.

“[color=#0054a6]I can show you to the temple where he’s kept,[/color]” he said. “[color=#0054a6]He was Lunarian, so I’m afraid I did not know him personally.[/color]” The admission carried a tinge of regret, not for the dead man, but for the chasm between his world and Seluna’s. Lunarians had always been enigmas, their rituals as opaque as their moonlit sigils. Orion had respected their distance, though; Dawnhaven’s existence demanded enough feigned intimacy without courting more.[/indent]