The more time she spent with him, the more unsettled Mara felt. She felt jumpy for reasons she couldn't explain. But at the same time, everything was so still around him, she didn't understand why it should bother her. He seemed to know how she was feeling too, though she kept her emotions from her face. He simply couldn't be nobody,  because he was doing something impossible. And the magic...

His question distracted her thoughts from where they had started going and she calmly met his gaze, her insides full of unseen butterflies. Why should that question bother her? It wasn't like she was a secret. Nearly all the witches in existence knew of her she believed. Maybe it was because this man was claiming that he wasn't witch born, that he was an unsuspecting outsider. But that didn't seem right somehow.

"I'm Mara," she found herself saying quietly, feeling trapped by his gaze. "I'm a threadseer. I can see magic." She barely whispered the last part and it was a wonder she could be heard above the fountain at all.

And then Mara realized what she had said and her heart started hammering against her ribs. Why? Why has she just admitted that to this stranger? He probably didn't understand what it meant, she barely felt like she understood it sometimes. If he truly was an outsider, it would go right over his head. Magic to normal people was invisible.

Her eyes automatically flickered to the threads that floated nearby, so calm and quiet. So unlike what she was used to seeing. Her head ached softly as she did so, but not as bad as she was used to it doing. She wondered why that was. Unconsciously, forgetting she was doing so in the first place, her hand tightened on the nail in her pocket.

"Who are you," she breathed, her mask cracking slightly as her eyebrows fold together a little,, puckering the skin between them.