[The soft chuckle that earns might be from his nervousness, or it might be from genuine amusement. Even he can't tell. But it's there regardless as she draws him nearer to examine him. Though the years separating who he once was and who he is now are long, he knows his old ways and knows them well. Nostalgia meets those memories, a fondness one might feel thinking back on an old friend or a younger sibling.]
It was not a path I thought I would ever walk, yet here I am. This has been a role filled gradually rather than forced suddenly, as some in life are fortunate enough to know, but I do not regret myself, much as the years have changed me.
[As much as it must deepen the flush over his face, if the renewed warmth in him is anything to judge by, it is barely a few moments into the contact before his eyes fall closed, the muscles down the back of his neck and shoulders loosening slowly under it.]
[With his new lot in life came a certain distance from people, even his closest friends and comrades on the First. His authority set a divide between them, a barrier not to be broken lest they see the cracks in his foundation, firmed over the years and sealed, but still there, waiting to waver their faith in him. He does not like it and he doesn't have to, not when it removes him from elements of society that any social creature such as they all are longs for, regardless of standing or station, but it is a price he has paid to see the larger picture painted. His people need the Exarch in him more than they need the old playfulness and teasing nature of G'raha Tia. So touch isn't anything he receives often at all, but he appreciates it no less, an experience made all the more precious for its rarity, and a small, selfish part of him yearns for it, hopes it will not end, even knowing it will.]
no subject
It was not a path I thought I would ever walk, yet here I am. This has been a role filled gradually rather than forced suddenly, as some in life are fortunate enough to know, but I do not regret myself, much as the years have changed me.
[As much as it must deepen the flush over his face, if the renewed warmth in him is anything to judge by, it is barely a few moments into the contact before his eyes fall closed, the muscles down the back of his neck and shoulders loosening slowly under it.]
[With his new lot in life came a certain distance from people, even his closest friends and comrades on the First. His authority set a divide between them, a barrier not to be broken lest they see the cracks in his foundation, firmed over the years and sealed, but still there, waiting to waver their faith in him. He does not like it and he doesn't have to, not when it removes him from elements of society that any social creature such as they all are longs for, regardless of standing or station, but it is a price he has paid to see the larger picture painted. His people need the Exarch in him more than they need the old playfulness and teasing nature of G'raha Tia. So touch isn't anything he receives often at all, but he appreciates it no less, an experience made all the more precious for its rarity, and a small, selfish part of him yearns for it, hopes it will not end, even knowing it will.]