He wants to touch her.
It's driving him mad, the whisper of her skirts against those legs he's never seen but can imagine with perfect detail, perfectly formed and strong as they wrap about his waist, capturing him, drawing him in, as her eyes do, as her scent does (fresh-baked bread and honey, echoes of the home he's read about in storybooks but never knew first-hand), as her half-laugh, reminiscent of her name, does.
But he is dark and old and immortal, and she is none of those, so instead he mounts a fresh spindle onto the upright and muses at the language of the wheel: maiden, orifice, mother-of-all. He imagines the princess-servant twisting tight beneath his wise fingers, then unraveling.
She wants to touch him.
It's driving her mad, the creaking of the wheel beneath his hands, his artist's hands, which she knows would know all of a woman's secrets, and would keep them, respect them, honoring the woman who allowed him to come so close. She doesn't see talons: she sees the gentleness with which he manipulates fragile, common straw, through some rare skill bending it, where other men would break it, and making of it something precious and pure. She believes if she surrendered her singular gift to his touch, he would make something new and unique of her.
But she is a daughter of the realm and the times, so she clutches her broom as she would his hips, if not for the armor of leather shielding them.
But someday, he will hear her body shouting at him to free her from her skirts.