At first look, Calliope Souh is a small girl with sun-darkened skin wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Takashi glances at her, then down at Mitskuni's little blond head, then looks back up at her, and notices more. Like her eyes and her hair and her fingers.
Takashi is good at noticing things.
Like how her eyes seem brighter than the stars at night in the middle of nowhere - almost too bright for her face. He's heard and seen books and TV shows and the few magazines he reads say, 'this color will make your eyes pop!' but he thinks it may have something to do with how vibrant her eyes are, even against all the bright colors of the flowers.
And her fingers are heavily callused on the pads of each finger, from years of practicing an instrument - the violin, as he finds out. And as he notices later, she sometimes slips away into the delicate notes of a concerto, swaying back and forth to the melody she taps out on the tabletop.
And for another thing, he will eventually realize, she is big. She takes up the room with her energy, with her voice, just by standing there. Just by entering a room, everything seems brighter. He's never really understood it when people say The room lights up when she walks in but he thinks it has something to do with the way everything seems to zoom into high-resolution the closer to her it gets, and the way that colors brighten and intensify around her.
But for now, all he knows is that she's the girl wearing the white shirt and the blue jeans and she has galaxies trapped under her skin and he sure that when she speaks they will come pouring out her mouth.
To him, Calliope Souh is a universe trapped in a human body.