You know what? Writing Neal is actually quite fun. I can be as sarcastic as I want, and come out with the most hopelessly ridiculous romantic statements that make me gag (you'll see what I mean), and call it character. Having said that, I don't think it's going to be a common occurrence! Anyway, just because I'm stressed, and I need to get something out and Concealed is in no fit state for it. (Therefore, I make no promises on how good it'll be!)
As always, I don't own the characters. I just like to take them out to play. They belong to Tamora Pierce (apart from the ropey Romeo and Juliet reference - if you've read it, it'll probably smack you in the face with the obviousness of it, but never mind!).
Moonbeams of Infatuation
Yuki called them fads.
It wasn't that he didn't love his Yamani Rose, his Island Flower, his Glowing Kimono of Radiance. He did. He really, truly did.
It was just that sometimes, he still got ridiculous feelings for other women. He'd tried to hide it at first, tried to pretend that the reason he was wondering around with his head in the clouds, dreamily sighing and muttering snatches of poetry under his breath was his wife. He'd tried to attribute his sudden dislike of the men who danced with the woman he was enraptured with that week to some small slight or other, some comment about Kel, or their treatment of the bumpkins in the war. He'd tried, he really did.
It was Kel who had spotted it first, when she'd caught him staring avidly at a table full of women at which Yuki was not sitting.
She'd stomped on his foot (somewhat painfully) and muttered that her memory better of failed her, because she could have sworn she recognised the moony look on his face.
And Neal had assured her that it had, and that he had been dreaming of his Petal, his Orchid, his Spun Sugar Swan of Delight, and Kel had promptly told him to shut up.
She'd watched him after that though, and despite the fact that he'd tried so very hard to distract her (in the form of Tobe, Dom, Lord Raoul and whoever else he could rope into discussion with her), and despite the fact that he'd tried even harder to hide the fact that he was staring at Caroline of Green Ridge and the way that the candlelight dappled her snow white skin, Kel, being as damned perceptive as she was, had promptly noticed.
It hadn't taken Yuki long to notice either, not when Kel had refused to speak for him for more than a week. And when she sat him down and forced him to explain, and he'd watched her eyes above her spread fan, he prayed to Mithros, the Goddess, to anyone who would listen, that she'd forgive him.
And (somewhat miraculously) she had.
She'd told him that she'd been warned long before about his periods of infatuation, the times when he'd spend a week obsessing about one woman or another, and then forgetting promptly about her soon after. She'd told him that she'd found out when she'd asked Kel years ago, why, for no rational reason, Neal seemed to despise Master SalmalĂn, and Kel had told him that in their first year he'd spent some time enamoured with Daine Sarrasri. It seemed that all that remained of his numerous flights of fancy was an inexplicable dislike of their male companions and recycled verses of poetry.
Neal wondered what it was, exactly, that he'd do without his wife. She told him that small, harmless crushes were one thing, and precisely where he'd find her shukusen if she discovered they were anything but.
And then she'd blessed him with one of her smiles that made him feel as if the sun shone directly on him.
And Neal had promptly come out with what he would have no doubt that Kel, Merric and Roald would easily term one of his most foolish statements yet: "Be assured, my love, that whatever I may feel for them is merely as tempestuous and fleeting as the moon, whilst you, Yukimi, my love for you is as constant as the sun."
