It's a blue feather, one to match his eyes, though she doesn't mean it that way, as she collects it, sheltering as if against the rain and the wind or more accurately against Lord Brecker's prying eyes. It's molting season, and she knows that one lone feather really doesn't do much really, but it feels like grasping at something.
It's like grasping at straws, and really isn't this what loving Zen is like, grasping at straws, that she is too weak to hold on to, too powerless to keep. She thinks of the way that she caught a glance, a glance meant for Shirayuki, that only the red head was supposed to see, supposed to feel, but Kihal for a moment felt like a princess, for a moment felt seen, but really, she wasn't seen.
She was weak and timid, as she backed up, as if she could capture that look and hide it away in her pocket, as if she could cling to it and feel how white her hands turned, how harshly her nails dug into her palm, dug into her skin, until she was practically dizzy under the weight of them.
It's too much pressure, but then again, so is this crush. The pressure that she never signed up for, the feelings that snuck in, when she's supposed to hate nobles. But nobles don't have blue feather eyes, ones you can stare into for hours and hours and hours, until you are melting, until you are so smitten, that you've become dizzy, as if you were spinning, spinning, spinning, as if she were a flower lost in the wind.
She lives on an island; she knows what the wind can do, what it can do to feathers, what it can do to lone hats, what it can do to birds, and yet, for a moment, she is picturing the way wind feels when it brushes against your skin, the way blue feather eyes can fill up with so much love as if it is aimed at her, just for her, as if she had a moment to just savor it. To feel it, and she knows people will mistake his eyes for the ocean, that people will mistake his eyes for the Clarinesian Crest, that she is quickly becoming familiar with, and she knows they would be wrong.
His eyes are feather blue; they match her birds that she loves so much, and why has she broken herself so much over him? It has to be more than the rareness of his blue eyes, the way they remind her of Popo, the way they remind her of life, of purpose, of goal driven life?
Kihal isn't a little girl anymore, with a mountainous kiddy crush, but still for a moment, she feels like one.