AN: Another one! I'm on a roll.
As a boy, he'd been clumsy, an eighteen year old Hume who stumbled over his own feet. His body had grown disproportionately, too quickly, and he looked strange, very young and very likely to trip over all manner of things. Fran had been hesitant at first, when he had approached her in the bar, clearly Archadian and even more clearly an aristocrat. The thing that changed her mind were his eyes, alight with quicksilver and wisdom beyond his years. Later on in the week, when he showed her the Strahl, she found she also appreciated his voice, not exactly deep, not yet, but knowledgeable without sounding condescending, and toned just right. Balthier had seemed, to her, to be perfectly groomed and raised, and she could just imagine him in a palatial home, drinking tea and knowing which utensil was used for what, always saying please and thank you and yes, sir.
A year passed and she woke up one morning to find he had grown up almost overnight, his form suddenly muscled and filled out, as if his skin had been a loose fitting shirt that had shrunk during washing. His face was more defined, thinner now without the comforts of his upbringing. And he was fully Balthier now, wit and flattery, the man who had been sleeping inside Ffamran, who had peered out at her through those young eyes and whispered to her: the skies shall find me, and I will find you.