Malia's Might

Chapter 7: His fierce beauty.

Mason was trying to figure out exactly what he was doing here.  He had intended fully to go straight to school once he had gotten dressed this morning.  It was his plan and to his own credit he had actually started heading that way, but that was as far as he had gotten.  Instead of heading to the bus stop he found himself perched once again amongst those damn gargoyles.  This time he was not letting his instincts and emotions run rampant on his brain though, he had at least remembered to glimmer himself so that he was hidden from view.  He wasn’t exactly sure how he could explain a teenage boy sitting on the roof outside of a girl’s bedroom so hiding was best.

                Still he found himself uneasy; he wanted to be closer to her even though he didn’t even know her name.  It was crazy!  Yet, it was the truth.  He was finding it harder and harder not to creep into the room and brush the raven tendril off of her sleeping face so that he could look at her with an unobstructed view.  She was a vision laying there in her dream world.  He could tell that her dream was a peaceful one since she had a half smile curling up the ends of her mouth.  Her soft lips were begging him to place a kiss there.

                Mason shook his head, dang he needed to get it together.  If he didn’t know better he would think she had enchanted him.  She couldn’t have though since their paths had never crossed and Mason’s teachings had taught him well to destroy any speck of material that could be used to bewitch him.  His people could not afford for their leader to become a puppet to anyone.  So like a ritual for himself every morning after brushing his own dark locks he would scrape his fallen tresses out of the bristles and incinerate them instantly.  At least having control over flame had its advantages in many situations.

                Mason was brought out of his own thoughts by the sound of the alarm.  He whipped his head back around to watch the vision in front of him as she blindly slapped at the confounded alarm clock and it refused her pleas to stop its incessant chirping.  He was finding it hard to contain the smile that graced his features at her antics.  So she was definitely not a morning person, he couldn’t blame her the sun was just barely starting to peak over the horizon and from her accent as she muttered to herself about morning classes being cruel and unusual punishment he guessed she was probably still battling jet lag from her journey here.

                He felt his breath freeze in his lungs as she suddenly was facing him in the window.  Could she see him?  It felt like she was staring directly into his eyes, no his soul.  For an instant all he wanted to do for the rest of eternity was stare into her beautiful jade orbs and then she stretched and turned away to walk into another room.  Mason let out the breath he had been holding as his heart thundered in his chest and his more beastly side urged him to follow her.

                He crept along the edge of the roof, winding in between the gargoyles that accompanied him.  He needed to get another glimpse of her; he had an urge to never let her out of his sights.  He was fighting himself and trying to figure out what had happened to him when he suddenly realized the room he was peering into was not any ordinary room.  He felt his face flame as he took in the details and the fact that he was staring into her bathroom as she prepared the shower dawned on him.  Quickly he yanked himself back from the window as she dropped her pajamas to the floor and her skin was left bare.   He would not be one of those creepy lurkers, she had not given him permission to see her beautiful form bare for the entire world and he would not take that image with him without her approval.  It felt like it would be a betrayal of whatever there was between them.

                Mason sat with his back to the window listening to her singing in the shower.  He didn’t know what song she hummed but the melody was catching on to him.  He felt the song weave its way into his very being, as if he had heard it somewhere before but the memory was lost to him.  Suddenly he heard the shower cut off and the rings that held the curtain in place being slid to the side.  He didn’t dare to look until he heard her feet padding across the floor and he felt she was most likely secured into one of those big fluffy towels he had seen near the shower.  His assumption had been correct.

                Mason felt his mouth go dry as he stared at her through the glass.  Even swallowed in that ridiculous cloud she was using as a towel she looked like something out of a fairy tale.  Her hair was wet and she was leaning over to towel dry it as it slowly began to curl as it dried.  She was surrounded in a cloud of mist from the hot water and it appeared as though she was a vision coming through the fog.  His heart skipped a beat when suddenly she looked to the side and peered at the very window he was staring at her through.  Again he wondered if she somehow saw him, but tossed out the thought as soon as he had it.  If she saw him there was no way she would not have given it away.  No one would be so calm as they had a stranger staring into their windows as he was.

                She began muttering to herself about getting it together and not being the crazy girl when she walked behind a screen partition and began to dress in the bundle of clothes she had on the chaise lounge near the door.  He was grateful that she had not placed them on the one by his window, he didn’t know if he would have been able to keep from shimmering into that room to hold her had she come so close to him in nothing but that towel.

                Finally she was once again within his view and thankfully he was able to better control his impulses once she was clothed.  She was staring into the full length mirror as she appraised her outfit and had a slightly sad smile on her face.  She clearly had sentimental attachments to the items she was wearing if her light fingering of the materials was any indication.  She turned to look at the back pockets of the jeans she was wearing and he saw the images of the bejeweled dragons on the pockets.  He smiled seeing that she liked elements of the supernatural.  Maybe there could be some way they could have a connection of some sorts without him completely scaring her to death.

                Then she grabbed a beanie that looked less feminine and manlier but still somehow completed her look.  He swore she could make a paper bag look amazing but for some reason the beanie had his inner beast miffed and he could feel his scales bristling.  Funny, he had never had that kind of reaction to anything a female had worn before; this was something he must look into later.  He followed her again to the original windows and her bedroom as she moved back with purpose.

                He watched as she opened a tiny box and pulled out a delicate necklace with a fragile looking pendant attached to it.  The way she held that one item was as if all her world resided in that one tiny piece of adornment.  She placed the necklace around her throat and then looped it around again.   He had to admit he liked the way the fine chain accented her creamy skin and brought attention to her heart’s rhythm pulsing in her neck.  He decided that if he ever got the chance he would definitely get her another necklace to adorn that throat so that she could think of him every time she wore it.  Suddenly she was peering at her own image as if she could see someone she cherished more than life itself.  He was starting to feel a bit jealous and uneasy when he heard her speak and realized that she was talking to her mother.  Was her mother alive and inside the mirror?  Tuning his hearing he picked up her solemn vow to the mirror and it dawned on him that his beauty had lost her maternal figure.  He could hear the sorry in her voice and it pained his very being.

                Mason turned and sat on the ledge with the gargoyles as his vision of a girl disappeared down the staircase, presumably to head to her new school.  He bristled at the screeching voice of the harpy that was her step-mother he now realized as she belittled the outfit that his beauty had chosen to wear.  He felt like he should say something but felt a surge of energy course through the air an instant before she stood up for herself.  He felt intrigue as to where the energy had come from as it only lasted a few moments and then was gone.  However, he couldn’t be bothered enough to search for the mystery source just yet as he felt a sense of pride swell in his chest for her quick wit and bite with words in retort to her step-mother’s belittling comments.  If her step-mother’s silence as the front door closed was any indication his beauty was a force to be reckoned with, and he loved her comment about dragon armor and fairy dreams.  He would be her dragon in an instant if he could; he knew he definitely didn’t want her finding someone else to be her “Prince”.  Why settle for a prince when he was already a King?