The sea Paris was familiar with. He could not imagine it as grass. Or conceive of a place so flat. There was very little flat land on the islands, most of it taken up by sandy beaches, or overrun with thick trees and dense foliage. His face turned seaward, as if he could see what she spoke of. And later, alone in his narrow bed, he would hold his hand above his face and squint at the blurry shape of his thumb trying to imagine it.

"Sounds lovely." He said of a thing he could not picture. Jin-ae imagined it, Paris thought. That far away look of remembrance stealing over her face. What Paris could not picture she saw clearly in her mind's eye. The place she had come from and would never see again. People who came to Ile de Paon did not leave again, unless it was by sea bier.

"It will not. There has never been snow on the islands in all our history. Not even the Priestess Mother could will it into existence here." Not even the Lady Reneux with her Black could accomplish such a feat. Or at least Paris thought not. Eyebrows winging upward at her laughter. It was pretty, if inappropriate to her station. Tongue tracing his bottom lip, Paris watched what favor could do to a slave. It made them too bold.

"No offense taken." He did not feel mocked. Not even annoyed that she expressed emotion she should not. It was hard to stifle the rising tide of personhood in yourself. Paris was grateful his own calm manner left him free of such outbursts. Though he was allowed. He was not a slave. Maybe Jin-ae forgot. Sometimes they pretended in order to survive.

He leaned in. Drawn in by her hands and the thing she summoned there to show him. A decorative piece of leather, stamped in a manner he had seen before in spoils brought back to the islands, but had not paid honest attention to. Bright beads falling like water from its edges. "Very lovely." He admitted, admiration for all he saw. The danger of it tickling that itch at the back of his neck.

"I will believe you about leather, and you may believe me about the libraries." He agreed. They had leather on Paon of course, made from the hides the hunters brought back. But it was rarely used for anything more than boots or belts when it came to clothing. To wear leather in such stifling heat would have been too oppressive. Even for Paon.

The turned back to the ribbons. Speaking over them together, close and hushed as if they spoke of great secrets. Something building between them though Paris did not know what. "Adornment?" He offered. She was a house slave. Surely ribbons were allowed, so that she might be a between backdrop to her lady. Or a prize for her master. Paris still wondered about that. Perhaps his mind was drawn to the idea because it mirrored his own life.

He looked at her. Gaze slow and heavy. Face turned toward the display but his eyes were all for Jin-ae. Paris could not have blamed Isidore for it. But she was speaking of Salome. Speaking as if Paris might know her better than the girl living in her house. He did not smile. Or frown, looking back at the ribbon. "She favors blue. Deep blues, such as sapphire, specifically." To honor the husband that did not visit.

Paris never smelled him on her. Or her bedsheets. Mostly finding traces of himself beneath the rich aroma of Salome. Chin up, Paris tilted a glance toward Jin-ae, something fierce rising up in his chest. "She will wonder where you get the marks to buy her gifts, unless you spend her own on herself." He cautioned, hoping Jin-ae might tell him where those marks came from. Wishing to know why those marks came at all.

Chin dipping, Paris agreed. "Surely Paon breeds the greatest of hunters." More feral than the beasts they hunter. Men bred for violence. He was an outlier. His weakness blamed on his father. Paris was not sure he agreed, but he had no wish to be a man such as these. No doubt his sort were needed. That ladies such Salome turned to him proved his inner truth.

It did not matter none other would know.

"Of course not. She is greater than we can ever hope to encompass." A faith of rote sayings. Paris had an endless supply of them as any temple child might. And many not born of the temple. Across Paon only murder was revered higher than faith. And even then it was expected to be done for the glory of Mother Night and not the individual.

Looking down over the shadow of his cheek bones, he watched Jin-ae. Hand reaching for the ribbon caught in his fingers. But she did not touch, or even lift her eyes last his chin. They settled on the bob of his adam's apple, he imagined. Then slid back to the ribbon as he looped it back around the stand it fluttered from. Dozens of others to keep it company.

"Seems strange for a young lady to not own ribbon. Are they not fashionable where you were from?" A place he would never see and know little about. It did not truly matter. Jin-ae would not see it again either. That time of her life was done and past. Question amusing him, Paris tipped his face to the sun and considered.

"Decoration, embellishment. Many like to string shells from them as jewelry." He thought of all the ways he had seen women wear ribbons on their person. Hair was the most common. Worked into braids or elaborate coifs. But there were other ways. Paris shrugged, and tucked a smirk to the corner of his mouth. "Love play, as well." He half teased. "Or so I read in a rather surprising text discovered in the library."

What indeed? Paris found his tongue pressing into the edge of his tooth. Nature, or a mishap he did not remember, had made its edge slightly jagged. An crevice that a sliver of skin could be slid into. Arrow shaped, like a good pen tip.

"Seems to depend. We all exert different pressure, I've noticed." Lines just ever so slightly different despite being copied from the same text. Paris' lashes swept over a gold hued eye in what might have been a wink in another place or time. Or world.

Palms brushing each other in front of his navel, Paris drew his elbows across his sides and his fingers through each other before allowing his hands to fall away. "Yes, no doubt." He murmured. A swell of emotion made the back of his throat tickle. Curiosity? Jealousy? Shame? He could not define it. His relationship with Salome was a careful one. Paris cared while trying not to become attached. He wondered who else she saw. Who else she brought before Jin-ae, eyes cast over the girl as if he could spy on her secrets. Or the secrets of her mistress.

"Truly?" A finger tip lingered. A thin circle of leather pressed between stopper and ink to keep the pot tightly sealed absorbed the oil from his skin. Gaze swept. Not wholly, not directly, looking. Jin-ae's face. The market around him. All the staring eyes felt for a brief moment. The whispers he was used to, even when they couldn't be heard. Their weight, ready and waiting on a tongue, felt, and dismissed as just another kind of breeze. "I suppose the lady does keep a quiet house, with her husband so often away."

As if there were nothing but common business keeping the couple apart.

"Never to be done. Even with those discarded by the birds themselves." Paris said solemnly. A passing hint of amusement making the corners of his mouth soft rather than hard. "I would not doubt some intrepid soul has tried, and been punished, for the thought." An idea that did not strike fear into him. For Paris the lash was just another arm of Mother Night and her handmaidens, the Priestesses. Its kiss an unpleasant reminder of what it meant to disappoint a Mother's love.

Transaction made, the pair moved off.  Paris with his simple black and Jin-ae with her colors. Did Salome give the girl time to paint? Did she even notice? Paris doubted it with a smile for the careless disinterest of his... the lady Nazaire. "Just a year?" He had practiced putting away the wash of pity he felt for those taken from other lands to be brought to Paon. Surely they had left something worse for something better, even if they were no more than slaves on the islands. Jin-ae seemed to be adapting well. Surely she was very sensible and recognized that Paon was for the best.

"All my life." Paris answered without actually asking how Jin-ae was feeling about her new home. It mattered as much as the wailing child and fretting mother. She was here now. And forever. "My mother was a priestess. So I was raised in the shadows of the temple even when I was not within its walls. The temple may change, and the lady ruling it, but otherwise things are as they have always been."

His body turned, shading hers. An angled knife to cut a sudden press. Hunters jostling the street as if they were raiders just back from the mainland. Voices loud and the imprint of their bodies louder. Psyches staining a swathe of market with jovial violence and the old blood of fresh kills. "This way, please." Arm out, palm up, his tapered fingers pointed to a break between displays that would shade them from eager elbows. The kill did not always dampen the hunger in the men. Sometimes it made their blood run all the hotter.

It was like the warmth of the sun, creeping up Paris' back as it crested the horizon. "There will be much feasting tonight." He commented dryly once they were under the shade of a broad leafed tree. A stall selling ribbons and another carved trinkets of bone, hiding them the sight of the hunters. There was a faint flush to his cheeks that darkened his eyes.

Paris' head tilted ever so slightly. She stood, she recognized, but he sensed she didn't really look. Eyes like water, that slid off rather than cling. But not servile. Maybe she was too new to it for the proper sort of humbling. Some never learned it at all. "Yes." Sometimes they died, because of it.

His father had never stooped or shrank. Sandals stirring the dirt of the marketplace, Paris shifted so she could glide by without becoming to close. The angle of his body changing with the direction of his hips. "You're welcome." He couldn't help the amusement that curled the corners of his mouth. His smile deep rather than wide.

Paris should have left then, but he lingered. Fingers moving over goods as he listened to her barter. Half attentions paid to each other. They looked familiar in a sea of strangers. But Paris had been born to Paon, and he very much doubted Jin-ae. She wasn't afraid enough. When she was done, her focus returned to him, and Paris' fingers fell away from manuscripts he had never intended to purchase.

"Myself mostly. But a little of both." He took her attention as invitation and matched his pace to hers, his stride only slightly longer. Side by side would have been too much. An admittance that they walked common ground. There was too much questioning about Paris status as it was. And he was likely to be flayed if Salome suspected him of prancing about with her spy.

"The temple has others to do its shopping. Housekeepers and seneschals who know what is needed all over." He explained, tipping open a bottle of paint. The slowing of Jin-ae's steps leading him to her destination. "Probably many of them. There is much to organize there." He admitted with some surprise. He had never much thought about it before.

"And yourself? Who do you shop for this day?" He sniffed a small pot of ink and put it aside with the air of someone all to familiar with the product. Telltale traces still staining his fingertips and nail beds. "This shade of red is imported. That deeper color will be half its price." He informed her solemnly, tipping the offending color on its stand, his voice pitched so that the stall keeper was less likely to listen in.