I turned.
Thaliel reached me first, which was always how it went.
She was tall, with the kind of presence that occupied more space than her physical frame technically required.
Her hair was black with a depth that didn't behave quite like normal black, changing at the edges into something closer to the void between stars when the light caught it at certain angles.
Her eyes were a deep, depthless violet that shone when caught by, almost looking like two beautiful pieces of amethyst.
Her skin was pale in the way that things are pale when light doesn't reach them often.
She wore the academy uniform, and that only seemed to cause her curves to be explicitly shown.
She was, and I say this with full acknowledgment that the observation is inconvenient, genuinely stunning.
Emyria beside her was a different kind of stunning entirely.
Where Thaliel read as depth, Emyria read as beginning.
