Snow whispered as it fell between their gazes, and Astier did not move when the mans icy gaze landed upon him. His presence remained rooted, anchored as a spire of frost-slicked stone amid the white-buried woodland. Head turned only at first, the rest of him remained statuesque: one forepaw still lifted mid-step, caught between motion and intention. His gaze swept over the stranger as though weighing him, not with suspicion, but with the quiet calculation of one who had survived long enough to distrust the easily seen.
Pale lashes lowered as he examined the man’s cloak, etched in cold ivory and glacial steel. He gleamed like starlight on ice, blessed by the golden light of the sun itself. Then, at last, he shifted, a subtle turn of shoulder to face the stranger fully: „Valyrio ūndos,” he murmured, the words slipping from his tongue like knives wrapped in silk. The accent was not perfect, it was refined but distant, controlled and careful.
His chin lifted ever so slightly, a glint in the pale slits of his eyes. There was neither warmth nor chill, only the weight of study, of restraint worn like armor. „I do not dance in it,” he added, in the common tongue, cold voice curling around the phrase. Seldom did he cross paths with those who spoke this searing tongue; and when they did, they wore fire, fury, and blood like a second skin.
The wraith’s ear twitched, a single lash fluttering with the wind, and his eyes narrowed, sharp as hoarfrost. „And who,” Astier asked, his voice a low drawl of quiet iron, „calls so boldly into the quiet?” He stood unmoving afterward, the snow settling upon his shoulders as if he were a relic carved from the mountain itself: watching, waiting, unwilling to yield the silence unless pried from his grasp.