[Arianna]
She has to sit up a little, to take the wine glass he offers, and even this young it seems to suit her so easily. Arianna's knees, now, do cant to one side, the pleats of her grey skirt arranged across her lap but no longer long enough in this arrangement to reach the proper top of her knees as regulations dictate. The sunlight glints of the rim of the glass, tangles with the sweet wine in it, and that stemless tumbler is elevated to chalice or goblet simply by being under her control.
Given the choice of something sumptuous and sweet, or a thing salty and slightly homesick, she chooses the berry. She sees to its fate and her enjoyment before answering the questions Silas has asked her, including the capture of rouge juices with her thumb, and the licking clean of that that thumb. There is no feigned play for his attention to it, simply indulgence and the natural consequence thereof. There is a faint stain of red at the side of her mouth, but it is not from wine, not yet. This leaves to him the taste of something more Italian on his lips and palate, something a little saltier.
"By other friends," she says, gesturing a little with the green top of the strawberry as she speaks. She has not yet gained the confidence and practice to gesture with her wine glass -- tumbler or no -- but that, too, will come in quick succession to these more collegiate years. "I take you to mean the assemblage of whom Initiate Exemptus Xavier Haelleyn expressly approves and has likewise vetted?"
Eyebrows lofted, titles expressed in almost perfect attention to their consonants and vowel shapes: these signs tell Silas almost everything he needs to know about Arianna's relationship to the elder Initiate. "They are droll and proper, and we discuss nothing with such candor or joie de vivre as do you and I. And if I speak of you, it is only in defense of our friendship, of which Xavi," her teeth are sharp around the nickname, needling at someone absent, "Does not approve."
She flicks the little bit of strawberry green out into the sea of grass and granite around them. It is swallowed up by the other-green when it lands and disappears forever, returned to the earth, abstracted from its identity.
"He's not here to be fun, Si, you know that, right?" Because she knows her friend's darker broodings better than they both would like. "It's all duty for him. My father stationed him here in case the worst happens. "He is a guardian and an escape route," she says, and now the tumbler comes close to her mouth, so that it is partially occluded as she tells, firmly, "Not a friend." Certainly not anything more. Her eyes are untempered at this age, so few things are held back and caged within them. This idea of his, that anything might be between her and the watchdog, it is stamped out as firmly as she can manage. The reason requiring firm a stamping? She is less clear on that.
And its possible, though, that in her political currying of favor with the lower kitchens maid she may have said something about Silas. She may have waxed a little poetic in her bid to catch Marjorie up in this illicit tryst on the moors. She might have, oh so craftily, suggested that they do not need wine glasses at all, that she would rather drink from the bottle, and let the other consor's mind run not to the slender neck of the sweet wine glass, but to other things tapering and rounded that might be lifted to one's lips. And there may have been some knowing darkness to the camaraderie in the kitchen-maid's eyes when she passed Ari the blanket, and then the basket, with its secreted bottle of wine.
But that? That was not friendship, that was bending another's resources to her own desires and plans. That was something at which Arianna has almost always excelled.
"How do you find this second part of your birthday, Initiate Robinson?" she asks, tumbler held to one side, free hand now planted on the blanket to balance the side-shift of her knees. The wind teases her hair, whipping it into fine tangles, ruffling his alike and causing the free corners of the blanket to flap like standards on the keep's walls. Then the wind is gone again, died down to just a breeze. Out to sea, the whitecaps are becoming more prominent, but there is still sunlight breaking through the clouds where they are seated. And when Ari pins his title to his name, it is playful, not at all like Xavi's, not at all bitten into and abrupt, but perhaps still with a hint of sharpened teeth.
[Silas]
"You have others with whom you spend time, and not all lack-brains like that insipid child who was pestering you earlier. Masterful deflection, by the by." He is far less charitable with those who would garner his friend's attentions than she is with those who seek his. But then he lets up just a little, leaning over to bump her shoulder as he takes up some other bit from the plate; there is more than they are likely to finish for lunch. Perhaps Marjorie knew a little something that they do not, when she was about the packing. "I could learn from you."
Because when the level of attention which Silas is afforded becomes undesireable, he doesn't know how to make it go away. So instead of running something like Arianna did, he simply disappears somewhere to stay discontent, and alone. There's quite for a moment, and it seems as if he may let her off the hook about her Xavi, but that is not to be. There's a sigh, impatient and displeased, and were Arianna to look she might note that Silas' wine glass is already empty. But then, she'd already seen that he was in a mood before class - and can see that adventuring out here, with the wind and potential for rain and sea and sky, has done him wonders.
"I know he's not here for fun. P'raps he doesn't know how to have any - though how he could avoid it with you is beyond me. Clearly, he can't be as intelligent as your father thinks him."
And quiet, as he nibbles some more at the plate, watching Arianna only from the corner of his eye, with most of his attention on the ocean and sky before him. The question of how he finds this part of his birthday turns up his lips and the smile is as the sun breaking from behind clouds, chasing away all hint of darkness.
"This second part of my birthday is quite fine indeed, Miss Giametti, and the company in which I'm enjoying it is the best part. Surely you can't have more in mind than this?"
Rarely is Silas Robinson seen flustered, especially in the last year. There's pleasure here, and a hint of blush. He certainly hadn't expected such an affair.
[Ariana]
It is really not that far a cry from when she has slipped sandwiches into her shoulder bag and also stolen away a bottle of milk from the creamery, or juice from the lower kitchens, or once or twice even beer from the more controlled of cabinets. Such an affair, he might consider it, but she had only wanted to do something special for him. To show he she still had tricks and adventures left to offer, separated as she was from him by Rank and ability now. Further from his attention while the fawning over of him by other girls increases by the day.
She has noticed that his wine glass is already empty, and hers will soon be, but she is in no rush to keep up with him on this. Not yet. They talk of Xavi, and whether her warder is clever or not, and they eat small morsels from the plate, and she seems rather less interested in the absent Initiate Exemptus than Silas is. Almost to the point of being mildly irked. What good is it to sleep the keep and its defenses, if they were only going to brood over the Flambeau whose job it is to police her social circles.
"Just one last thing," she tells, with a sort of smirk that is at once inviting and yet impossible to read. Inscrutable. She finishes her wine and tucks the tumbler against her knee, where it is protected from tumbling over. Her teeth catch her lip for a moment as she considers the timing, then tells him: "Close your eyes, Silas."
Undoubtedly he knows this pattern. Close your eyes, Silas, and plunk-splash he goes into the river. Close your eyes, Silas, and tag-he's-it and she's running off through the wood. Close your eyes, Silas, and some other thing will happen, when he cannot mark it, and it will probably be wonderful but sometimes not. So this, here, echoes, but she is as firm about it as any other time. Moreso, maybe, as she appends: "And no peeking."
When his eyes are well and truly shut, or at least as shut as they might be to her inspection -- hand waved before his face, catching in the light and throwing shadows he feels as much as sees -- only then does Ari unbutton the top few fasteners of her shirt and slip her hand underneath, to where she has hidden a small object at her bust. There is no other place she might have hidden it so thoroughly from his inspection; surely his hands slipped around the perimeter of the basket as he laid out their lunch; surely he would have felt the lump of it, tucked into the waistband of her skirt, as he helped her across the river. But secreted here, Ari was fairly certain it would remain unseen. And, unlike other girls, she does not make a sport of his finding it. Instead she withdraws it between closed fingers, the metal is warm from being tucked against her skin.
Her fingers are cold as they take up one of his hands, and turn it so that his palm is up. Therein she places the weighty little thing -- a pewter frog, small, but the echo of an early gift he gave to her, which was of course more squeamish-squirming with life and slippery. Her fingers are cold; the frog is warm; and into its shape are carved the words for it in all her many languages, just deep enough that he might trace them with a stylus, too small for fingertips.
She rocks back to her position to watch him inspect it, hands moving back to her breast to close just the lowest of undone fasteners. Her vest keeps her more than demure; only the suggestion of things seen is made from this retreated angle and if he has not peeked, then, he missed the sight of her bent forward to place her gift into his palm, gravity-his-bro assisting the aperture through which he may have glimpsed its hiding place. She leans back a little, hands planted behind her and shoulders pushed up as she worries so little about her posture. Her knees are less precisely demurely together, but her skirt is long enough to cover. There is an eagerness to her, a hopeful thing: she wants him to be pleased.
[Silas]
Before she has Silas close his eyes, he refills his wine glass; it's still a a fairly light pour, definitely that of a high school sophomore instead of an adult. While he is starting to feel it a bit, it will be another glass or two before it truly takes effect. Perhaps the drink is why he dares to to sneak a peak as she's retrieving his gift. It's only through monumental exercise of self control that he keeps up the appearance of virtue, of waiting for his surprise. In fact, it's not entirely feigned; he is surprised at his own reaction to such sights. It's not as if he's never seen cleavage before, but this is different.
This is Arianna.
He opens his eyes when Arianna indicates he should, when he feels her cold fingers in his, and yes, she's handing him a pewter frog full of details he's not capable of processing just this moment, when everything in him is saying 'KISS HER' as loud as it can. So there he is, using those cold fingers as a hold to pull her in, closer, and kiss her on the lips - gentle and testing - before letting her go to examine the gift. Silas is, in fact, not entirely capable of meeting Arianna's eyes this moment, and so he studies the engraving on the frog's body instead.
"It's beautiful, Stella. Thank you."
He's still not meeting her eyes, is in fact a sort of awkward that perhaps no one's ever seen before.
[Arianna]
She will wonder, later, in both joyful and rueful moments, if she willed this thing to happen. Had she, by looking up at him as she placed that gift into his palm, compelled him somehow to pull her closer and to kiss her? Because the breathlessness of the moment, and how everything around them seemed to just stand still, and even the wind was silent, and even the grass didn't sway, and even all of everything she could feel was the warmth of his fingers entangled with his and then the gentle press of his mouth to hers -- also warm, always warm, Silas is veritably Spring unfurling and Arianna?
Stock still for half the time it takes to blink and then, lips parted slightly, breath drawn so suddenly that they both can feel as it rushes in, eyes closed, lashes pressed tight together, Arianna, even more cautiously, even more nervously, leans in just enough to return the affection.
Then they part, and he tells her how it is a beautiful gift and surely she says something, something witty and appropriate, something they will remember and look back on and take as the grace the overlays the burning of her cheeks, flushed hot with hope and perhaps the embarrassment of hoping, and she does not rock back as far as to lean away from him, but she does pull back just enough to right herself.
The wind is cooler where his fingertips and mouth have left echoes on hers.
She wants to be witty and she wants to be proud and she wants to be graceful, but this is what she says:
"I'm.... glad you like it..."
Her fingers tangle in her lap. Her hands do not rise to refasten the buttons of her shirt, not yet. His eyes are on that frog and not her, and her eyes are on that frog and not him, and it is the best watched frog in all of the pewter animal kingdom, it is fastidiously watched.
[Silas]
There's a long, quiet moment as they both study this frog.
There's a long, quiet moment during which it seems that the awkward might become a problem.
There's a long, quiet moment during which either, or both, of them might flee.
But then, while Arianna is watching the frog instead of his face and Silas is looking at the frog instead of studying Arianna, a decision is made.
It's quick, shifting his weight so he moves from his bottom to his knees.
It's quick, leaning forward just so, his empty hand rising to claim Arianna's chin.
It's slower, the way he leans in to kiss her more thoroughly.
It's slower, the way he tastes her lips with his tongue.
It's slower, the way the kiss deepens significantly before he slowly, reluctantly pulls away.
He's near breathless there before her, eyes still closed, her chin still between his fingers. She can feel the (un)natural warmth there, the feeling of Life before he's truly specialized, the potential for rampant growth behind his touch. She isn't Awake, perhaps, but she is the child of Hermetics - she is Aware.
"I . . . should I stop?"
Silas truly doesn't know. Of course it's easy to tell his effect on people like Katja, who are at least as interested in his lineage as they are in him. As stated before, this is different - this is Arianna.
There is electricity all around them, and not all of it is because of the thus far off shore storm.
[Arianna]
There is a long moment, and in that long moment, in which her nerves stand on end and she is beginning to wonder if maybe that mightn't have been a major mistake, never once in that long moment does she have thoughts of fleeing and never once, in that long moment, does she imagine that he might abandon her here. She doesn't have many thoughts at all beyond Silas kissed me, which is wrapped all around I kissed Silas, and both are entwined with the tympani of her heartbeat, banging away in her chest. It is a long moment, but it is not long enough for her to regain a sense of center, or awareness of the world around them. It is a long moment...
... and then.
This kiss is slower, and his hand has captured her chin, and she finds that she minds not at all when he tips her face toward him. This kiss is long enough for her to taste the wine on his tongue, as her lips part and her own tangles with his, and how this comes out of her without thought, without translation, some language that her heart and body must know but her mind does not and it creates a sort of tension -- which is of a mind with another sort of tension -- that eases out of her some small, appreciative sound, of which she will be forever ashamed, and one hand rises to rest against his cheek, and her fingers are so cold out here in the wind, so sharp-cold against the warm of him, as her fingertips slide into his hair.
This happens slowly, in the longer moment of kissing him, with an abandon she could not have imagined of herself, with a significance she could not have foretold. So that when he pulls away enough to ask her something, and her hand pulls back enough that he is spared the chill of it, and they are mutually breathless and taken aback by the force of this, then her green eyes are muddied with some unfamiliar wanting, and her mouth is red from the press of his, and her cheeks are rosy, shirt still partially undone, and again, she should be so witty, so sharp, but what she says is:
"I don't want you to stop..."
And it comes out breathless, and not quite as certain as the words that shape it should be. It doesn't answer the matter of should or shouldn't, instead putting certainty to the cues her closeness is telling him. And the look in her eyes says nothing about his lineage, and nothing about what she stands to gain in this: it is want, in the more naked and immediate ways of adolescence, but also is it weighty with their friendship and affection for one another.
And then.
"Should I want you to stop?" she asks him, and the want has pulled back just enough to be hesitant and uncertain, also in the immediate ways of adolescence, and there is something in her that begins to turn to fear, and the thrumming of her pulse is now twofold increased in emphasis.
There is electricity all around them, and not all of it is due to the steadily advancing storm.
[Silas]
If you asked Silas even an hour ago if he thought he'd be kissing his best friend any more than on the cheek or temple or hand or some such thing, he'd have laughed in your face not because Arianna isn't beautiful and shouldn't be kissed, but because they're friends. Nothing more and nothing less. But there's something about sea and sky and Beltaine, and the feeling of daring that comes along with adventure, and this gift that she's given him.
(Not to mention the feeling of her hips and waist under his hands on the occasion or two he'd lent her a hand crossing the stream, or the bit of cleavage he'd seen when she leaned forward to get the pewter frog from its hiding place.)
"You're cold," he says, which is not an answer to want, or to should or should not, but it's what's comes first. The frog is tucked into his pocket, treated with such care, and then her hands are drawn into his, to his mouth, where he blows on them. It's only when they're warmed that he lets go, taking up the wine glass again; there's far less (almost no) dark and brooding now, and certainly no thought of an Initiate Exemptus often in Arianna's company, or silly girls who hang on him in the halls of the keep. In the here and now, Silas has thought only for Arianna. The next comes only after he's shifted so he can put his arm around her, so he can snug her against him and share his own abundant warmth. (If, of course, she allows it.)
"I don't want to stop. Should I want to?"
There is no fear to him, but then there seldom is. For a moment, he eyes the sky and sea, then turns to kiss the corner of her lips again; one arm is around her, the other holds his wine glass, the basket is now in front of (or perhaps behind) them. The storm is far enough out yet that he doesn't feel the need to pack up and leave, despite how quickly that can change. It can wait a few minutes, perhaps, while he finishes his wine and enjoys this new position.
[Arianna]
Pockets. If only the inequity of school dress were not so clear in this department, maybe he wouldn't have had a chance to glimpse her breasts through the undone opening of her shirt, maybe he wouldn't have felt called so clearly to kiss her, maybe he wouldn't have had the surprise of her returning that kiss, here on the cliffs, where the sky meets the land and the ocean below rushes in to greet them both, or now, as the storm rushes in to meet them, and the wheel turns through the spoke marked Beltaine, and also on the advent of his birth. Maybe he would have come to these realizations on a less auspicious day, or perhaps even not at all, and she would not be tucked in beside him, fitting just so, as if they were always meant to fit together, shifted just enough to wrap her arms around his middle, which of course presses one of her breasts into his side, and of course leaves her mouth close enough to kiss at the corner.
All this because of pockets, or the lack thereof.
It is difficult for Arianna to mark and name the things that rise within her. Anticipation is an edgy thing, which dances like anxiety, and tastes a little like fear when it is new and undiscovered country. It sings in her and crackle-shifts-and-breaks as surely as the electricity of the storm does out above the water. But there is also the warmth of Silas, and the afterglow of that first real kiss, the first kiss that was more than a peck, which parted her lips, which led to something wetter and the tasting of tongues and wine and teeth. There is warmth and want and also a newfound way of expressing her affection for him, which has grown out of but is not the same as the affection that she has held for him since he was just a boy.
"No..." she says, but that is paired with a sort of stiffening of limbs and spine, a hesitance so readily apparent that it also flushes into her cheeks and Arianna, unused to such awkwardness between them, moves to steal his wine glass from him, to wrap it up in her fingers and elevate it to chalice, and make it a symbol of her godhood -- though she rightly does not understand how completely the chalice is a symbol of that sacred place within her -- and then, with the symbol of her sex in hand, and eyes on his, and nervousness crowning every movement of her, she drinks. Not a small sip or a shallow swallow. She drinks deeply of the cup before handing it back to him, as if the sweet wine and the nearness of him and the headiness of the storm would be forced to resolve through this communion.
And when her hand glides back across his stomach to rest again at his side, she drags her nails over the fabric of his shirt, testing, teasing, and yes, still tentative. To better learn the texture of it; to learn how it shifts his breathing or affects the tightness of his hold on her. It is a simple thing, a grazing touch, the smallest of first incursions into his warm and ready places. It is not at all the way that other girls have boldly thrown their wiles at him -- she is naive and ill-prepared for such things. Her breath is warm against his cheek when she kisses his temple, and this, too, is tentative. And then Arianna is still for a moment, arms around him simply holding him, her temple rested against his shoulder, content but utterly unable to school her breathing to something calm enough and steady enough to fool the Hunter.
[Silas]
There are spots, in the run of her nails across Silas' stomach, that cause him to tighten up and expel breath strangely; were Arianna to look at his face, she'd see him trying not to laugh as she hit spots a little more ticklish than others. This exploration of his body, as limited as it is, also causes his arm around her to tighten a little as he turns to nuzzle her hair, her ear. Idly, also testing-teasing, his tongue comes to lick its lobe, his teeth to nip lightly. Silas is, after all, not so inexperienced as Arianna is.
But there is awkwardness, and it's strange and heavy between them even as they feel closer in some ways than they ever were before. Silas is more accustomed to this physical sort of intimacy, but not the things that go along with it being Arianna; he doesn't know how to react to what feels like his heart about to burst from his chest, or to the way warmth spreads from everywhere she touches, pulling at brain, heart, and groin all at once. Even with this new way of showing of affection, this first real kiss they've shared, he's not sure he should let her know all that just yet.
But then there's the [chalice] wine glass and bits of him he's only recently learned to attend perk up. That electricity around them intensifies, at least to him, as she drinks from his glass, eyes holding his. Suddenly, the reaction is a lot more visceral, though Silas wouldn't be able to tell why - sure, he knows about the symbolism behind cups and similar vessels, but he's seen other girls drink from glasses, toast to him or each other with glasses, try to make glasses a sexy sort of prop and not felt this way. But then, there's a compelling argument in him not having cared for any of them the way he cares for Arianna, isn't there?
She returns the glass and he drains it, the better to put it back into the basket; there's a moment in which they are not touching, as Silas packs things back into the basket (the cake can wait for later) and set that basket aside. "We've a bit longer before we have to worry about rain or anything," he says.
And then he lays back, pulling her with him, to wrap the blanket around them both. He is on his side, facing her, with her head on his arm as he makes sure she's as comfortable as she can be here before leaning in to kiss her again - longer and deeper this time, with his hand moving from stomach, to thigh, before coming to rest on her ribs, grazing her breast but not holding it. There's little in the way of talking for as long as Arianna allows this to go on, and much in the way of escalating heat.
[Arianna]
Each of these sensations are new: his mouth near her ear, his tongue on its lobe, his teeth nipping lightly. They elicit a certain pattern of responses, each measured as her breath is held, and judged as she breathes out shakily, and found to be pleasing as the shudder running through her becomes more about something pleasurable than something fearful or uncertain. She doesn't know how she is supposed to feel about this, and so her mind asserts itself, clever as ever, pushing her to name each new sensation, to determine how she feels about it, to extend it to its logical consequence, to get all moralistic and ethical about those feelings and how she feels about having them for Silas. She is far too in-her-head to react with grace and sensuality to these new experiences. She is still young, and quite naive.
She is sharp-eyed and watchful as he tucks their picnic things away, and mindful of all the little places where her skins sings out the memory of his touch, and unmindful of how her teeth draw her lower lip into her mouth, or how she watches him with her chin tipped down just enough that her eyes are shielded by her lashes, or how her chest heaves more with each breath, moves with less restriction than her normal bearing. This time, this one time when they will be like this, she is too new to everything to be anything but utterly honest in her reactions. Disarmed. Attentive.
Silas mentions the rain, and Arianna's attention is momentarily cast heavenward, to the tapestry of grey and white and silver that is the shining summer sky. No blue breaks through there now, and the broad beams of pooling light are gone as well. The darker layers have a smear of rain beneath them, but no drops have fallen down to kiss their heated skin. Not yet, and as he draws her down with him and wraps the blanket around them both, it becomes far less likely that either will notice the first signs of the storm when it breaks around them.
She isn't sure how she should lay beside him, how to be still and also expectant of so much. It's his experience that guides them, until she is settled against the warmth of him, protected also by the blanket, and rapt with watching either his eyes or his mouth, until they become too close and her lashes kiss again, eyes pressed shut as he kisses her and she feels the back of her head lift off of his arm so that she might meet his lips more fully. This is not a conscious thing, her conscious mind informs her -- this is a thing that bodies know about how bodies greet one another when they are close and also entwined. His hand on her stomach is splayed over muscles that tighten at his touch, as if he could read the electricity and the war within her from the shape of them, through her vest and dress shirt. When his hand slides down to her thigh, her fingers catch it up again and bring it back to her center, to her middle, to the point from which it strays upward until it rests on her ribs and -- her mouth breaks from his to draw in a sharp breath as his fingers graze her breast. In she breathes, and then out allatonce, and then in again -- until she again decides that this is pleasurable, and this boundary can be crossed more fully.
So this is how it goes, he makes small incursions and she tenses, and her breathing tells him these are touches she has never known before, and that is surely gratifying in the electric moments where she keeps him waiting, until some decision is reached, until hands on hips are okay, until the teasing flick of his fingers over the margins of her breasts are okay, until a hand that slips lower to fondle the pleats of her skirt where they rest over her thighs is okay. And then until these things are more than okay, until they are rewarded with small sounds, sounds she has never before thought to make for him or for any other, until they are rewarded with the shift of her body against his, or under his palms, as the tension in her makes it impossible to hold still through his ministrations. And all the while there is kissing, and when there is not kissing, there is an intensity in her eyes as they hold to his or a fascination with watching his hand slide over her.
They have just progressed to the slip of his always-warm hand under her shirt at her stomach, to the touch of skin to skin and the crackle-snap of shared electricity, gliding up to her ribs, to the sweep of his thumb as it traces under her bra and around the circumference of her breast. Arianna is certain that something within her will break with the marvelousness of the feeling, and her back arches, pressing her skin into his touch, shifting his hand so that it cups more than traces, beneath all of those layers, when the sky flashes white-purple with lightning, so intensely that the heavens demand their momentary attention. They have a second to think how it seems apropos.
But not two. And the roll of thunder over them is so loud that it seems to shudder in the ground beneath the two of them; their bones quake and tremble with the clap-crash of it, and all around them comes the pitter-patter of falling rain drops. Gentle now, but interspersed with fat and warning ones. If either of them look out to sea, the storm has become a wall of dark clouds; lightning dances between them. They are thrust high into the heavens by the cliffs, out on the open moors, far from the treeline. Storms on the Isle are infamous for their severity, and the rain that falls is not the warm fat lazy sort of a forgiving summer shower.
[Silas]
As distracted as he is, as consumed as he is, this flash of lightning and almost immediate crack of thunder process in Silas' newly awakened (or Awakened, as the case may be) Hunter senses quickly, and it takes scant seconds to tug Arianna's shirt to decency and be up, out of the warmth of the blanket.
"Come, we need to be to shelter. Now."
He offers her a hand up and into his blazer (becuase when a storm breaks, the temper almost always drops precipitously) and quickly gathers both blanket and basket; this time it's he that takes both, because as fleet-and-sure of foot as Arianna is Silas is more so. It's without thought that his posture and balance shift to accomodate the light but somewhat bulky load, as well as making sure Arianna has a hand when she needs it. He is mussed now, of course, his tie completely undone and his shirt completely escaped from his waistband, but that hardly matters as the rain turns from threatening to punishing. They head for the stream first, of course, but there's no way they'll make it to the school in time, and so Silas turns the way she'd nodded to indicate the watcher's shack.
"This way, Stella."
The ground is slippery and growing more so, but the downpour is slightly less violent in the tree line until lightning strikes near and he urges Arianna to hurry - it is now that she slips, almost falls, and he hauls her up to put an arm around her and draw her along. On the way even Silas slips once, down to a knee, but it's worse for Arianna who isn't prepared for quite this level of adventuring. By the time they reach the shack, both are soaked and freezing and at least a little muddy. They go in and Silas checks for wood, which he will collect from the sure to be nearby shed if it isn't in the cabin proper; warmth is a necessity. Before he so much as truly looks at her again, Silas has a merry fire burning in the hearth and the blanket hanging on a line before it, the better to be warm and dry for them. Next is his shirt, though he leaves his trousers where they are - they'll dry on him.
"Here, I'll hang your vest and my blazer as well. Are you alright? Were you hurt as we came?"
Once the practicalities are attended to, all of Silas' attention moves to Arianna.
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