Page 16 of The Splendor of Fire
“That’s easy.” He gathered the long lengths of his hair into his hands and pulled it back, revealing both ears. “He has my exact ears.”
She smiled and angled his chin so she could see, and the outline of his ears appeared on the page. A faint, sweet smell tickled his nose and he tried to place it as she adjusted her grip on the charcoal and sketched in the folds of the ears.
An elegant finger slid down the length of his nose, and she smiled.
“He has his mother’s nose.” Her sketching hand paused, and he realized she didn’t know what Théa looked like. “It’s long and straight, a little wide at the bottom but it gives him the look of an elf.”
Her lips curled back into a smile as she traced the nose as he described.
“A little wider here.”
Using her third finger she smudged the line then widened it. She looked at him, lifting her eyebrows slightly.
“Yes. That’s it.”
The clear blue of her eyes traveled to his eyebrow and she drug a finger along its length.
“Just like mine. Only small.”
She nodded. Her eyes went from his face to the page and sketched two miniatures of his brows with featherlight strokes.
The pad of her thumb brushed over his bottom lip and he jumped, horrified with himself. He’d nearly kissed it. Her eyes were wide.
“His l-lips are thinner than mine, but wider here.” He indicated along the lower border of his lips. “His top lip looks similar to your own. They turn up at the corners.”
Her lips moved.Yours do too.
“Not as lovely as yours, though.”
Blushing, she traced a perfect bottom lip on the first try then began the top.
“This should have a higher peak.”
She corrected the upper border and then looked at him. “Yes. Like that.”
Moira opened her mouth and pointed to her straight, white teeth.
“The front two come forward a bit and gap apart.”
Searching the room in thought, her eyelashes lifted from the page and fluttered.
An idea of how to describe them came to mind. “He sucks his thumb at night, it’s affected the shape of his teeth. His mémé says he is too old to still suck his thumb, but I cannot get him to stop. I’ve tried everything. I wrapped his hands in toweling, but he wriggled out of it. I bribed him with promises of extra tarts and trips to the beach, but he wasn’t interested. I painted his thumbs with cod liver oil but that only made him soil his tailclouts ?2all night long.” He shivered at the memory of changing dozens of tailclouts. It was incredible how much could come out of one two-year-old child. He had to scrub poor Gabriel for over an hour just to get him clean.
She laughed until tears appeared in her eyes and she attempted to straighten her face.Sorry. Your face…She laughed again.
“Don’t be sorry. You’re lovely when you laugh.”
Wincing and pointing to her throat, she stuck her tongue out.The rasp.
He shook his head again. “You are lovely when you laugh.”
Blush crept across her cheeks again. Carefully, she filled in the mouth, and a few baby teeth gapped apart in Gabriel’s grin. When her eyes lifted to his, he fell into their blue pools.
“Perfect.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking about her sketch, or her countenance.
When she touched his eyes, Léo remembered himself. “They’re his mother’s eyes, not like mine. Bright blue, and a bit rectangular. Yes, like that. The lashes are like baby feathers, his eyelids hooded.”
Her charcoal traced an eye and she looked up at him. Her fingers braced apart and touched the distance between his eyes.
