[She is pretty fucking orange, as things go, but still distinctly less so than he is. Even all his other colorful layers don't do a damned bit of good against his wings, hair, face, or the fact that whoever picks the coats decided coordinating orange with orange was a smart style choice.]

[Even with the extra months they spent together, it's still a bigger change to see the effect of the years on her.]

Yeah.

[A quiet little response. Being a sprite didn't actually tell him what a fully realized Seer of Light looks like, not when she wasn't his charge.]

[There's a tightness in his chest for seeing her that only gets worse as she sits down. There's a whole layer of reality to it different than just hearing her voice. She looks fresh and new next to him, the kind of shiny apple you put at the front of the display instead of the lumpy, bruised thing that gets tossed as not store-worthy. She hasn't been here yet in the way he has, with longevity and endurance and too many knocks along the way. He has to swallow just to get more words out.]

It's called hobo chic. You'll pick it up if you give it long enough. I know you hail from the frozen over backwoods of New York, but even you have to admit it's colder than Santa's balls outside.