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Eclipse does not eat all that often. Eating is usually an afterthought: a quick mouthful of leaves snatched up here, a fish there, or when he can remember to eat. Sleep doesn't come so well anymore, either. And both of these things, while usually considered bad for kimeti, are something that Eclipse himself enjoys. The slight hollows in front of his hips, the too-awake glitter of his eyes... these are things he likes. They're beautiful, in their own way. He suffers so, and yet things are still so beautiful.

His mind full of words, Eclipse finds himself wandering through a damp section of swamp, picking his feet through squelching mud and tangled roots. He's not looking for anything in particular, though sleep would be nice -- he's just here. Not even looking where he's going, and trying to compose a line about tangled roots and tangled hearts.

The dark-furred kimeti grunts and nearly topples over as the other leaps right into him; he regains his feet and then turns to her with a sort of quiet dignity that seems half intentional and half unconscious. He tips his head at her, opens his mouth to say something, and then blinks. She has run over him again just with her incessant talking. Eclipse can make this distinction almost immediately: her talking doesn't really amount to much, does it? Not at first.

But when she mentions feeding a soul... he smiles, wanly. He hadn't ever thought of that. He could use that line. "Perhaps. I've never heard of such a thing." He sounds mildly surprised, and shakes his hair from his eyes. "But you're right. My soul has become malnourished."

Eclipse pauses, mid-motion -- he'd been looking around [possibly to find an escape route] when the words sunlight turns to liquid stop him. Picking his head up and shaking his hair out of his eyes, he takes a step towards her. "My name is Eclipse." No one has asked his name in so long that it feels odd to give it. He pauses, choosing his words, and from his expression it's almost like he's tasting them before he lets them go. His long tail swishes back and forth behind him as he speaks. "Are you a poet? Some of your words -- they're quite beautiful. Do you ever listen?"

For someone who has gone through much of his waking life mourning something he can no longer see, and who calls himself a poet to boot, Eclipse finds himself in an odd situation. Clearly he hasn't been noticing what's around him... and this talkative doe, despite the literal almost physical force of her words, has.

It makes him draw himself up, standing taller, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. He looks almost embarassed. "I am a poet. My poetry-- I keep in my head. But I don't create much anymore." Eclipse picks his careful way over to a patch of bramble and bracken ... in which small red flowers bob their heads like tiny fires. "Poetry shouldn't start when you decide. It should flow. Like the rivers, here, bouncing and tumbling over the rocks. They can't be stopped." He noses at a flower and finds its scent subtle-sweet. "Just begin one day. And don't stop."

Although, to tell Blue Streak to not stop... may be a poor decision. Eclipse regrets it almost immediately, but not before chuckling at the thought. He has a nice laugh, if it's a bit hoarse, creaky and unused.

Eclipse regards the tiny bobbing flowers for a moment longer, and turns his glowing violet eyes onto Blue Streak near the end of her monologue. The longer he stays near her, the easier it becomes to predict when she'll be off and running on another diatribe; it also becomes easier to just be patient and wait until she stops for breath. Somehow, this lightens his mood a bit. Eclipse is so given to moodiness and depression that even this small thing has brightened up his day.

"Don't stop, of course," he amends, picking his head up and turning a slow circle around her, "Just -- pause to breathe. Sometimes there's a need for silence." She had loved silence; his face twitches just a bit. He remembers. "Observe the pauses between things." The long-horned buck shakes hair out of his eyes, looks around, and then back to Blue Streak. "Don't stop... just slow down."

Eclipse is torn between trying to edge for one side of the small clearing in order to escape and pausing to listen to Blue Streak speak for longer. It takes some effort to sort through her words, but so far it's been worth it, more or less. Shaking his hair out of his eyes, he smiles, though the expression is sad.

Leave it to Eclipse to interpret everything as a reference to the doe he loved and then lost. The "silence is the death of words" did it. How did she know?

"Have you ever lost anyone dear to you?" If Eclipse's voice is a bit strangled he tries not to let her hear it -- not immediately. His throat is tight, his chest tight; either she's lost someone as well or she knows somehow, and he wants to hear what she has to say. "Silence is a kind of little death."