Truthfully, being the gargoyle on the perch of stone had been his first brush with the life of luxury that the noble people were used to; when he was a much younger man, he would catch himself thinking of what it would be like to have servants waiting on him. His father had had a small farm on the edge of the lord's lands, and all of the family had chipped in to make sure that the plants were tended for and cared for. He still remembered the summers of his youth, when he would spend the day bent over the fields until every inch of him was caked in dirt and he had to dive into the river behind the farm just to clean off the first layer of muck from a good day's worth of hard work. He wanted to be like that still when he had a family, to raise a son to feel the dirt beneath his nails and along his forearms.

In comparison, he knew all about the lady's past. How she always seemed to be more of a tomboy than the lady that her family wanted her to be; he also heard about the past that she had with the peasant boy. Seeing as he had been a little worried that there was truth to the rumors of the servants, he bypassed his rule of not interfering with the mortals just because he didn't want the guy to get away with what was supposed. He never knew if the lady knew about how, though he couldn't stop the former rumors, there had been no others because of the demon that had visited the rumor-starter in the middle of the night. His non-interfering rule had been compromised again, it seemed. Truthfully, he could have gotten involved with a lot of stuff if he really cared to. Could lead armies by the nighttime with his skin of hard almost-rock. It was movable rock when he was sitting in the nighttime, cool, rough, and not malleable to the touch. He could be a force to be reckoned with.

However, the whole interfering thing left a bad taste in his mouth. He didn't honestly care for getting involved with human activities; the first few years of his imprisonment he had considered talking with his family and trying to help by night, but he didn't want them to have nightmares about what had happened to the man that he had once been. So instead, he staid up on his perch until all of his family had died, and then he watched the descendents of his family tend the family farm until they too passed on. Since he had been a caring man in life, it was tough to watch the deaths of all of his family members, one by one. During the night, he would sometimes fly to leave flowers on their graves...but he had to be careful. If someone spotted him, he would most certainly be hunted down and traced back to the palace. Then it was only a matter of picking out which gargoyle doesn't belong...seriously, it wasn't rocket science. Even he knew that he looked suspicious, but could he be expected to stay inside when what he really wanted to do was curl up inside infront of a warm fire?

As he watched for her reaction, he realized that swooping in out of nowhere probably wasn't the best idea he had ever had. Taking the witch's broom was still number one, but this ranked pretty far up there because of how easily she could scream and wake up the household. He would never get his flight then, especially if she got anyone to believe that the gargoyle on her balcony had spoken with her. Hoping that she wouldn't scream, he cocked his head a little and waited for her to finish taking in that he was talking to her. Yeah, gargoyles don't move - most of them don't move. A smirk started to twitch across his stoney features, but he kept it off because she was freaked out already without him showing off his fangs. The devil was a heavy influence in his youth; a part of him died inside each time he thought of the demonic face he now sported. However, she wasn't scared enough to run back inside and hide in a corner. Coren was impressed by that.

He held still as she held out a hand and brushed his arm. How long had it been since he was touched by a human? She smelled good, of soap and perhaps flowers...and he wondered how she wasn't scared witless with a gargoyle talking to her. She had always been strong and fearless though; it wasn't too unreasonable that she wouldn't be scared of him. However, he guessed that he felt weird to her, like a beast. His personality was so far from it, save for a depression deep within his heart. She sunk to the balcony, then began to rant about how awful it was that she was going to be sold off to a guy who wouldn't care for her. As much as he agreed, he was wise too, wise beyond a normal lifespan. You learned stuff by sitting up on a perch for five hundred years.

Sighing a little, he flared his wings and hopped carefully onto the ground. He straightened up to how he preferred to stand, though he didn't get much of a chance when he had to spend the day crouched over his perch. His skin was slate grey in color, dark in the moonlight, and his legs bowed out and away from him. Both legs, longish and sharply defined, ended in taloned feet that were designed more like feet and less like his hands. Around his waist was a strip of cloth that acted as a sort of decency protection; it was worn as a skirt of sorts, belted with a strip of thin rope. Though he wore something to cover his middle, he didn't wear a shirt. Thus, his bare and thickly muscled chest was open for inspection and he let his bat-like wings flare away from his body and stretch out.

"My apologies, my lady," he began as he refolded his wings halfway. "Crouching on that platform all day leaves me sore all over." He flared his wings again, then settled with looking down at her in what he hoped was a non-threatening way. "As for your problems, I wonder, seeing as I have seen both sides of the issue, why no one is ever happy with what they're given. Peasants long for the ease of luxury and the noble long for the freedom of the peasants." He shrugged his shoulders absently and studied a talon.

"Hmm...what were your other questions....oh yes. I am a male, as you nicely pointed out, but I understand your objections to being treated as nothing more than a whore. However, it seems that women of your status rarely if ever get the chance to marry for love. Once you have provided a male heir, you will be free to live in the lap of luxury. But perhaps that's not all that you longed for it to be?" His smile was a small smirk really. The grey-stoned gargoyle had quite a tongue on him when he actually got to talk; it was the same when he was alive as well.

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