If nostalgia was his taste, there was a lot of it there. Elia's dark curls, all pulled over one shoulder and bound with some dark, glittery contraption; cinnamon-toned skin peeking from the v-shaped collar of her robe; curves that looked as though they had barely changed at all since he had left. And her eyes, of course, large and dark and looking as if she had just seen a ghost herself, or maybe had cold water thrown in her face. Confused and a little distressed, she was trying to figure out where to start – her eyes dropped from his face (his impossible face) to his hand, reaching to almost touch her.
"We have a brilliant illusionist," she commented, half-murmured, and then stepped forward a little further. From there, she could raise her hand to his face, her fingers under his chin to turn it first this way, and then that – studying him as if looking for flaws or seams. All illusions had their seams; she had learned that after a decade with the Cirque.
He was not the same, not like she was. He was older, a little different. But not all the years different that he should have been. Even as a witch, he should have been showing at least a few grey hairs at this point. But he was... what, in his thirties? Not old enough. Real, dimensional under the touch of her fingers, but not as he should be.
He didn't even taste the same, his magic didn't roll across her tongue the way it had before. Elia would have recognized that taste anywhere – her senses had been full of Ezra plenty of times for her to know it inside and out. But it was different. Musky, wild, with something that reminded her of deep woods, notes of bright coppery blood.
"But I'm not the ghost. You're dead," Elia offered bluntly, but softly. "I was at your funeral, and at the rites..."