So recently, he’d felt much the same way - that this, finally, was the beginning. And it was. But not of the story he’d imagined for himself. Not the one where he was given full-throated welcome, shown ancient scrolls and surrounded with soon-to-be fast friends. Not the one where at long last he’d met others like himself, those who wanted so very badly to belong and to become. It seemed that the stories he’d gown up hearing had been outdated (not surprising, coming from Errol). The Dawn Court was not, at the moment, a beacon of knowledge or a light on a hill. Once it had been, and so he hoped it would be again, but at the moment it was too quiet - the kind that came not from heads bowed in study, but from empty hallways, quiet corridors, meadows that bloomed below lonely dawns. There was, too, the matter of the maze, and the dragon, and the magic that seemed to seep below it all, ponderous and strange. In Charlemagne’s dreams he walked the corridors of the maze and fire licked the path behind him. His tail was still singed in places; he lacked both the will to shear it and a friend he trusted well enough to do the job. No doubt Florentine would call it all an adventure. For his part, the unicorn was unable or unwilling to find a word for the churn of feelings in his heart. Today found him in the courtyard of of Delumine, the summer sun warm on his back, songbirds and grasshoppers the bulk of his company. He thinks it a bird, at first, whose shadow over the stone catches his eye; as soon as his green-eyed gaze darts up, he realizes his mistake. The young stallion’s curiosity is quick to come to the fore; with pricked ears and a lifted head he watches as the creature lands, the clatter of his arrival breaking the stillness of the day. For a long moment Charlemagne only watches him, admiration and caution warring together in his breast. Here, surely, was some prince or knight; such golden grace he has rarely seen. Only when the unicorn realizes there is no one else yet to greet him does he step forward, and with a dip of his own horn give the greeting that he himself had always longed to receive. “Welcome, stranger, to the Dawn Court.” His voice sound strange to him, more of his father than himself, and a few beats pass before he adds, “I hope the winds were in your favor?” @Somnus I like your boy already! |
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