Does magic have a smell?

The thought drifts across his mind even as the sharp, metallic scent wafts over him, in a half-strange, half-familiar way. He can’t remember having ever come across it before, but something about the wind and the trees and the dappled gold sunlight makes him feel as if somehow, it’s always been a part of him. His wings tremble, the hair along his spine lifts.

But still he presses on, and he doesn’t stop to think that maybe the thrumming in his blood is a warning, that maybe the grass that caresses his fetlocks is trying and failing to hold him back. He doesn’t wonder that maybe she’s leading them to something terrible instead of something wonderful - Ipomoea only lets that metallic scent fill him up until his heart is racing and his mind is spinning with possibilities.

And when they come upon the emerald, a tangle of weeds and woven grass forming its cradle, he doesn’t feel disappointed (even though it’s not what he expected). He comes up and lowers his head until his eye sparkles like dark tourmaline beside the gemstone.

And as the trees begin to shake and whisper among themselves, raising their slender branches to point at the two horses (or are they pointing beyond them, into the shadows?) he simply smiles. A silhouette passes fleetingly beyond the trees, so quick he may have imagined it, and he knows that this was the end.

Perhaps some mysteries simply are not meant to be solved.

---