The first thing that catches him straight from a tear between worlds is the cold.
 
In the Riftlands the weather had followed its own mad rules; feral magic had driven it wild. Deserts were born of seas and caves crumbled into canyons, but rarely did the wind blow with a bite and a whisper of colder to come. Now that he considers it, Lysander has never seen a winter.
 
He can’t say he is eagerly anticipating the prospect. Nevertheless, stagnation is dullness and dullness may as well be death –
 
And besides, Florentine is around here somewhere. That is enough to make this world worth exploring. Not that he has the option to leave; once he has been unceremoniously birthed into this November-gray meadow, the window between the worlds knits itself shut.
 
There is a quirk to his dark lips as he watches it go, though he says nothing, only wonders for a moment what will become of those left behind. Perhaps the little Anthousai had left other tears for them to escape through; perhaps she’d be back with a way to save them all.
 
It would not surprise him, but then not much did.
 
Next he stretches, long and languid as a cat, and scratches his neat arch of antlers against a black knee.
 
Only then does he take in the world around him. Green-brown grasses blown flat with the wind that riffles its way through his dark curly hair, and thick furrows of clouds like fields that stretch from horizon to horizon, and nearly nothing else. If he is unimpressed he does not show it; he only begins to walk, a gait as feline as his stretch.
 
He knows it is only a matter of time until he finds someone. Lysander is never alone for long.



@Florentine for the mentions, and @Crux if you wanna talk midnighters - but anyone welcome!

Oh, it’s a bad, bad ritual 
Oh, but it calms me down

It’s the squeal that draws his attention, surely as a rabbit’s would a fox. He pauses, ears twisting, the sweep of his gaze setting on a little hillock with a knee-high mantle of winter-brown grass.

There is motion there, just a stirring, just a shape. Lysander’s lips stir, too, into a quick little grin before he’s crossing the field, the sharp interest in his eyes belying the unhurried pace of his feet. Perhaps it was to be expected, but the stallion still finds himself delighted at the thought of being watched.

By the time Lysander reaches him, the bay has climbed back to his feet. He looks like he’s been made of a mud-bank, and like a strong wind might blow him over; Lysander huffs a breath and flicks a black-rimmed ear.

Such fearful things, horses could be.

“Were you going somewhere?” he asks mildly as the stranger works to catch his breath. The glint of mischief in his eye is not particularly kind. Lysander is not a cruel man – just, at the moment, a slightly bored one.

He edges a step closer, just to see how the bay would react.

“I hope you’re alright,” he says, and then adds dryly, “I also hope you’re not a guard. You’d have some work to do.”






@Auru thanks for the nudge, and sorry for the wait!

Oh, it’s a bad, bad ritual 
Oh, but it calms me down

He watches the stranger take a first step back and wears a rueful smile as he waits for a response.

The shock is understandable enough, he supposes. In the world he’d come from – the one mercifully closed off behind him, now – Lysander would be one of the least threatening things that could appear. That place could dream up such horrors as even he had never seen, and he possessed an agile mind and a long history.

Here, however, it seems that magic is either an uncommon thing – or perhaps an even more deadly one.

Or maybe this poor fellow is not indicative of the rest of the population.

He can see from the emotions that flicker across the brown man’s face that he’s comprehending Lysander’s speech, though he’s still made no effort to speak. The stallion watches, bemused, as he takes yet another step backward. “Ah, friend,” he says, gaze unmoving from the other’s face, “You have nothing to fear from me.”

It is true for the most part, though he flicks his tail at a fly-buzz of irritation when there is still no reply, no effort to speak. It has been a long time indeed since he has been met so fearfully; for the first time he wonders what he looks like. He can feel antlers, a foreign weight, but nothing else seems particularly out of place.

He can also feel weariness rushing in, filling the places where his magic had been, and hunger, and thirst. It all combines to make him more impatient; with a shake of his head he steps forward again, closing the distance between them, tilting his head in an effort to force the man to meet his eye.

“Can you at least point me in the direction of someone more willing to talk? I’m looking for a girl – golden coat, purple flowers in her hair. Has she passed by here recently?”

Surely Florentine was not too far ahead of him (how wrong he is, in multiple aspects). Maybe that accounted for the stranger’s fright – that he’d seen not one but two horses canter out of a tear between worlds. Still, Lysander does not reopen the space between them; he has things he’d much rather be doing than standing in a field, talking to himself.



@Auru

Oh, it’s a bad, bad ritual 
Oh, but it calms me down

If Lysander had had a more specific idea of what was going through the stranger’s head, he would have been amused. But even as a god that particular power had never belonged to him, and so he only watches as the brown stallion continued to display clear signs of anxiousness.

Then, at last, the fellow met his eye. This time, Lysander stays put when the other shuffles back again, shifting his weight to his right side and cocking a hind hoof. He smiles benignly when the stranger finally speaks, and then –

“Sovereign?” he repeats, and for the first time surprise flits across his face, brief as a passing shadow. It’s followed by the return of the smile, warm as a new sun. The little Anthousai has been busy indeed, and for the first time it occurs to him that the play of time in the rift-window she’d made might not be the same for both of them.

How interesting.

“She’s an old friend of mine,” he says quite truthfully, “though I have not seen her since she was a girl.” He tilts his head, then, considering the stranger before him. Flora’s new title brought up all sorts of questions, but he didn’t have much hope in answers. “Tell me where I might find her, and I’ll leave you to your…grazing.”



@Auru

Around them blows the breeze, fingers tousling their hair, lonely and cold. Lysander can find none of the strange things of the Rift on it – no sickness, no whispering trees or clockwork creations. That had been a mad world, a machine running down, leaking magic like oil.

He’s not had the time to wonder if finding this place a ‘normal’ (as much as anything was ever truly normal; all life had a way of making things messy) one would be an adjustment. Finding out that Florentine was a queen is quite a start to making him think it isn’t. Not because of any merits of hers – he would trust her as a sovereign, even knowing her only as a child – but because, in his timeline, she’d only left the riftlands a few days before.

Curious.

All this has him considering, mouth quirked in thought, but his attention returns in full to the stranger when he gestures. There is a pang of…not quite guilt, but dismay, that squeezes like a fist at his heart as he watches the stallion. It is never his intent to cause shame, and he only very rarely went in for fear.

“Thank you,” he says, and dips his head. For a long moment afterward he considers the stallion, his lionlike mane, and lion’s eyes, and less than a lion’s heart, and Lysander’s lips twist into something wry and soft. He comes no nearer (he has pressed the boy enough), but his voice carries over the distance between them.

“I am sorry for startling you. I forget how much of a shock such a thing must be, to some.” A last smile, almost fond, before he turns and takes his leave, heading for the east, for a castle by the sea.



@Auru ahhh poor fellow