Aeneas watches the Halcyon practice. He is far away, at the lower edge of the cliffs, staring up at the soldiers as they perform acrobatics and other aerial maneuvers. They brandish wooden swords and spears and, when the wind blows right, Aeneas can hear the harsh clack of the training equipment as it strikes wood, or the dull and heavy smack of it against flesh or bone as they spar. 


One Pegasus is struck at the wing joint and Aeneas watches from afar as the soldier begins to spiral down, down, down. The sight is at once unbearable and impossible to break his gaze from—Aeneas’s heart is in his throat and he wonders what he should do but remains frozen in fear. The descent is abruptly ended, however, when the Pegasus tilts his wings and regains altitude after the pain of the blow subsides. Even from here, Aeneas can her the disjointed call of the soldier’s voice to his sparring companion, but he cannot register the words.


He had been told he could play along the cliffs, so long as he kept his distance and remained careful. But after observing such a feat of fearlessness, Aeneas feels emboldened. He steps closer to the edge, just a bit, to peep over the side—


The cliffside gives way beneath his weight. If Aeneas were older, and had more experience, he might have recognised the shale where he stood, the fragile and separated stone not meant to bare a load. But Aeneas is not wiser and the ground drops out from beneath him with a stomach-churning abruptness. He has no opportunity to stumble back, or regain his footing, before the entire world cartwheels before his eyes. It becomes sky-land-sea-sky and then a sudden, jarring halt as he slams onto a ledge beneath where he stood. It takes him several long moments to regain his breath; it’s been pushed forcefully from his lungs by the impact.


When he does, he feels terribly alone. The winter sea is stark beneath him, punctuated by the jagged rocks protruding from its turbulent surface. Everything is grey, from the overcast clouds to the sea to the rock beside him. Aeneas swallows and stretches his wings, taking inventory of whether or not he hurt himself beyond repair. There is a tight catching at his wing joint, but it feels more sore than anything else. The problem, however, is that he has not learned yet how to fly.


Why else would he be on a cliffside, jealously watching his mother’s Halycon? He rests there for a long moment before gathering the courage to call out. “H-hello?” Aeneas’s voice cracks through with fear. “H-hello? I-Is anyone there to help m-me?” 


The sea answers, and the gulls answer, but Aeneas does not yet hear a voice. He gazes up from where he had fallen, only to find a sheer cliffside with little footholds or crannies upon which to climb. 

---

Aeneas had not been the only young boy watching the Halcyon train. From his place amidst the trees the growing colt had also watched the pilots battle and fly. The entire meadow below was full of the sound of drill shouts and clacking swords. In silence the wild-wood boy watched and felt some strange affinity. It whispered to something within him, a magic deep, deep within the hollow of his bones. 


He watches until he grows bored, until he has seen every move that day. When the warriors pause and gather to receive instruction, Leonidas turns from them and edges silently, elegantly through the brush. 


Nature pushes Leonidas, drives him closer and closer to the sea. He goes, obediently, climbing lithe and nimble over fallen trunk and exposed root. The forest cradles its orphan boy, and his gold darkens in the secret shadows of the wood. In a year alone, learning how to live, taught by Novus’ own feral soul, Leonidas has come to know how to creep without a sound. He can slink like a tiger in the jungle. He can walk as proud as a stag through his throne room of vaulted trees and floor of emerald leaves. 


The sea is hungry tonight. He hears its baying as it breaks itself upon the rocks of Praistigia Cliffs. Slowly Leonidas steps out of the trees and the forest laments its boy’s leaving. It reaches for him, flowers bending towards his golden, sun-bright glow. The coastal air salts his lips, his gilt hair. They make his lashes sticky sweet, darkly gold. He steps toward the edge, called by a child’s voice that sounds more like a trickery of the gods.


Hello- help me, the seabreeze whispers in the wild boy’s ears. Carefully Leonidas steps toward Terrastella’s edge and peers over. Down and down his gaze tumbles until it lands hard upon a younger boy. Leonidas’ hair drifts out over the cliff edge, tugged by a reckless wind, tempted by a hungry sea that strains herself up, up toward the child who perches precariously half way down. Gold and silver melt into each other as the child looks frantically up. The gulls cry with the boy’s frightened voice. 


Leonidas steps off the cliff, ever graceful. He descends, swift and wild (as his mother once loved to, not that he knows). Suddenly his wings flare out, bright and golder that Midas could ever wish for. The wild-wood boy drifts in, extending a foot to step lightly upon the boy’s slim, cliffside perch. Beneath his wash of soil dark hair and golden highlights, he watches the boy. 


Leonidas keeps his distance as he circles the young boy (he has not yet learned to love being touched but he has learned how strangers want him to keep away - except for Aspara. Except for her.). “You don’t mean to be here, do you?” Leonidas asks with a voice a century old and yet light with his youth. Eternity has already begun to try and mold him, to immortalise this boy. Time and eternity war across his young body, eternity to slow him, his time magic to make everything faster. Slumbering bulbs, waiting for spring, suddenly bloom in the cold winter air, coaxed by the orphan boy’s erant magic. 


His smile is wild and coy, the untouchable bird within the sky, watching, watching and the sleek, playful fox, slinking, surveying, smiling. Leonidas has learnt a hundred terrible lessons just like this, each one he has survived, so far. Though he wears the scars of their teaching across his body. 


The boy child is fine as a bird, his wings still soft with nesting down. He is not a fledgling, not yet. “Are your legs strong?” The elder boy asks as he completes his circle around the younger. He comes to stand where the edge of the ledge kiss his heels. The sea sings her siren song to him. Come in, Leonidas. Come in. He ignores the temptation and studies the boy. “You can jump, or you can climb.” The sunlights limns him, silhouetting him stag-like against the sea. Yet his grin, oh, his grin, it is full of wicked, wild adventure. To climb, to fall, both are perilous, both have Nature’s dangerous fingers toying upon them. But Leonidas has spent his whole life (his two, fragile years) playing her game, and he is ready to bring another player in.


@Aeneas
“Speaking.”

This day Leonidas is brave and bold and steady as a monarch of his glen. From beneath thick black lashes (dusted with pollen) he watches the younger boy. Nothing could have prepared the orphan boy for the flash or the bang. It is over and gone before the elder child has even reacted, but he startles as all good wild thing do. He is off the ledge, swooping back, his wings flared wide, his hair a tangle in the open breeze. He snorts low and wary and watches the younger boy’s tattoos glow with crimson emotion. The child’s ire is as fleeting as his small explosion and only when he yelps, small and young and vulnerable, does Leonidas tip his wings with grace and drift in to step back upon the ledge as nimble as a fae-boy.


The orphan’s smile is gone in the wake of the other boy’s ire. But it returns, a delicate, mysterious whisper of what his smile had once been. His head tilts wild and avian as he watches the child cling to the cliffside, its shadow turning his body darker with its embrace. How was he smiling, indeed? “Because you are not in any danger.” The older boy chimes with a voice of whispering leaves believing his words to be as true and obvious as the sun within the sky. “I will catch you if you fall, you will not even dash your foot upon a rock. But I bet you can fly more than you think, little hawk. Between you and I you will not be hurt.” He thinks of the fledglings he has seen. The hawklings that tumble out of their nests and spread their young, untried wings, coasting farther on their undeveloped feathers than Leonidas ever thought possible.


Leonidas gazes at the boy and realises that this is the first boy-child he has ever met. He feels a kindred bond bloom within his breast, his identity. How many times had he watched the city from the protection of the wilds embrace and seen how the children played, boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls. This feral orphan has grown into his loneliness as readily as a fox, but it was in those watchful moments seeing children play that made his heart feel something strange - less than complete. 


And yet, already this boy he has found is outraged with his smile, his delight. Leonidas blinks slowly, hopefully and steps closer, his proud antlers reaching for the sky. Their ledge is small and the boy climbs and the rocks fall. The sea swallows the tumbling pieces but nature’s boy pays not attention to their ill-fate. Instead he smiles again as the boy climbs. That grin is a wild, mysterious thing, better suited to thickets and glens, things of the untouchable wild. Leonidas is still such untouchable wild. 


Static crackles across the climbing boy’s coat, its sparks gleam excitedly in Leonidas’ eyes - flares across twin suns. Aeneas (this hawking boy Leonidas has no name for yet), looks to him and that gaze is like a clutch, as if Leonidas is the cliff, the safety to cling to. The boy slinks forward, graceful and silent and nearly asks this hawkling boy, Will you climb or shall we drift? But then the child takes another step and Leonidas laughs encouragingly, “Yes.” Then takes to the air, hovering next to the boy and whispers keenly, “Here.” as he points to the next foothold. From above them the cliffside succumbs to time, months drift by in seconds and the rock wears in odd places. It succumbs to Leonidas’ magic and ages until footholds grow more pronounced out of the cliff. The elder boy gasps at the last, wearied but made wickedly proud at his achievement. It should be an easier climb from here.


@Aeneas
“Speaking.”