[EXP] Aureate

[Leonidas]

leonidas

holy places are dark places.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.

This was Novus’ maw. And there was little doubt in Leo’s mind of this fact. 

The cave sighed and it groaned. It breathed cool damp air across the boy’s face and his heart thundered with the wild wonderings of what lay in the deep and the dark. 

Around him the walls glowed with soft golden light. It moved with him, lit by the small golden antlers that had begun to grow atop is crown. Little more than a trunk and two fine prongs, his gilded antlers were small, but they gleamed as only golden metal can.

The boy watched the golden light play across the rough hewn walls of the cave. Oh, here was a place of mystery and wonder. It was a far cry from the forests he made his bed. Already this feral boy knew how to climb rock and tree. Already the trees were beckoning him up and how could they ever resist inviting him so? Leonidas was a boy of the golden wood. His mahogany skin was forest floor of wet, rich earth and his mane midnight and dawnlight: ebony fading like night into gold. But woven into his mane were leaves where his dam wore flowers. Hanging between the tines of his juvenile antlers were the vines of woodland.

His smile is deep and rugged. It is as riotous as a meadow sewn through with weeds and wild flowers. His laugh births a woodland as it tumbles from his lips and dancing through the cave as if it were made of tall trees and a carpet of leaves.

His heart rages in his chest like the rapids of the Rapax. It thunders in his ears and not even the low groan of the caves is enough to be heard. But the boy stands upon the cusp of the cave’s great tunnel. Oh, one tip of this strange cave and he would tumble into the darkness only to be lost in the labyrinthe of Abigo.

He might have dared a step. He might have tipped his weight forward and embarked upon this strange world except that footsteps echoed at the mouth of the cave. The wild-wood boy paused, turning, his ebony hair riotous atop his neck and brow. His gold eyes gleamed beetle bright as he drank in the bright of the world beyond the cave. 

A small girl stepped out and Leo turned from the cave entrance. He stepped once, twice, thrice through the dim-dark. Until the light caught his golden antlers and the sunbright glow of his small, nestling wings, Leo was little but shadow. “Are you an adventuring kind of girl?” He asks as only a little boy can as his fine skull tilts to regard this new girl. So many, many girls. Leonidas has yet to even meet a boy… yet, young as he is, he barely thinks it strange and certainly not enough to warrant joy or consternation at the lack of any other little boys to play with. “I was about to find out what secrets hide in the caves..” He steps forward another step and his eyes glow lamplight bright. If he doesn’t notice the absence of boys, what Leo does notice is that all girls are beautiful. “Will you be my secret keeper?” He asks with a smile as wondrous as a feral fairy wood.

@Maret | "speaks" | notes: thank you for threading with him! Please bear with me whilst i work out how to write him and who he is!

♢

[Maret]

M A R E T

---

The forest sounds to her like it’s singing. The branches shake their leaves in beat with her own heart, and the wind whistles a song that speaks of sunlight and rain and green things. She can’t help but dance along to its rhythm, twisting and weaving through the wood along a path she did not know. Her hooves leave small, crescent shaped prints in the earth in her wake, the only sign of her passing.

She almost doesn’t notice the way the light around her seems to bend, the way the beams breaking through the canopy seem to twist in midair just so they can alight upon her skin. A smile blossoms across her face at the sun’s touch, leaning into its embrace even as she skips away. A scattering of ice follows her like a trail of fairy dust.

Her imagination runs rampant, there in the forest that closes in around her. Every break of the sun through the canopy is a spotlight, and she twists through it in a beautiful dance that the leaves applaud and the wind cheers her on with a whistle. Every step, every pirouette and leap is exquisite, as if the world itself will not allow her to make a single faulty move; she is a master, dancing only to the beat of her own heart, wild and irregular though it may be.

With every step that wild thing inside of her beats faster, and her body twists more quickly through the trees in kind. On and on and on it goes, until her heart feels as though it is about to burst from the effort - and even then she dares to press on, trusting the soft cloud of her imagination to catch her when she falls.

But until then, she runs.

She runs like the shadows are chasing her.

She dances like all the world is watching.

She leaps over fallen trees and upraised roots like she’s flinging herself over mountains.

She runs, she dances, she leaps -

- Until the forest ends as abruptly as it began, and rock rises up around her in place of trees.

Her little chest heaves with each gasping breath, her hair floating in disarray to either side of her face. Twigs and leaves and mud bespeckle her coat, and if it weren’t for the tiny pristine horseshoes and the gold wrapped around her neck that betray her as a nobleman’s daughter, she might have looked like a wild thing borne of the forest. But oh, she certainly feels like a wild thing, as she gazes up and up at the mountains.

A small part of her whispers that she should turn around, that she’s wandered too far from the Court and her parents. But another part, a louder part, can’t help but ask: what lies beyond the forest?

She takes the first step out onto the rocks, and her heart leaps painfully high in her throat.

She takes her second step and thoughts of home are already fading, excitement taking the place of trepidation.

By the third step she’s back to skipping, and her laughter is loud and joyous as it echoes off of the slate.

She doesn’t see the great cavern that opens like a mouth in the mountainside, not until the boy with his dark wings and golden antlers steps out of it. Maret slides to a stop, and watches the way the sunlight plays across the prongs of his antlers in the same way that it played across her father’s wings. ”Are you an adventurous kind of girl?”



Oh, maybe if she were older she would have questioned this boy who seemed to come from the darkness. But she is young and naive and her heart yearns to explore the unknown; so she lifts her head up and puffs her chest in the way she’s seen boys back home do. “Yes,” she says defiantly, and her voice is haughty and matter-of-factly. “Yes I am.”

She’s already stepping forward into the cave, her golden horseshoes clicking against the stone floor. Her small ears prick forward with interest, peering curiously into the shadows. She thinks she can hear the sound of water, dripping off rock somewhere in the distance.

“I can keep your secrets,” she tells him, and she already trusts that he would keep hers. “I’ll bet this cave has more secrets than stars in the sky. Shall we look for them together?”

---

@Leonidas xx
”sunshine, daisies“

❋

[Leonidas]

I am not like any ordinary world

She emerges from the wood like a dancer. The child is nimble upon her feet, the ground barely knows of her passing as her feet carry her whisper light through the forest.


When she stops, her sides are heaving, her golden eyes bright and wide and full like the sun. The girl is black and gold: bone striped with night and limned with gold. He is the woodland and yet she is the stars and the black and first rays of dawn.


Her gold feet at last sing as the girl steps upon the stone and such a noise beckons him forward from the darkness of his cave. Leonidas moves out into the sunlight that dances across the tines of his antlers as she had through the woodland.


His question gives her pause and she hesitates, fine and curious as a fawn before she steps toward him and into the shadows of his cave. Yes, she says and the wild wood boy smiles in answer. He follows her like a moth to the flame that leads him deeper, deeper into the cave. 


“Are you a faerie?” he asks as he studies her, her fine bones and the smile that the cave still sings of with bells and chimes. Adventurous faeries are his favourite kind of children. Leonidas moves to stand beside her, they are small before the great maw of the cave that reaches deeper into the earth.


“Can you?” He asks of her again when she leans into the darkness and vows that she can keep his secrets. He studies her face, the way his gold and hers glow like candle flames, illuminating their bodies. The children are fireflies caught in an endless night and Leo takes a step forward mysteries curling his mahogany lips as he reaches for her, beckoning her on with him into the dark.


“I will keep your secrets.” the boy says, though he need not. Twigs click together in his mane as the boy turns deeper into the cave. He hears only her breath, the brush of feathers and hair, the chink of her gilded hooves. “What secrets do you hope for? What secrets do you already have?” He whispers and does not know whether she is close to him or far as the darkness presses upon them like a shroud. His heart is a staccato within his chest and it beats ever faster as his wing reaches out for her as the tunnel reaches its deepest dark.


@Maret

"Speaking."

credits