lysander
Lysander no longer thought much about the rift.
It had always been a fleeting place for him, intriguing but temporary; he had never allowed himself to get caught up in it, never for a moment considered it might claim him with sickness or with death. Only here, in a land so without monsters, had he been acquainted with his own mortality, and it is here that he spends much of his time considering now.
Novus had become a far more interesting place than he’d first credited it with, and such faulty first impressions were not something he would forget.
The copper stallion walks now along the cliffside, the sunset bathing half of his body in fire and warmth. What attention he wasn’t giving to each step he gave to the sea, watching each roll of waves as though searching for something. Talk of the Ilati and selkies both had piqued his boundless curiosity, and it was signs of either he sought for now.
What he finds, when he chances a look down the path and finds a figure there, is something else.
For a moment he is surprised to find himself face-to-face with another unicorn, just as striking, just as deadly-looking, as the last. It was a lucky thing, worlds away where he had been born, to see even one in a lifetime; he thinks with a private grin that he must be a blessed man indeed. But as he nears and draws to a halt his expression smooths into something amiably impassive, and he tilts his pale antlers in greeting to her, his green-eyed gaze lingering wryly on the tip of her horn before moving to meet hers.
“For the time being,” he answers, and smiles as though at a joke. “I assume the question means you don’t. I had thought, for a moment, you might be one of the dangerous things I’m told crawl up from the sea with the tide.” He says no more, does not offer his name or ask for her own.
Oh, but he thinks she might be a dangerous thing, nonetheless. She is a striking and memorable figure, though he had never been near enough before to see those golden eyes – but there is no mistaking the riftlands on her, or the dead space where a current of magic should be.
But nothing about Lysander betrays his recognition, or that he wonders how many of them there are, and if they are all refugees –
Or if they might be something else.
@Indra
