life’s but a walking shadow
Indra dips her head in agreement as the antlered stallion speaks. She, too, can feel the paths of a thousand possible lives unfolding at her hooves, innumerable and wonderful and terrifying. It is hard to imagine not seeking to explore them all, even as she knows that a step in any one direction will erase so many other courses that might have been.
Briefly, silently, she turns her question on herself: Would she change anything, if she could? Would she even have the knowledge or volition to, or would she blindly follow once more the same old path that fate had carved for her? Was that not, in some ways, what she was already doing now—walking a cliffside she had surely walked before, in the dream that tugged her endlessly between Novus and the rift and back again?
The night breeze whispers over her skin, smelling of salt and secrets, and she gives a small shake, turning her thoughts away from time and free will toward more sociable topics. “No real destination,” she replies. “Perhaps toward where the people are. I would be glad for your company,” she adds, and means it, for she has been wandering too many weeks alone, and his is the sort of conversation that she could readily grow used to. She flashes him a smile, ghostly in the dark. “You can show me where it is you make your home.”
She starts again up the cliff-trail, the golden stranger a dim bronze phantom at her side. His pale antlers seem almost to shimmer against the night, and every now and again the round ball of the moon is caught between them, crowning him with an otherworldly glow. “You must tell me a story,” she instructs him, “and a good one, to pass the time. If it is disappointing, I shall feed you to the deep.” Her expression is carefully solemn, only the barest arch of a brow daring him to make her prove it.
And so they walk, on into the lengthening night, the sea a rushing murmur at their heels. Indra, never one for chasing gods, cannot help but feel the touch of one, here—Vespera, perhaps, watching over the sleeping lands of Terrastella.
Or this unlikely stranger, chance encountered on the road.
i n d r a
@Lysander figured I'd start wrapping up, but let's thread again sooooon <3
