Nothing is the same when Lysander returns from the mountains.
In the time since the regimes were swallowed up by the god in the summit, summer has broken; the wind has a bite to it now that there was not before, and it won’t be long before each dawn sees a cloak of frost like leftover starlight on the green grass.
It has only been a few days, he thinks (though he isn’t sure how many hours he lost track of, staggering through the forest at night, sleeping in the silver fog, being healed by the storyteller) but now he bears new scabs across his ribcage, near-twins to the knife-wound that has long since turned to a silver scar.
There is a thin misty rain falling when he reaches the capitol, and he is bemused to find himself almost grateful for the jut of dark gray walls. Around his antlers is a blue ring of forget-me-nots, a suitor’s gift, and Lysander feels almost foolish for carrying it – but if Florentine has returned (and oh, he cannot bear to think that she might still be atop that mountain) he knows he must begin to make amends for nearly dying yet again.
For once he forgets his pride and asks the first passer-by he sees where Florentine is. The swamp, comes the response, and the once-god does not linger to see the way the stranger’s expression twists and turns more mournful than the silver sky.
He forces himself not to look skyward as he passes over the open fields, but he is careful not to make his path near the ivy-covered temple. It is shameful, his ugly fear, but he will examine it later – now he lopes (though each stride strains the injuries still pink with healing) for the humid mouth of Tinea.
At first he sees nothing when he enters it, each footfall soft on the damp and spongy ground. It is still gray-green here, not yet turning red with autumn, and rain-damp petals drift from his foolish crown like a blue bread-crumb trail through the swamp. Lysander pays no mind to the first lily, but by the time he sees the third he knows what they must mean. It has been some time since he was a god, but he remembers the tricks of them, the games they play and paths they lay, and he feels almost shameful (thinking back to his black words, the scrape of blood antlers on stone, the push and shatter) as he follows the trail that Vespera left her people.
How to describe his curiosity, almost wonder, when he finds the first staircase, carved from oak and disguised with leaves and twisting vines? Oh, he could linger here, and dream of naiads and all the strange creatures he had long since left behind, for this feels a nearer echo to those myths than anything he has yet seen. But as he climbs each knotted step, dark thoughts gather like shadows beneath boughs.
There are a thousand reasons the queen of Terrastella might be here, but it is the worst of them he fears. His brush with the kelpie did far more to teach him how fragile his meager life is than any blow from the Night King and his thugs.
At last a silent, solemn-faced mare directs him to the belly of a great tree, one whose width could house a ballroom. Lysander inhales a last rich-green, rain-dark breath and steps inside to warm darkness, where there is only the glint of gold in the dim like scattered straw.
The scent of blood and sharp-smelling poultices strikes him at once, so near to his own recent misadventures, and Lysander’s feet beg him to step again into the clean damp air. Oh, but his heart weighs him down, an anchor sinking for the sea-bed, and as his green eyes adjust to the semidark he bows his arch of antlers and the foolish crown of forget-me-nots drops to the whorled wooden floor beneath him.
“Florentine,” he says, and though his voice is bedrock below the silken soil it is more desperate, more fearful, than it ever was when it was he in a hospital bed.
you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night
@
