With silence he watches the pale pegasus approach, her compassion for the rodent at odds with the expression she wears. She is as worn down as the rest of them (they are all frames of bone with too-taut skin lately, bodies never dry, eyes never bright save with fever) but she does not hesitate before she acts.
Lysander does not avert his gaze, though there is the feeling of witnessing something meant to be private as she begins to sing, her voice soft enough he loses the words themselves. There is something strange and dark in the deep green of his eyes, and he is thinking of a time when he was a god, his power still full, and he set tasks for his followers.
He knows, now, what this is – even before the stranger speaks. And he does not appreciate being on the receiving end of it.
A gopher abandoned, a woman whose vanishing summoned light in her wake. Was it so different from a golden hind coursing through dark woods, the tang of magic clear in the air?
The grey mare’s gaze is still on him, and he meets it now with a nod, though his dark mouth bears no smile.
He wants no part of this goddess’s tests. But neither does he want to risk bringing further punishment – not with Florentine still so weak.
“Even the healers need healers, of late,” he says dryly. “Terrastella’s resources are the only things running dry.” But he sighs, resigned, as he turns his glance back to the gopher, pressing itself further into the safety of the pegasus’ wing.
“Bring him inside, when you can,” he says to no one in particular. “I’ll see what herbs I can find.” Before the rains – and Florentine’s injures – had kept him from straying, Lysander had kept himself busy gathering all manner of plants. He thought then of Isra, and how she had tended to him without care for who or what he was – it is the final prompt he needs, and with a toss of his antlered head he canters back toward the keep. Swift-heeled as he is, he curses himself all the while.
To be helping rodents on behalf of a god he only loathed – what next?
you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night
@Batty @Toulouse @
