For a moment it is only the susurrus of their breathing, only the feel of Isra’s skin against his and the warmth of their little group in the dark. It could be a universe then, their cave, and the monster waiting outside the worry of another world. There is the tang of copper and of gold on his tongue when he breaths and it reminds him of being a god. Sleeping under soil, waiting to rise; offerings of minerals and spices and blood.
When Isra steps toward the water Lysander almost holds his breath - but of course nothing happens. (A unicorn’s horn had always been used to purify, after all, and water more than anything). Still he makes no movement, only watches the slow fall of water drop by drop from the shining tip of her horn to spread in the pool.
After that he follows, winding through the steam, smiling his secret smile. What dim light there is splinters on the surface of the pool and throws up strange shapes like ripples of color on all their skin, and there in the heart of the mountain with the storm outside they are made into things as magic as the rift could have dreamed.
He only hesitates once more, at the edge of the pool as the stranger drinks. There is a laugh in the line of his lips when Katniss speaks, a laugh that falls out soft as fog when she says she does not mean them harm.
“It is not you I fear,” he answers, and steps into the water.
It is Isra he follows, and when she offers her story he meets her eyes and tilts his head to her, the smile softening to something secret - something that speaks of a long and bloody night beneath a baleful moon, bark wound into bandages like straw spun gold.
His gaze does not leave her again, not as thunder makes the cave quake like the belly of a beast and water streams down his sides hot as blood.
Lysander only waits for the storyteller to carry him away once more, worlds in worlds in worlds like a pool in a cave on a mountain in a land that the gods have forsaken.
we wake with bright eyes now
ours is a white lies town
@Isra @
