Pan is pleased with the bird, and he watches her carefully as she swoops from her perch to the stallion, his smile soft and a bit whimsical as he observes their bond. In another world, the boy would have his trusted otter by his side, or perhaps wrapped around his neck like a furry brown drape. Those days were gone though, and in their place is nothing but hollow dreams and a bag of sea litter. Still, the boy is happy. He always finds happiness – for Pan did not know to be sad for the life he’d lost. Instead, he was simply experiencing each day as if it were his first.
Should he tell the star king that he’d found a cave, so obviously abandoned by an earlier version of himself, filled to the brim with his treasures – once lost and now found once more? Would he think the boy mad, if Pan told him of his dreams – of the girl with the laugh like a summer song, with flowers in her hair, with a dagger in her palm – of the witch in the swamp – of the crisp autumn punch against his lips?
His face was wide with shock as he stared at the Dusk King, lost and afraid.
@Asterion
