“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.”
The moment Pan takes out his treasures Fable is hooked like a slick-scaled fish. He is quick when she untangles himself from Isra's shadow. The tilt of his head is decidedly ungraceful. Even if Isra knew any other dragons she could not have brought herself to tell him that he's a creature made to rule the surf (instead of one to pine after bits of glass and silver bones).
Fable has already forgotten that Isra could make him a hundred shards of sea-glass and coat a world in silver.
Just as the dragon is reaching for the bit of glass Isra laughs and the bits of magic at her feet dissolve so that the grass is just grass again. She almost misses the gold and the birch-- almost. But when the soil at her hooves smooths out and turns to scales not unlike the ones on her and Pan, Isra doesn't miss the gold anymore.
“Welcome to Denocte, Pan.” There's a playful gleam in her eyes that was absent before when she reaches with her nose to brush his cheek. “I'm Isra.” She winks to hide the quick bolt of sadness that shivers through her when he talks about dreams. Lost. The word comes to her unbidden, born perhaps in that ink sea of stories and dreams that lingers in the bottom of her soul.
There is something to be said about story-tellers and boys with scales and dreams who never shed their youth.
“Of course dreams are real.” Around them bits of grass turn to glass that rises into white-foam froth. They look like waves when the moon shifts from behind a cloud and coats them in a faint silver sheen. “Neverland sounds lovely.” Isra almost says that she would always want to grow older.
But when she looks at him and thinks again of that word, lost, she swallows the words and only smiles.
Each of the words she doesn't say taste both bitter and sweet.
@Pan
