there are many paths to tread
A bird drifts overhead in lazy flight, its circle carving an arc across the sky. He keeps one eye trained on it as he walks, wondering what it sees from so high up. Does it see him as a black spot, a wolf walking through the sand? Can it see the horns balanced upon his brow, the scarves billowing against his sides?
Or does it see only a meal, and is waiting for a time to strike?
Toulouse would pay good money to have access to a vulture’s view, all the better to scout out potential targets. But the bird is up there, and he is down here, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from drowning in the desert.
Movement catches his eye, and he turns towards it by instinct. He watches as the silver man alters his course, his own stride stalled. ’This ought to be interesting.’ The Solterran King was unmistakable, with his silver skin and the scarf that blows like blue smoke. He was not a popular man, or so Toulouse had gathered from the meeting he had called - his presence alone might be enough to send others scattering.
But Toulouse was not like others, and silver was only second to gold.
A smile eased on his lips, like a kid caught in a place he didn’t belong.
”What brings you out into the desert?” the king asks, but its his eyes that he seems to be speaking with. Toulouse tilts his head so that the rings decorating his horns glint in the sunlight.
“I thought kings preferred castles to sandpits,” he mused aloud, voice little more than a murmur. “You never know what might happen, so far from home.”
He meets the king’s eyes, holding his gaze for the span of a heartbeat. Overhead the vulture is circling them now, as if preparing for one of them to drop dead.
Toulouse drops his gaze, gesturing towards the Oasis that hovered like a mirage in the distance. “I was going for a bath, I have sand clinging to all the wrong places,” he smiles his boyish smile, all charm and innocence.
“Would you care to join me?”
