There is a soft storm rolling in across the island and Lysander almost feels at home.
Thunder ripples gently through the cool springtime air, and the patter of rain on the leaves is a lulling sound (like the heartbeat of a thousand scarlet berries). Carefully he ambles through the undergrowth with the grace of a buck, the grace of a man with hair burnished golden by sunlight. There are curling vines he must be careful not to snare his antlers on, and the sense of being watched crawls like flies along his skin.
The last time he had felt so many eyes on him, it was a midwinter night and his blood had stained the snow. He had almost died, then, a sensation new to him in his centuries of existence. Now as then, a smile curls his dark mouth and his eyes shine like all the things that wait in the soft dark. Around his neck he wears the dagger that had saved his life, but it is not the reason for his casual calm.
Lysander has been reborn.
He is no god. But he is not quite a man - and the dark-haired stallion is not sure where it leaves him, but he is willing to find out. Once more his blood feels a little like ichor - a little like the pool that shines through the leaves ahead of him. Around him birds sing the way they do in dreams: thickly, long hands treading through deep water.
In the dim it shines like treasure, but it is not the gold he seeks. Yet soft, soft he steps, his green eyes bright, drawing his gaze up from that calm surface to a brighter color, honey-gold. Now his smile grows; he thinks wistfully of running fingers through her hair. One day, perhaps, he will again.
Only when he glances down at the ink-black flowers with their jewel-dark eyes does he think of Isra, and how this island seems like a thing she might have dreamt, before her dreams turned black and sharp as blades.
Lysander steps forward bold as a stag, and a golden leaf rings softly against the tine it is bound to. His hair curls darkly at his throat and his winter coat is shedding away, revealing the copper dapples along his shoulders. Not until he reaches her does he stop, and then he presses his muzzle into the juncture of her shoulder and throat and inhales deeply of her. It isn’t until it slows at the smell of hyacinths does he realize how quickly his heart had been racing.
When he withdraws he doesn’t wonder whether she knows something has changed in him; he is too busy realizing the change in her. Surprise is not an emotion often worn in his green eyes - they make him look young and bright as spring. Lightning writes a bright arc above the trees, and in the brief illumination of it she could be a goddess. The pool lies beyond them, forgotten.
“I wondered if I’d meet you here,” he says, and when he grins it feels brand new. "I knew you could never stay away."
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