The mystery continues to unfold between them, or maybe it is only deepening - each door not an answer but only another room, larger, stranger than the last.
August is not sure he’ll tell Minya how glad he is that she is beside him, something familiar when all else of home is left behind on the shore. He isn’t sure she’d believe him, anyway; it’s always seemed against her nature to accept a compliment that doesn’t have to do with her beauty, or the way her body moves upon the stage, through smoke-filled rooms.
So he only watches her stroll forward, like the black stone bridge turning to white sand is nothing but a scarlet carpet rolled out for her feet. In the darkness the sounds of her trinkets are softer, more in welcome than in warning, and even before she turns back to him he is following. But when her gaze does catch him, sharp as cold steel held to his throat, he only smiles and presses on. At her question he flicks an ear, rolls a shrug - but he stops below those reaching branches, considering. With a hoof he tests the bark, striking at its trunk until the outermost bark chips away and the sharp smell of sap adds a new note to the perfume of the dark night.
“No,” he says, and grins at her, but even in the moonlight she knows him well enough to know that it is false. As false as the island, maybe. “But I don’t know if it is alive. Is anything here? Maybe it’s all animated by magic.” It is too warm for the shiver that touches him then.
August looks past his companion, where the slope rises up in jagged leaps, and falls still when he sees the silhouette of a unicorn. He waits to be seen in turn, to be greeted or warned, but the figure is as still as the tree. Only when he notes the way the moonlight shines so strangely on its not-skin does he wonder if it is real at all, and with a brow-raised look back at Minya he approaches. He must squint to make out the words; he reads them aloud, half to himself, half for the benefit of his fellow orphan.
“Time is free. Time is here. Tempus.” His voice fades quickly against the sound of the surf, and when he shifts his weight back on his haunches August is frowning - as rare for him as an honest grin for Minya.
@Minya
August is not sure he’ll tell Minya how glad he is that she is beside him, something familiar when all else of home is left behind on the shore. He isn’t sure she’d believe him, anyway; it’s always seemed against her nature to accept a compliment that doesn’t have to do with her beauty, or the way her body moves upon the stage, through smoke-filled rooms.
So he only watches her stroll forward, like the black stone bridge turning to white sand is nothing but a scarlet carpet rolled out for her feet. In the darkness the sounds of her trinkets are softer, more in welcome than in warning, and even before she turns back to him he is following. But when her gaze does catch him, sharp as cold steel held to his throat, he only smiles and presses on. At her question he flicks an ear, rolls a shrug - but he stops below those reaching branches, considering. With a hoof he tests the bark, striking at its trunk until the outermost bark chips away and the sharp smell of sap adds a new note to the perfume of the dark night.
“No,” he says, and grins at her, but even in the moonlight she knows him well enough to know that it is false. As false as the island, maybe. “But I don’t know if it is alive. Is anything here? Maybe it’s all animated by magic.” It is too warm for the shiver that touches him then.
August looks past his companion, where the slope rises up in jagged leaps, and falls still when he sees the silhouette of a unicorn. He waits to be seen in turn, to be greeted or warned, but the figure is as still as the tree. Only when he notes the way the moonlight shines so strangely on its not-skin does he wonder if it is real at all, and with a brow-raised look back at Minya he approaches. He must squint to make out the words; he reads them aloud, half to himself, half for the benefit of his fellow orphan.
“Time is free. Time is here. Tempus.” His voice fades quickly against the sound of the surf, and when he shifts his weight back on his haunches August is frowning - as rare for him as an honest grin for Minya.
@
August - -
this above all: to thine own self be true
STAFF EDIT***
@august has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +100 signos.
