Any trace of the little shore-dragon vanishes quickly beneath the trees. What footprints could such a creature make?- only shed grains of sand, only saltwater tears no different from sea-spray. How long, he wonders, before he thinks of it as nothing more than a dream?
Still, he is as glad as his companion to pass beneath the boughs and welcome the cool of shadows over his dusky skin. The king’s gaze meanders the forest floor, searching for kelp that might be a dragon’s wing, with the right kind of eyes. There is only the smell of saltwater thick over the island, mingling with rich loam.
When his gaze follows Corr’s up into the trees, where fruit hangs like bright globes (it makes him think, unbidden, of Denocte’s castle made strange and lovely for the midwinter party) he pauses. Florentine has told him stories of the riftlands - never enough, he is always eager for them - of fruit and flowers that, if consumed, could bless you or curse you. It is not a stretch to think the same might be true, here.
Corr speaks and he tips a dark ear toward her, smiling at the awe in her words. It’s the same thing he feels, a wonder that runs so deep it feels almost like sorrow. Oh, to be a boy again, all excitement and no concern.
But when she says portal, his gaze goes to her, his interest stolen away from the island. “It is,” he agrees, musing. “I’d wondered if the creatures here came through from somewhere else, or were here all along - or perhaps the island is only making them now, like that dragon.” For a moment the king falls silent, ducking beneath a fallen log. Cirrus flutters over it, ungainly in the forest with her webbed feet and long wings, but this time she keeps her thoughts to herself. “I came through such a portal, too,” he says, and his voice is hushed, as though they wander a cathedral and not a forest. “From a land called Ravos, where the magic was as wild as this - but there was nothing quite so strange.” Only the gods; always the gods, making trouble, pitting them against one another.
At her question, he glances back to her, considering for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s too much of a mystery than I can guess at. Maybe there are just places, even here, where magic pools thicker than elsewhere - like a tidepool. Maybe it is the gods, but…” he sighs before smiling, wry, at a king’s blasphemy. “I rather hope it isn’t.”
From somewhere ahead, a creature calls - but bird or frog or cicada or dragon, he cannot say.
@Corrdelia
if you'll be my star*
