For a moment Lysander wonders if his magic has returned to him - if it was not just his immortality he found in the desert that day. Because like a thousand trembling roots he has turned to blooming vines, like a sapling growing up into a red cedar higher than any temple of marble and prayer, his son is growing before his eyes.
In seconds he is on his feet, whisking his tail at the strange dragonflies that hover like gnats with their silver-veined wings trembling. That tail curls dark and gold grows like wheat at the end, a shock of sunlight as another peal of thunder groans overhead. And all this time Lysander has had the same held breath.
He spills it in a laugh now, feeling as shaky as his son (maybe more, given how steady those feet already are). He sprouts feathers like Icarus.
“He’ll grow into it,” he says, too surprised to be wry - but there is a grin curling his bronze cheek. Only when he looks over at Florentine does his heart stutter with worry - but it recovers with each word she speaks. They have been through more dire than this. “Well,” he says, turning toward her, grazing his muzzle across her cheek, “I was never a newborn, but he is your son, an answer in itself.” And it is her son - their son - he watches as his golden mate makes a bed of cool ferns.
Only when both mother and son lie together does Lysander slip away into the twilight. The storm has passed, and the last of the clouds are limned with gold; all the world feels wrung clean. Insects buzz and hum, and fireflies meander between the trees. The antlered stallion never strays out of eyesight, and a dark ear is always turned to the pair. But his search is fruitless: he knows none of the plants of the island, recognizes nothing enough to be safe to give to Florentine and Leonidas. Mint, or elm, or comfrey - any time he thinks he finds something he knows, the wind shivers and the leaves tremble and he sees that there is something different. Something strange.
In the end he doesn’t risk it. In the end he returns as the breeze blows cool kisses against his shoulder and sides and the only light is the softly golden water and the rising moon. There he stays with her, keeping watchful guard, until the moon crests the sky and Flora gives them a daughter pale and perfect as snowdrops. Once again he is staring, as though he might drink up the picture of her and hold it within him forever. When Flora hisses like an indignant swan he only smiles to himself and says “Don’t they?” as he presses his mouth to the nape of her neck.
She need hardly as him to lie with her; he does it gladly, their bodies warm in the cooling night. If there was ever danger in the forest he doesn’t feel it now; there is only the four of them (a wondrous number) bedded down in the long grasses at the edge of an amber pool, wild and new. He listens to Florentine as she talks about her broth with his chin laid across her back, and he listens to the crickets and the nighthawks and the sigh of wind in the leaves, but his eyes are still holding only the twins.
“She is beautiful,” he murmurs. “They both are.” Only her gaze on him draws him away from the sight of those two twined around each other as though they still sleep inside the belly of the world. When she reaches for him he tugs on one of her long, long curls and he inhales the soft smell of hyacinths and thinks of home. “Aster is perfect.” Lysander’s mouth shapes a smile, thinking of a retinue of Anthousai - how close to his beginning it sounds, and how far away. “I’m extraordinarily lucky. But feel free to keep reminding me how much.”
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