She asks him questions, questions that fall like silk from her lips, questions that seem to know the answer better than he knows. He isn’t sure he has the words he needs to reply.
Leto comes forward, letting her muzzle brush the leather still wrapped about his legs, its ends torn and frayed. He wonders if she sees the numbers carved there, what used to be his name, before the stars found him.
A captive, she calls him, a once-prisoner, and although Sirius has not heard the words before he can hear the stars begin a chant in his ears, and the word seems to fit him as well as his name. YES, YES, YES, the stars tell him, NO LONGER A CAPTIVE, FREED. His head is swimming in their words, in their constellations, in their brightness, and when he speaks again its in a dreamy, far-off voice.
“Yes,” he tells her, ”yes, I think that’s what I was.” NO LONGER, they whisper again, more gently this time. He thinks they might be laughing, way up there in the sky, as if delighted with themselves, as if proud of saving one of their children. Their voice falls away to nothing more than a hum in the back of his mind, as ever-present as the buzz of a bee’s wings. He clings to it, to them, to knowing they are with him. Here in this land where the galaxies seem as close to earth as they ever will be, the home they have led him to.
(He’s never known a home before, but he thinks this might make a good one.)
”They told me this is a better place,” he tells her, and ”So far, they have been right.” He hopes they are right; he had flown so far to get here, here at the end of his wings’ strength, and he isn’t sure he could do that again. Here feels like the end of the world to him; behind him is only more tethers and more hunts and more masters, but here there are glass roses and girls with stars in their eyes.
Sirius draws his breath in and holds it, and this time he follows her gaze when she tilts her starfire-eyes heavenward.
And oh how he gasps, when it seems the galaxies are smoldering above them, a single star burning bright, brighter, brightest in the sky. He knows that star as intimately as he knows himself; they share the same name, and he wonders if someday, somewhere, they might share more, like brothers, like friends.
The star grows brighter, swelling with light that sparkles white and gold, blue and red, colors he’s never seen before. SIrius takes a step forward, his head still craned backwards, and his other wing raises now to join the other one, and together they stretch for that star. He’d like to fly to it, to swim through the sky with his namesake.
When he looks back at her at last, he sees the starlight has anointed her with a crown of silver that drips down the edges of her face.
“I think I might like to fly now,” he tells her, and for the first time in his life it is not a question.
hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you
i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy
@Leto ! <3
this may be the worst reply i've ever written you
