So he looks at Elif instead. In her green eyes he can see something-- awe?-- shivering like the leaves of a cottonwood tree, not knowing how to not be seen. Pride unfurls in him, a shy kind of pride that, for the first time, he holds close to heart instead of displaying like a banner.
“Well, yeah I pray to them all. Don’t you?” The gods needed each other, he was sure of it. It was not something he heard talked about much, but he assumed he was not alone in sending a prayer to Vespera, Caligo, Solis, Tempus, every time he spoke Oriens’ name. He lets himself drift away in thought because he does not know what to say when she mentions the way his song looks, except “It’s… odd, isn’t it?”
His magic was a trivial thing. It could not protect, or heal, or wound, or do much of anything than awe– which was arguably useless. But it was his magic. And although he did not understand the hows or whys of it, surely there was some god-given purpose for him having it. He believed this, as he believed many things, without a doubt. But until he understood it better, he did not wish to share it to excess, or even to talk about it much. He tells her this by averting his gaze, back to the fine subtleties of the alaja, although he already had an incredibly detailed image of it committed to memory. It was inspiring to think there were ancient traditions that encoded prayers in patterns of shape and color. And the sect of monks that practically raised him, they prayed through song, often wordless and improvised. It was all connected: touch and taste, sound and sight and scent. Not just in the obvious way but something deeper, more meaningful.
It made him feel like it was possible to live in such a way that your very existence was a prayer, and the very possibility of that strikes a fire in him warm enough that for a few seconds he does not feel the wind at all--
And then it’s not there at all. His ears ring with the sudden absence of it, or perhaps the grey noise is a relic of his mind unable to understand pure silence. It unnerves him, but the calm look on Elif’s face, like she’s not afraid at all, steadies him.
“I wonder where they go…” her wondering voice gently bends the cathedral silence around them, and the wind soon picks up as though to say “we’re here, silly children, here always here” and she says “yes” to him, the answer he already knew because he had gotten a sense that she was a true pegasus who would fly wherever there was wind to take her. He might be a little jealous of her daring, a little insecure of the ridiculous roots he sinks into the earth. He must remind himself, before the insecurity gets the best of him, that it was not so bad to have roots, when you had friends willing to travel.
“Oh you have to see the forest!! However you imagine it to be-- it’s bigger!” It was surreal, flying from root to crown of the oldest trees. It made you imagine what it would be like to be a little bee, buzzing around a forest of flowers hundreds of times taller than you. “And have you heard of our library, how it’s made of trees?! Not all cut up and square but like the forest grew around the library and the library grew into the forest, and you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins because they’re one and the same.” He’s breathless with cold and pride and most of all longing, a deep, deep longing for the place that most put his soul at peace.
And that is how he knows it’s finally time to go home.
“Of course,” he says with a cocksure grin, physically incapable of saying no to a race. He spreads his wings and holds them open for a moment, just to soak in the top-of-the-world feeling, and then with a running jump he’s off into the young night.
(LET IT BE KNOWN that if he loses, it’s only because he let her win, being the gentleman that he is.)
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@Elif ahhh I loved this thread <3
