This keening soul;
I am not from here. The stranger says as water falls away and silver meets gold above the rippling water.
Leto gazes, her eyes snagging upon the pale glow of sun-bleached bones, woven into the dark of this stranger’s mane, like they are in the black of hers. Snarls of hair adorn the black girl’s throat, they plait and curl, bound together by hair and vines and wild things. Feathers sway in the breeze, begging but beg for the wind.
Those words, they bring a smile to Leto’s lips. It is bright and fierce. That black smile gleams like the sun, it shines like the moon and leto wonders of the world beyond Novus. She wonders of her free-roaming brethren that stepped away, into the wilder lands.
“Where are you from?” the shed-star murmurs, hungry as though starved. She craves to know more, she yearns for whispers of different lands. Oh how she aches. Oh how she burns. Her blood glows white, white and the stars above burn bright in answer.
Leto’s lips reach for where bones hang in the stranger’s mane, for where her hair is woven into plaits. She does not wear sigils as Leto does, bold and starling – like carvings of starlight across the midnight of her skin. “Of course you do. All Ilati wear charms in our hair. Skulls and bones, leaves and berries. All that the earth gives us, we are at liberty to wear.”
She trails off, her eyes drifting toward Tinea. “Are you returning to us?” Leto asks though… us - it feels like a lie. It feels like a betrayal when she hears her shed-star blood roar, when she looks to the ocean and wonders when her bones will be lost there.
“I am not pure Ilati either. There are few who are.” Our people are dying. she does not say, though her heart is bleeding, though her soul smarts and rips.
“My name is Leto.”
@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3
