leonidas
holy places are dark places.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.
it is life and strength,
not knowledge and words,
that we get in them.
He stands upon his archway of rubble and stone like a warrior. His antlers point down toward this girl, gilded like the finest of weapons Midas himself might possess.
From beneath the fall of his forelock he watches the girl where she stands like a shard of moonlight – all sharp, young edges and a wicked horn like a spear. His eyes trail over the scales that mark her a dragon girl. They are black as the night that stretches out above them and reaches from corner to corner of Novus.
Leonidas’ gold is a torch in the night. He is a lamp, a spark to set the world alight. But the girl is dark mystery and his gaze trails along the curve of her eyelid, where scales gather like tears and fall, thinning to a point upon her cheek. Even her tears are made to end the world with their wicked sharp.
Blue runs through her mane as fast flowing as a river running out to sea. He has never seen a girl quite like her. But Leonidas has not seen many girls. And those he has seen are spun in gold and set into ivory and lavender.
The gems along her necklace gleam like beetles and bewitched the boy trails along the intricate lace. The black holds him like a maze and he tumbles down the rabbit hole of their beauty.
I will do no such thing.
Ah, the boy might have continued his studying, his admiring, but her words – however spoken like an angel’s cry - are enough to snap him from his adoration. He stands up taller, no longer a lovesick boy with soft brown eyes warmed by the sight of a pretty girl. Her words, as sharp as a No! cried out in defiance, bring him back to the boy he is. A feral boy who makes his bed in leaves and flowers, who dreams not of girls but woodland gods and gods of Time that can split worlds in two.
It is a good job he is a wild boy then, for the silver girl throws a stone at him and smiles like a leviathan. Beautiful beast. Is what he thinks as he steps to the side and the stone snicks along his shoulder. It is enough to bruise, enough to make him cry out, scandalized. She may be beautiful, but she is not above his revenge and the boy is scooping a fellow stone from bridge. He throws it to her and his magic pushes it fast, faster, faster. It skips through time and space pushed on by his time magic and reaches for her. Before it can even reach her, the boy is halfway down the stairs. Another second and he pauses, savage and bright with his outrage. Leonidas is leonine, a greater cat to the cub who snarls and hisses at his feet. Her silver hackles are raised, her thin, pin-like claws digging into the stone.
“Artemis.” He hisses, naming her a goddess of the hunt. A wicked, beautiful girl made for savage things. Artemis: an untouchable girl. He bears his teeth and blinks his sun-bright eyes. He is the daylight to the night that weaves around her.
“This is my fortress.” He says of his ruins, “And I don’t let just anyone in.” And down his brow tilts until a dozen prongs point to her like accusing fingers, like daggers made to end goddesses. “Especially not pretty girls with a penchant for stone throwing.” And he laughs like a fearless boy as his cheetah cub leaps to the ground and slinks toward the girl and her wolf pup.
@Avesta <3 | "speaks" | notes: eee
