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.
Leonidas is not ready for a world in motion.
Born in stillness, where animals are simply soft, warm statues and where the sun does not move from its place within the sky, he has never stopped to think that animals might come to move like him.
Leo is not ready for most things. Still young, still surprised by a world he barely knows, the boy is less surprised by the way sand rises to form a monster than he is by the simple fact that the monster moves. It lends him to wonder what else might move in such strange and mysterious ways – would all the trees fall upon their bellies to slither like snakes the way this one had done? Would all Novus’ beaches rise to move like bears? Would clouds turn into bees and descend to sting them all? Would the sea turn into wonders he has yet to even imagine?
So many thoughts of awe and wonder and terror pass through his mind as he scrambles to a stop, his head lifting up, up, up to peer into those chrysalis eyes of the bear. Leo is a dreamer boy. He dances with weapons in his grasp and claims the woodland as his own. His quilt is leaves, his bedframe twigs and brush. He carries branches like swords and plays as if it is sharp enough to cut a hole in the world big enough to find where his family went. He is a boy who dreams he is a warrior tried and yet risen above all – a champion.
But what does a dreamer-boy-warrior know of monsters and magic? His heart is wild in his chest, he has not known sensation like this before. He has not felt the white-hot heat of terror that lances through his nerves and ignites his limbs like an inferno.
Ah!
He steps before his sister, brave and bold and terrified. He lowers his skull and bears what few teeth have come through his gums. Those small milk teeth gleam, little and blunt and nothing compared to the monster’s whose jaws are pointed with teeth like knifes and strung together with poisonous spittle.
What is a boy to a beast?
Nothing at all.
And the monster explodes into a swirling vortex of sand and butterflies. Their wings are nettles that sting and sting and sting and how the boy cries out and wonders how such creatures can be so cruel. Did his mother not say she had a butterfly once? A familiar who guarded her as a child?
Horror becomes him. It swallows him like a whale a shoal of fish. And the boy thrashes in the chaos of pressing, fragile, vicious wings. They touch every inch of him and his voice is strangled in his throat. He gropes through the butterfly storm for Aster and when he finds her runs and runs and runs, reaching to pull her with him. Keep her beside him, forever, always.
His skin stings, still remembering wings, even as he steps out from the chaos. A moat reaches out before them – was that not how they came here? It looks as if it may be flimsy, as if it may break, but the twins are small and fast and he turns to his sister and cries, “Run!” His voice small and shrill as any terrified boy might be. Then he leads her across the terrible moat, skipping and leaping from place to place, hoping each will hold their weight.
OOC: Leo has chosen option 1 and has used his iridescent feather to advance to this round.
@Aster | "speaks" <3
