Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour
and eternity in an hour
He sleeps and does not think that the space beside him grows cold. He does not feel how the warm press of his sister’s ivory skin against his is so very gone and how his own skin now grows cold. Leonidas did not even stir when her limbs disentangle from his. All the small boy did was sigh and sleep on as his sister stirred and rose and left him.
The boy's sleep is deep and warm. Exhaustion is as bottomless as a the sea, it pulls him in to the tide of sleep and holds him down deep. Here in the depths of slumber, all is black and warm. It is nothingness. An oblivion in which he finds rest. It is nice not to be awake, for to be awake is to remember. To be awake, to be any higher than the deepest pit of sleep is to swim in the shallows and let his mind wander with its worry and its questions.
In sleep, Leo’s mind builds dreams for him: dreams that feel more terrible than reality, dreams that remind him over and over how his parents disappeared, dreams that threaten him with all he still has left to lose and just how they will be taken from him too. His dreams are endless and cyclical. In dreams he cries and begs and feels the warmth of his mother and father and follows them, protected. In dreams he watches them leave, over and over and over.
But when he wakes, the boy realizes that all is actually better within his dreams. In reality his parents are still not there, he still fears more loss – of his sister, he still cries when he is awake. Reality, that his family are truly gone, is the sting of a scorpion’s tail and it is enough to paralyse the child with its ferocity.
Yet when he sleeps and does not dream… oh! That is bliss.
…Except for the monsters that prowl and the beasts that seek to slake their thirst and satiate their hunger. Leo has dreamed his horrible dreams, but nothing of the beast that comes for him is as harmless as his dreams.
The log that he sleeps upon shifts, Leo rouses, remembers his loss, aches, and lets himself slip swiftly back into that deep nothingness. Oblivion seizes him fast, it keeps the boy numb and does not warn him of creeping monsters who test the log beside him.
But then there is the touch. It reaches for the boy in his sleep and scoops him from its depths like a divine, rescuing hand. It is a touch that cradles the sleeping boy. It a soft caress along his throat, brushing the silk of his baby hair to and fro. It is an idle stroke, so similar to his mother's touch. In his stark recognition, in his desperate longing (and weighted down by drowsy sleep), the boy does not pause to think that there is nothing here that smells like his dam or sire. The breathing he hears is not like his parents’. In fact, the air crackles with unease and not with a mother’s warmth. But he is an orphan boy and hope for his parents' return still surges white and bright within him. He clings to it like he clings to the grip that pulls him up from his sleep.
He does not need that stirring nudge to implore him to wakefulness, for he is already there. He rises, rises from sleep with hope blooming brighter than a flower within his breast, he gasps and opens his eyes and looks up with golden, joyous hope and the word, ’Mama?’ tumbles as a plea from his lips. But that word, that hope falls away like a stone. Leonidas feels it crash within him and shatter like glass. He is cut from the inside. He is raw with terror beneath the creature that looms above him, with death laughing out across its razor teeth. That look is not the soft of a mother's gaze, his sun framed silhouette is nothing like hers. Oh it smells of fetid blood and rancid death and it rears back, set to strike.
Leonidas scrambles, his magic stirring in his bones. Quick, quick, quick! It implores him, faster, faster. But the boy does not move. He stays and stares up at the beast and asks with wild terror in his chest, "Are you death?”
Stop! The shout comes as the beast readies itself to strike and Leo – a boy with the future running in his veins, who can move faster than light – simply does not move and instead lies, looking up at the beast, his eyes wide with askance. He wonders if in death he might find his parents again, or maybe that life was just so strange and wrong without them – was it even worth it? Yet Aster is a divine rod into his heart. Her memory shocks her brother into action and as his saviour comes, not in gold or earth like his mother, but in the form of a strange stallion, Leonidas is standing and looking around for where his sister should have been.
Her place is cold where she should be laying. His skin is cold where her body touched his. And upon the monster’s muzzle is fresh blood that gleams like a grim smile. It mocks him and rage surges within the boy.
We are not alone, his sister said. Her voice is angelic in his ears, it is a rallying cry that drives fury into his veins. The boy stands upon spindle limbs and lowers his skull like a lion. Small ears fall to the curve of his skull and his nape twists and snakes in grief and desperate fury. It is a boy’s challenge to a monster. It is an orphan’s challenge to the world that has seen fit to deal him foul card after foul card. He moves beside his saviour, the stallion's words lost and screams at the monster. But that scream breaks into a strangled cry and then the sob of an orphan boy so utterly lost.
@pravda
