there are many paths to tread
He watches the oily-black man, with his leaf green eyes and glossy wings. He tilts his head when he smiles, lowering his horns until they’re bared and pointed towards the other man’s throat. Then he smiles, wicked and mischievous, and there’s a glint to his eyes that rivals the sharpness of the strange man’s teeth.
”Something like that,” he says smoothly, glancing at the pegasus beside him. They had come by boat - if the large raft they had lashed together with ropes could count as a boat - with Juniper towing him along. Flying himself to the island would have been far more preferable, but while Toulouse’s silver tongue had lifted many a jewel from a wealthy woman’s purse, he had yet to find a way to talk the wings off of a pegasus. A shame.
His eyes slide back to the dark stallion, just in time to see the two identical versions flicker into place beside him. Tall. Black. Winged. Eyes as green as a spring wood. Each man identical. Each feature the same.
He bares his horns again.
”I’m Seneca,” each of them say, and Toulouse believes each of them and none of them. It was an easy thing to call yourself by a name - it was far harder to become that name entirely. He knew, oh how he knew.
He lets his eyes rove over them all even as they begin to blend together, with their identical eyes and hair and wings. And all the while his mind is coiling itself like a snake, ready to strike.
But at who?
One of them was liar. One of them was an honest man. One of them was like him.
How would he catch himself in a lie, or his brother? How did he force a liar to reveal himself? Perhaps Toulouse knew this game better than Seneca thought he did.
He lifts his head slightly, peering out at the trio from beneath his lashes. There’s a feral, determined glint in his eyes, something wild and arrogant.
”Seneca,” he says, and lets it be an address to them all. ”Do you call yourself Seneca?”
Each of them already has.
But at least one of them would lie.
@
@
