Mist clung to the plains as a boy breathed in the scent of his once-home.
Not so much a boy now, not really; he had grown in the two years he had been gone, filling out a bit along his shoulders and chest. The childlike lankiness that had always marked him separate remained, though, and he supposed that age would never change what had been forged in blood. Legs tucked tight to a mahogany abdomen while wide feathered wings held him aloft, Raglan soared over the swiftly cooling earth. A cloudless sky had greeted him, as if the heavens themselves had bid him look — just look; Denocte still stands, the bonfires still burn, the citizens still dance to the tune of the stars.
See? Murmured the loving voice of Night Court, of freedom and woodsmoke and dirt-filled beginnings, I have survived, just as I always have. Fire and war are no contest for my people, for your people.
And yet, he flew on.
Maybe it made him weak, made him a coward — Gods knew that he had been so before, and he would be so again before the darkness took him. Raglan had long ago come to terms with the guilt associated in his flight from Novus, but that did not mean that he could just alight within his people’s capitol. Indeed, the boy’s heart was far too fragile a thing for such a venture.
And so, he flew on.
A setting sun limned the stallion’s deep red wings in flame, ushering his brilliant silhouette toward the Sideralis where he sought to land. As pale hoof pressed to soft, grass blanketed earth, Raglan felt an exhalation that reached down into his very bones. Nearly half of his life had been spent away from his home; this brilliant, wild motherland whose streets had sung him to sleep between cobbles and castles. His returning was silent and careful and calm, not at all what he had imagined, but just what he had prayed for.
Would that he could shake the sensation of being a stranger.
