I am not like any ordinary world
She emerges from the wood like a dancer. The child is nimble upon her feet, the ground barely knows of her passing as her feet carry her whisper light through the forest.
When she stops, her sides are heaving, her golden eyes bright and wide and full like the sun. The girl is black and gold: bone striped with night and limned with gold. He is the woodland and yet she is the stars and the black and first rays of dawn.
Her gold feet at last sing as the girl steps upon the stone and such a noise beckons him forward from the darkness of his cave. Leonidas moves out into the sunlight that dances across the tines of his antlers as she had through the woodland.
His question gives her pause and she hesitates, fine and curious as a fawn before she steps toward him and into the shadows of his cave. Yes, she says and the wild wood boy smiles in answer. He follows her like a moth to the flame that leads him deeper, deeper into the cave.
“Are you a faerie?” he asks as he studies her, her fine bones and the smile that the cave still sings of with bells and chimes. Adventurous faeries are his favourite kind of children. Leonidas moves to stand beside her, they are small before the great maw of the cave that reaches deeper into the earth.
“Can you?” He asks of her again when she leans into the darkness and vows that she can keep his secrets. He studies her face, the way his gold and hers glow like candle flames, illuminating their bodies. The children are fireflies caught in an endless night and Leo takes a step forward mysteries curling his mahogany lips as he reaches for her, beckoning her on with him into the dark.
“I will keep your secrets.” the boy says, though he need not. Twigs click together in his mane as the boy turns deeper into the cave. He hears only her breath, the brush of feathers and hair, the chink of her gilded hooves. “What secrets do you hope for? What secrets do you already have?” He whispers and does not know whether she is close to him or far as the darkness presses upon them like a shroud. His heart is a staccato within his chest and it beats ever faster as his wing reaches out for her as the tunnel reaches its deepest dark.
@Maret
