I am not like any ordinary world
He watches the man that rolls within the grass. Mud churns up, rubbing deep into his skin. The earth smells of metal and rain though the skies above are clear like glass. Through it the universe lays herself out in all her splendour.
How many nights had Leonidas and his sister slept beneath this endless sky? How many nights had he watched the moon like this man does? The forest boy steps out from his cover of trees. He is mud covered too - as all small boys should be. But his hair is tangled, leaves and twigs and stones and forest trinkets hanging from within it. It is unclear whether they were intentionally woven there or if time just wove his hair around them until they are as much a part of him as the gold of his mane.
Slim and lithe the boy moves along the bank, following the bend of the river. He reaches the man’s side, where he lies in the grass and looks up, up, up. Leo lays down beside him, a small sun boy - a once prince of Terrastella and smiles at the moon. They sit and lie together this man and this boy and for a long moment Leonidas says nothing, until, ‘Are those white things other worlds?” He says of the stars that twinkle and seem to laugh like the man had been just moments before.
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