let's be wildflowers
He likes listening to her, as she speaks. The sound of her voice is the same way the forest sounds, when the wind tousles the branches and sets the leaves to dancing. It sounds like something soft but strong, the sound of voice that could whisper and calm something wild, something that the rabbits and the deer and the cardinals would accept as their own.
And as she speaks, he’s looking up at the sky, what little of it he can see through the interlocked branches. Sunlight is filtering down through those broad leaves, tinged gold and green, dust motes spiraling through the air. It looks, for a moment, like so many fairies dancing through the air, flitting in and out of view.
“Viride used to be like that,” he says when she finishes, his voice as soft as a bird flying far overhead. His wings shift, pressing themselves tightly against his fetlocks.
“It used to cover most of Delumine, back when Novus was still young. And the people who lived in it were like you, like your people; they were a part of the forest, connected to its very roots.” He shifts his eyes from the trees to her, and there’s something brighter about his eyes now, but also something that seems perhaps a little bit more sad. “The history books say Illuster was only formed when part of the forest was cleared out, so that the early Court could build its home. And Viride was never able to recover from the loss of its heart.”
He thinks about that often now, the way the forest, the way the entire land must have looked back then. It had been a wilder place then; sometimes the trees still felt like something wild when he asked them to tell him a story. Sometimes they acquiesced, and told him of a time when the trees and the people lived together as one.
He smiles, as he looks at her, and nods his head for her to follow as he steps forward. The underbrush parts with a whisper before him, revealing a thin game trail that weaves between the blackberry bushes and the bluebells. His hooves dig into the soft soil.
“But for those who have the heart to look, there’s still plenty of magic to be found here between the trees.”
There’s a light bobbing in the distance, something small and gold, hovering at the edges of their vision. And just when she might turn to look it vanishes, but faint laughter seems to fill the forest when it does.
@Callynite
