some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
He waits for her to join him, standing a few trees away where the woodland begins to stretch away and beckon the young horses with it. It seems like an age to Leonidas as he stands pausing to see if she will indeed follow. He does not doubt that she will, but ah, as the Swamp remains victim to her silence, now Leonidas has committed himself to a moment beneath the energy of the storm, he ripples with electricity. He feels the power in the air, the crackle of the afternoon rousing, wild and bright.
The air trembles as he watches her move to him and the thunder has not even yet reached them. Though the boy reckons he can hear it, like a giant’s groan, a thundering stampede out in the canyons, heard all through Novus as a dull roar. The girl reaches him, lovely in her strangeness and he greets her with a wild smile before he leaps into the brush.
They run, no, they fly, over root and brush and branch. Leaves bat playfully at the children as they pass. The woodland is beckoning winter in but first she rushes the golden children through complimenting their coats with bronzes and browns and crimson reds.
Leonidas runs fleet footed, always peeing back for her, waiting, waiting and then on and on faster and faster until he strides mirror his and their wings become unnecessary for the way they fly. As they run he tries to teach her, to show her how to be quiet, silent as they run, but all he can think is how she sounds like a singing sword and time, endless Time. He knows about time and he laughs as he thinks of it. In answer snowdrops spring out of the ground, waiting for the snow that is still many days away.
But then, then they burst out of the trees into a meadow whose grasses are dark, dark green. Her flowers glow beautiful and rich caught by the fleeing sun and darkened by the chasing storm. The sky is iron grey and yet darker, darker to where the storm broods and angers and grows restless, restless. The cool wind blows and rain tips out of the clouds. It falls like a sheet upon the boy, the girl.
He turns back to her, his steps jaunty his skin twitching, his limbs as restless as the sea over the edge of the Praistigia Cliffs. It comes, it comes, he knows. She stands still strange and still so lovely. The rain falls to greet her, momentarily soft, before it falls heavier, heavier. A cloud of rain settles across the meadow, mixed by the cool winds. It swirls, it dances and beneath his drenched lashes (and the droplets that tumble from his lashes to the arch of his cheek) he watches her. For so long it is only she leonidas watches. The boy knows storms, he has slept beneath them, fled from their wrath, danced in their rains, let its ire bleach his own… but this girl… she stands and smiles and her eyes are filled with new awe. She watches the storm as a newborn might.
The weather does not disappoint her. Lightning splits the sky, the clouds cleave into two and light spills suddenly brilliant. In its bright, brief light leonidas thinks he might see all the world and the universe too. He wonders of his family, those people he thinks of infrequently - too afraid, too afraid… Where are they now? Does his mother still run beneath the storms? Does she laugh too?
Nicnevin glints like a gilded sword beneath the storm, the electricity is as a tuning fork upon her body. She rings and the note is beautiful and strange. It rings on and on and on and Time whispers in leonidas’ ears. It reminds him how she is different. She asks if it is rain that drecnhes their skin. He goes to her and through the water that gathers on his lips he tells her, “yes.” And laughs again, still elvin and reckless as any wild boy is. A second bolt splits the sky and alert, poised he looks to her and calls suddenly, “Run!”
He has seen her wings. The boy knows they reach even further than his. The wind calls to them and he answers, leaping into the air as his wings unfurl, mahogany and gold down feathers pressing upon the wind, carrying him up, up. He twists back to her and calls her into the sky, to fly with the lightning and a boy, reckless and free.
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