He’s not been sleeping well, these past few weeks. A wyvern stalks his dreams, following him through each dark twist of a maze where the hedges fade into row upon row of books, and both their feet echo on the library floors. At the edges of his vision there are licks of flame, but they are never there when he turns to look. Somewhere ahead of him, he knows, is the wiseman, but the wiseman will not help him - only pose a riddle, and laugh when he can’t answer. Charlemagne wakes to the sound of that laughing when the light is still feeble and silver. He wakes alone, as he has every morning since arriving to the Dawn Court, and he stretches and shakes the tension out and slips as quiet as he can toward the courtyard and the fields. He likes seeing the sun come up (as surely most of them do) - for him it’s a reassurance. He is safe here, even if he is not…not quite happy. Even so, hope builds in him as he takes in the proud walls, the careful placement of each stone in the courtyard, the way the dawn washes it all in gold. It’s clear this place was built with sunrise in mind, made to welcome it. He’s nearly to the gates when he hears the first good morning, and something about the voice is naggingly familiar, but it’s muffled by distance. It’s not until he, like Ipomoea, rounds a turn and sees her that he realizes why he knows the voice. It’s her. The girl with the dagger, the girl with the grinning insults. Florentine, the paint sage cries, quite happily, just as Charlemagne opens his mouth to say something far less welcoming. The unicorn shuts it again and huffs a breath, unsure how he feels about the pegasus being greeted so terribly fondly. That, and wasn’t Florentine the name that Pan had mentioned, almost reverently? Clearly the experiences others had had with her differed quite a bit from his own. His first impulse is to turn away, but he doesn’t allow himself to; he is not a coward, he is not, he is not. He survived the maze, survived the dragon, survived the desert and Bexley. He would survive a second encounter with the girl. Instead of saying anything, the young stallion only watches her from across the courtyard, neck arched and expression as brooding as he could make it. @ |
image © unsplash
