I am not like any ordinary world
As Leonidas watches his sister dance, switching eerily from filly to colt and back again, he never thinks that he and Aspara would become like her, like it. With skin like gossamer, little more than a breath in the air, a strange mist his tines pass through. The child swirls where he strikes, his sister disappearing as readily as smoke in the breeze. When the silver mist reforms it is less Aster and more strangling colt.
More and more spirits bloom out of the darkness, bright with their firefly light. Their wings press upon his cheeks, his throat his shoulders. He feels the ring of them upon the tines of his antlers. It sings like he thinks stars might. Yet the noise echoes strangely, wrongly. He returns to Aspara, to the sound of their horns meeting which is more right, more perfect than the wrong, doppelganger noise of firefly wings upon his tines.
The child is soundless as it dances through the descending mist. It is a tribal dance, an ancient rollick abound with fetid magic. The wild-wood boy tastes it upon the air, he can almost feel a torn veil sigh its ragged pieces against him as it passes over. The mists entomb them, until their only world is the spot where they stand, a moonlight girl and a sunbright boy trapped within a deathless orb.
But their colour is fading. The glow of his antlers no longer outshines the fireflies. The spirits’ flesh becomes less ghostly and far more solid. His gaze snags onto Aspara, he expects to drown in blue, but her eyes are pale. She is a phantom beside him, her skin thin, thin, thin. Fear tangles up into his throat but already Aster is turning and fleeing. The words of the colt, who had smiled so brightly as he was rewarded with the chance to live again, chase at their heels.
It happens so fast, even as he runs. His magic stirs with his adrenaline. Faster, faster! it cries out through his every thread of existence. Every part of Leonidas was made to make time turn faster and the spirit magic eats away at his body. He and Aspara no longer run but float through the wood. He cannot feel his limbs. ”Hurry!” The boy implores his city girl as he presses his teeth to her flank urging her, begging her, quicker, quicker!.
What would he give to hear the way she once crashed through the brush? He yearns to drown himself in the dirty scents of the city that clung to her skin. Now Aspara makes no sound and there is no scent about her fading body. She is disappearing like snow beneath the sun.
When she leads him into the river, Apsara is little more than a phantom girl. Her skin pearlescent and translucent. Leonidas can see the midnight sky upon the mirrored surface of the water through her skin. A strangled cry escapes him at the sight of her. Only then does he realise the water around him does not ripple. He does not feel the heat or the cool of its touch. He does not feel the water at all.
Frantic, he reaches for Aspara, clutching for her as he had once clutched the air where his family had disappeared into another world. He felt nothing of them then, he feels nothing of Aspara now.
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