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.
The wildling girl smells of smoke and sweet things he does not find in the woods. He breathes her in, curious. His touch is only momentary, a grateful press of welcoming lips. There is nothing here that brought him any comfort or familiarity, until he saw the curve of her wings, the colour of her skin. He had seen her body illuminated by lightning, shadowed by an iron sky and made hazy by the humid climate of the swamps. She was easy to pick out amidst the crowds here and he went to her, little more than metal caught within the magnet of her copper skin.
She had been watching the dancers, even before he reached her. There was a delighted gleam in her eye. It was a sharp look, full of challenge. Yet when Leonidas looks to the ice and those who dance and fall and laugh upon it, he feels no element of her joy. Only a nervous distaste sweeps itself through his veins. He hopes his partner is not so keen to take to the ice as this wildling girl seems to be.
“Yes.” The boy says somberly when she asks if he is to meet another. The wildwood boy lifts his invite, its careful artful scrawl of words gleaming silver and beautiful beneath the moonlight. “Nicnevin,” The name falls from his lips, boldly, clearly, confidently, as if he had not spent a whole afternoon repeating it until it fell seamlessly from his tongue. Leonidas gives no indication that the invitation is illegible to him. Instead he simply folds it away, until later, when he will hold it again and wonder what part of those scrawling patterns make up the name, ‘Nicnevin’.
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