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 knows when she begins to follow him. Leonidas has spent a year as a boy within the dangerous grasp of nature. She taught him swiftly how to learn when he was being hunted. Now he feels that shiver up his spine when he hears the way the foliage whispers as feet step over leaves and branches yield to passing limbs.
The child whispers after him. In the shadowed light of the swamp she is little more than shadow dappled in moonlight, her small horn a shard of bone. The older boy pauses and turns his head, just enough to see her slim, small, shadowed form and the gleam of her eye.
She is a dark and strange creature. Her presence is that of cool fingers upon his spine, cold like death. Her small strides are lupine, even in spite of her too-long limbs that pick their spidery way through the underbrush. The boy walks, slowly meandering, leading her, guiding her deeper into the swamp until it opens out into a clearing he knows. The umbrella of trees part here and light seeps down. He had slept beneath the stars, their light a blanket to warm his chilled bones.
She is only a girl, barely more than a baby and Leonidas does not fear her, but all the same he has met a colt who tricked him and stole his life as if he were a fountain to be drunk dry. She is a small girl, but oh, she could be so much more than that.
Leonidas steps out into the clearing and turns to face her. “Welcome little wolf.” The boy breathes as he stands, bathed in light, his gold hair and feathers limned. He stands a king, a god within his clearing and watches the child come.
@Isolt <3
