some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
This day Leonidas is brave and bold and steady as a monarch of his glen. From beneath thick black lashes (dusted with pollen) he watches the younger boy. Nothing could have prepared the orphan boy for the flash or the bang. It is over and gone before the elder child has even reacted, but he startles as all good wild thing do. He is off the ledge, swooping back, his wings flared wide, his hair a tangle in the open breeze. He snorts low and wary and watches the younger boy’s tattoos glow with crimson emotion. The child’s ire is as fleeting as his small explosion and only when he yelps, small and young and vulnerable, does Leonidas tip his wings with grace and drift in to step back upon the ledge as nimble as a fae-boy.like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
The orphan’s smile is gone in the wake of the other boy’s ire. But it returns, a delicate, mysterious whisper of what his smile had once been. His head tilts wild and avian as he watches the child cling to the cliffside, its shadow turning his body darker with its embrace. How was he smiling, indeed? “Because you are not in any danger.” The older boy chimes with a voice of whispering leaves believing his words to be as true and obvious as the sun within the sky. “I will catch you if you fall, you will not even dash your foot upon a rock. But I bet you can fly more than you think, little hawk. Between you and I you will not be hurt.” He thinks of the fledglings he has seen. The hawklings that tumble out of their nests and spread their young, untried wings, coasting farther on their undeveloped feathers than Leonidas ever thought possible.
Leonidas gazes at the boy and realises that this is the first boy-child he has ever met. He feels a kindred bond bloom within his breast, his identity. How many times had he watched the city from the protection of the wilds embrace and seen how the children played, boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls. This feral orphan has grown into his loneliness as readily as a fox, but it was in those watchful moments seeing children play that made his heart feel something strange - less than complete.
And yet, already this boy he has found is outraged with his smile, his delight. Leonidas blinks slowly, hopefully and steps closer, his proud antlers reaching for the sky. Their ledge is small and the boy climbs and the rocks fall. The sea swallows the tumbling pieces but nature’s boy pays not attention to their ill-fate. Instead he smiles again as the boy climbs. That grin is a wild, mysterious thing, better suited to thickets and glens, things of the untouchable wild. Leonidas is still such untouchable wild.
Static crackles across the climbing boy’s coat, its sparks gleam excitedly in Leonidas’ eyes - flares across twin suns. Aeneas (this hawking boy Leonidas has no name for yet), looks to him and that gaze is like a clutch, as if Leonidas is the cliff, the safety to cling to. The boy slinks forward, graceful and silent and nearly asks this hawkling boy, Will you climb or shall we drift? But then the child takes another step and Leonidas laughs encouragingly, “Yes.” Then takes to the air, hovering next to the boy and whispers keenly, “Here.” as he points to the next foothold. From above them the cliffside succumbs to time, months drift by in seconds and the rock wears in odd places. It succumbs to Leonidas’ magic and ages until footholds grow more pronounced out of the cliff. The elder boy gasps at the last, wearied but made wickedly proud at his achievement. It should be an easier climb from here.
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