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.
She does look already painted. Like marble. Yet a wild-wood boy has never seen polished marble like her skin. Instead he thinks of her as the rough-cut stones he finds in the deepest gulleys of the wood. Their faces are like marble two toned with dark or light veins cutting through. If Leonidas were an educated boy he would know the stones tell him of their age, of the landscape. But he does not. Instead he just studies their beauty and then leaves them where he found them - treasure for other eyes to find.
Wandering through the fires this night, before he finds the marble girl stood still as a statue, the boy is thinking of Maeve and Aspara who have made him yearn to step out of his forest home. He shies away from the licking flames that dance and spit and hiss dangerous and unpredictable. Leonidas loathes fire, he has seen it swallow a whole corner of a wood before. He ran from it with the woodland creatures. The feral boy does not know why they keep the fires here, why they dance and run between them as if celebrating their light. Fires are wild and dangerous things.
Yet their light upon the gold of him is spectacular. The boy gleams like a god like a forest ablaze in autumn colours. He moves regal as a stag and dangerous as a cat. He skitters like a doe around the flames and yet turns into a fox as he slinks cunningly through the crowds, barely seen, unnoticed. The smell of smoke and city things cling to his skin and he shudders. The smell of sweet treats and hot drinks fill his nose and he turns to look at the stalls. Their scent is strange, unnatural for a boy used to staining his lips with the fruits of the wild. He has never had cooked food before.
Turning from the stalls, it is then that he sees the girl, still, statuesque. She is young and small and slim. It is only then he realises how much he has grown. Yet he moves to her, princely, wildly. Her horns, his antlers share the same gold, but that is where they end. Her body is white and black, silver and gold. One wing black, one wing gold. He remembers a twin, a child whose limbs tangled with his in the womb. She was white and gold to his near black and gold.
The boy comes to the white and gold side of this marble girl. He wants to press his muzzle into her neck and breathe her skin and fall into memories as he whispers sister against her skin. But this girl is not his blood, no matter her gold, no matter her ivory. Instead he slips out of the darkness and looks at her from beneath his thick lashes, heavy with smoke and reminiscence and gazes at her with pain and loss and a want she cannot right. He knows it, but he stands beside her and whispers so very nearly broken - his adolescent voice shattering over the octaves-, “Will you come to the woods with me?” Away from the fire. Away from the noise. For that is where is his peace is, but where loneliness grows as choking as the roots she imagines will rise up and kill her. That loneliness has sent this strangeling boy out into the midst of a strange and loud festival. He hopes to shed his loneliness here and bring a friend back to the woodland with him.
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