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 boy watches the smoke drift over the trees, thick and dark and ominous. Its body of twisting tendrils carrying dying embers, bright as spots of crimson stars.
The crying laughter of children has filled the night, the sounds of a thousand footsteps trudging through the spring wood and out into the meadow has roused the boy from his early evening revelry. He watches, crouched atop a rock, his gleaming gold dimmed by his cautious demeanour. His is nearly a shadow, his dark gold burning like amber.
Leonidas’ ears twitch as more city dwellers tredge through his wilderness home. They laugh and they sing and children dance like members of a tribe, their faces painted. It is a haunting spectacle and yet an air of revelry crackles like electricity setting his nerves alight with excitement.
None notice the forest boy atop his rock. He has long ago learned how to fade into his woodland home. Atop his antlers new vines weave and spring flowers shine, pale as a blush in the moonlight. They are all tangled through the tines, strung like woodland garlands. The boy does not know how much he looks like his estranged father then, how the earth whispers upon his skin of a father that was once a god of the earth. Has Leonidas’ father returned to his divine seat, wherever he may be? His son’s skin smells of the budding shoots and herbs he slept on the night before. The boy is content here, alone, in the wilds of his heritage.
In his golden eyes is reflected the myriad hues of the bonfires that shine their light into the edge of the wood. They blaze through all the colours of the rainbow, through every colour Leonidas has seen in the wood. He knows such colours belong there and not in flames like this. What strange magic becomes these blazing fires?
He leaps from his rock like a stag, he lands nimble as the fae. He rises from his crouch like a princeling of his woodland home. But he runs like a king, like a monarch of the glen intent on finding out what strange firelight kisses her myriad hues along the edge of his wood.
Leonidas slows as his trees thin, as the meadow stretches out and his eyes are met with festival joy. Children run screaming, racing between the fires that burn and spit and spark their different colours. Adults talk and laugh and hug and kiss - he blushes and looks away and wonders why his stomach twists and he feels awkward. He thinks of Aspara. His blush deepens, there are fireflies in his belly.
Then, a voice, small and close and familiar. A small shadow steps close and firelight gleams over the white of her markings. She calls his name, her voice small and tremulous, like the bleat of a lamb. Leonidas slinks out of the wood, a stag, a fox. He draws near to Maeve and smiles as he presses his muzzle into her small neck.
And then the wild-wood boy realises what is different about her this night. “Phoenix,” he whispers, “where are your ribbons?” The boy says nothing as he watches her body curve away from the flames, her eyes looking anywhere but there.
It’s okay, Maeve. He longs to say. They scare me too. And still he remembers the running of the flames in the height of summer, how he ran from them through the wood. How the corner of the wood was lost to ash and charred wood.
@Maeve
