I am not like any ordinary world
The island whispers to the boy as he walks through it. His heart clatters behind his ribs in nervousness, in quiet delight. His connection to this place lies in the core of it. He remembers still when time stood still here, how he grew up used to a world that did not move, but stayed so utterly still.
Leonidas listens to the islands whispering, he lets it push him, chase him, tug him this way and that. The island magic leads him to the castle, with its many strange rooms and unearthly magic. There is nothing normal here, there is no woodland place in which to rest his head. Yet, as much as the grass and the trees are home, so too is this strange, curious island.
In fact the islands grip upon him sinks deeper within the boy than his love for the wilderness of Novus. This island is bound to him, and he is bound by it. Its magic sits deep within the threads that tie him together, that keep his heart beating.
Through room after strange room, Leonidas wanders. He does not question the strangeness, not even when he too steps into a sunken room filled with water. His wings flare, his feathers useless in the water. But that is the strangeness of magic, is it not? The water slicks off his feathers as if he were a waterbird. Leonidas swims, elegant, curious and breathing. How he breathes is another mystery the boy thinks nothing of. Instead, slowly, carefully he watches his surroundings and lets the tide push him from room to room.
Until, suddenly, the water pushes him up, up towards the surface, where a ceiling should be but only light gleams as if it is the sky. He emerges, dry from the water and is lifted up, up, up until the water turns solid and dry beneath his feet. There, before him, a young boy stands, as if he has been waiting all this time. Leonidas’ skull tilts and down his long dark nose he gazes at the boy, “Do you not let the island tell you where to go?” The elder boy asks, curious.
Leonidas’ magic tugs him, directs him on to the next door, down the hall of slick black glass and doors that yawn open onto dying suns. The wild-wood boy walks to the appointed door and nudges it open. A universe held fast within a room. It claws at the walls, it sinks for an eternity down beyond the floor, and yet the room contains it, holds it fast. It bleeds like ink, it splatters itself with stars like white paint. Galaxies are icing smudges across its black, endless ink. The wild-wood boy looks to Pan and thinks only of his mother as he steps into the room and tumbles, down, down, down past stars and moons and planets and down, down to where the floor rises to meet him and never, ever touches his feet.
@Pan
