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 stands in a lake of rippling gold. His hair seems dipped into the sunrise sea of tulip flowers. The bright of the petals turn the bark-deep hue of his skin as dark as a silhouette.
He does not know the girl approaches, not when his eyes are closed and his chin upturned to the sky. His antlers arch back, pointing directly up to the sky and down, down toward his spine. He could have stood here, bathing in the warm gold of the flowers for an eternity. He is more nymph than colt. More wild boy than the smartly presented children who pass by him.
They watch, those children, with their eyes wide open. They recognise a feral boy when they see one. The clues are there in the dirt upon his body, the starlight tan of a thousand sleeps spend beneath the night sky and the foliage that twines through the brace of his antlers. Leonidas is not merely a feral boy of the woods, he is the woods and he stands as still as regal as an oak in the heart of the meadow.
A child speaks and the boy opens his eyes. His gaze tumbles out of the sky and down to her. Oh. She is so like them, with her delicate plaits and the flower woven into her hair. Warmly he gazes at her and looks down beneath his lashes to the upturned face of the tulip she seeks. It sways for them, keen to be plucked. Are you really? The wild-wood boy wants to ask it. Do you know what it means?
If the flower knows, it does not care, for still it sways, hopeful. Leonidas leans down and plucks the flower out of the earth, it comes, rising in his grasp. It seems brighter now, the glow of a sunrise. The girl is watching him, her eyes a shade of blue he has never seen before. He has no name for it, has never seen it in the wild-wood. Maybe it is a deep sea-hue. His breath flutters and he reaches out, but does not wait for her to take it. He knows what Maeve would like, to have the flower woven into her hair. Is this girl the same? The colt wonders as his brow furrows with the effort of weaving her flaxen hair around the stem. When he stands back the flower is nestled against her neck, bright and gleaming.
“It suits you.” Leonidas says, high like a boy. He has no hope that it will last. He is too much a man tonight.
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