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.
Maybe when Leonidas has existed for thousands of years too, he will also think of shame and anger as fleeting things. But not now. Now he is a young boy, brimful with hormones that tip him towards adulthood. He stands upon the precipice tipping between adolescence and manhood. But this place is more than just a tipping point. It is a storm, swirling about him. Its waves are high and cruel, its clouds thick and moody. The boy feels himself snap between emotions with all the speed and ferocity of lightning finding the earth. It is what brings him to stand, tall and proud and stretched with vengeance.
Such vengeance might warp him, if it did not suit the wildling boy so well. It darkens the gold of his leonine gaze until it burns like lava. It arches his muscled neck until he is more god than boy. It turns his antlers from beautiful crown into gilded weapon.
His lips curl into a snarl and as he steps forward, it is with the prowl of a lion, the slink of a cheetah. The monster yawns and Leonidas’ gaze skip, skip, skips from one long, sharp tooth onto the next. Each tooth gleams like a bone sword in the lazy post-storm light.
A drink is a mundane offering from a man who screamed at his bonded and pulled it back mere moments before it ripped a fae-boy open. Leonidas stands and wonders what art the scars would have made upon his skin - if he had ever survived it at all.
But it is not himself that Leonidas is here to avenge. Neither is it a drink of water for his parched throat. “I do not want any of your charity,” the wildling snarls. He needs nothing from this man except an opportunity for vengeance. Bold as a king before a mere pest, Leonidas stalks toward the beast and lowers his head until his tines point as wicked claws and daggers at the raptor. “I want only a fair fight.” Just the opportunity to pour every ounce of his magic into the beast and watch it age and crumble before its time. A just cause, the wild-wood boy thinks, for the sister he lost that night.
@Pravda
