I am not like any ordinary world
i wasn’t sure you would come.
Of course he would. Leonidas does not think there is anything that could have kept him from coming. Not the fallen trunk in the deep of his woodland retreat, not the tangle of the brushes that wrap about his ankles, not the ominous open mouth of the cave, nor the winding dark, dank veins of the underground cave system.
Of course he would, when she waits for him beside the lake, lit by the glow led glow of underground life. Above them, upon the cavern ceiling the water’s reflection ripples in time with his heartbeat. He hears her rising, echoing around him in a chorus that would be swallowed by a wood, if there was any life here, but them and that which glows in the water.
Maret is hesitant when she steps to him, but the wildling boy is not. He moves to her, a piece of woodland escaped underground. He might seem strange here, with the leaves tangled into his mane, twigs and bones and flowers and herbs. They all find a haphazard place upon his body, within his hair. Leonidas is a part of his wild wood come to life and it moves to her, this girl of midnight black and moonlight white, trimmed with golden charms.
She dreams like him. He knows. He has seen her, in the briefest moment before she heard him, her eyes drawn out across the water, her chin wistfully resting upon her knees. What is he more eager to draw from her? The stories upon her page or the ones she keeps behind her eyes, locked behind her lips? Leonidas does not know; he cannot decide. But he holds for a moment over her notebook with its well loved and worn leaves and then into her eyes.
Yet the wildling boy is not made to be still for so long. His lips tip into their feral grin and he reaches for her, to tug her out into the water and wash from them everything from the world above until there is nothing but the sound of them filling every corner of their lake’s cave.
The water welcomes him, lights his stomach with bright blue light, highlights the sharper, more manly lines of his face. But oh, his grin is boyish and wicked. He turns back to her, splashing, laughing, drenching the gilded feathers of his wings until they are useless. There is no need for flying down here, in the hidden, secret corners of Novus’ belly.
He waits for her, bright and wicked and wild and beckons her, less a monarch of the wood than an elven king, made for the magic of places like this.
@Maret
