I am not like any ordinary world
The golden boy swims to the bank, his golden hair a shock of wealth upon the silver of the water. Pan, the ivory child, is also beside him. Together they climb upon the bank. Leonidas’ limbs are trembling, his mind is full of yawning black and galaxies held between divine tooth and jaw. His chin tips up as his eyes look up into the blue above them and wonders of the stars at night and the black between them. Was that just the inside of a monster-god?
When his chin tips down at last, it is to see the other boy fleeing. Leonidas watches him go as silver drips off the edges of his ribs. Oh, he thinks, at what point was the strange island’s magic too much? For him it was when the glass did not break and his lungs cried out in desperation. They were ready to gasp and fill themselves up with water, just in the slightest hope that it might have been air instead. And when he thought he could hold off their instinct no longer, the glass broke, spilling them out into open air and a flowing river. The island did not want him dead. Not yet. Not yet.
The wildwood boy stands drenched and a lone upon the bank and gazes down the way that they had come. There is no trace of volcanos or gods, nor windows into rooms filled up with water. There is nothing at all but the taste of strange magic, lingering like metal upon his tongue.
Leonidas turns, alone, as ever, toward the bone bridge and the mainland beyond.
@Pan
