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.
She freezes.
Oh she becomes as still as the statue beside her. Their eyes are mirror suns. One set looks up into the sunlight and the other is trained upon the strangeling boy. Leonidas pauses, as if waiting for the statue to turn her stone head and fix those gleaming, mineral eyes upon him. But they do not. Only the girl gilds him, binds him up in the innocence of her gaze.
Her stare is too long. Time means nothing to her, yet it is everything to him. He feels its length, how she loses her grip upon it. It slows as if his twin is here, pale as the white-smudge clouds, arresting the turning of the world, slowing the passage of the sun. Seconds become minutes. Leonidas is not made to be slow. He rushed into a still world, his time magic reaching out to everything and whispering to it, faster, faster. It stirs now, unsettled, uneasy with how she holds him still within the bright of her lovely, wide eyes. Flowers bloom at their feet, urged on by his magic. Grasses rise, flourishing at his hand, to tickle at their knees and abdomens. Nearby, leaves turn gold and orange and brown upon a tree and fall away like autumn has come too soon.
But it is all just a spell. It is how Dearest holds this time-boy in her eyes and makes him feel like all is slow, slow, slow. Maybe he should know better, but he does not. He may be a man so very soon, yet this moment reminds him that he is just a boy, immortal, though not yet wise.
And then the spell is broken. The girl is blinking, turning back to her mother and the startled, grown flowers, stop their aging. They sway upon the cusp of turning and wilting in anticipation of a season that is still so many weeks away. Upon Dearest’s cheeks Leonidas sees the bloom of colour, a sweep of red as bright as sweet as a raspberry blush. It is a twin to his own, which was another fuel to his magic as it sped up the lifespan of the grasses and leaves between them. Leonidas gazes at her like a rabbit and she the wolf that holds acceptance in her jaws. But she does not reject nor reprimand him and slow, cautious as a fox he steps closer when she looks back upon her mother’s statue.
His eyes flit to its beautiful detail, the carving fine and magical. What would he give to see one of his mother or father? It might remind him of their bodies for already their memory is a fading smudge, their colour leached, their voices unrecognisable.
Enchanted, Leonidas steps slowly closer to the statue. Golden feathers fall from him like autumn leaves. They skitter across the grasses and drift out, over the edge of the island and off into the playing crests of the sea. He pays them no heed as he reaches out to touch the cool of her mother’s neck. It is not soft nor warm as a mother should be - he remembers that, at least. Slowly he tucks his chin back into his breast and huffs a soft sigh, lost to the salt-sea air. “She sounds wonderful.” The orphan boy says with a grin.
Beneath the thick sway of his lashes he watches as she asks him if he is a guide. His head tilts, canine, soft puzzlement darkening in his elixir eyes. “No. I am no guide. I just come here to find my parents. I was born here and they left me here. Each season it takes on a new form and i come back to see if they have returned…”
For once there is no sadness, for once his wings do not flare as if he needs to flee and hide amidst the wilds of the wood. “This is the season of statues. Those we know and those we do not…But i do not know why it shows your mother.”
And this might be the most he has spoken in so long. But his voice is low and rich and new in its adult, masculine tone. He immerses himself within the new cadence of his voice, growing, evolving. “Are you pleased to see her?”
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