LYSANDER
He carries with him the smell of copper and salt and red rich iron - the smell of blood.
Lysander is not a creature made for winter, and it is as if the new antlers he wears itch and bleed in lament. His love is for places where sun and salt conspire to curl his dark hair, and the vineyards grow long and languid on sleepy golden slopes. It is for the tang of summer fish and the darkly sweet smell of growing things, unfolding, loosening, opening up to heat and light.
This place has wind that bites and moans and leans, and he shivers against his will. In the Rift he might fashion himself a bower of firs - or he might simply keep walking, because nothing lingered in the rift lands for long, least of all seasons. Here there is little he can do but keep moving, seeking scant shelter among a copse of trees.
He pauses in a stand of aspen, bold bone-white and grave-black, and relieves himself with rubbing each arch of antler against a trunk. The ensuing scraping sounds and momentary relief keep him from noticing that the birds have fallen to quiet. Only when he pauses does he note their absence; he steps back, black-lined ears turning, green eyes canny.
And then, above him, a glimpse of gold among bare black limbs. The stallion tilts his head back, arching those ragged, bleeding antlers, and his dark mouth shapes a grin. It takes a second - two - of watching, but he is already sure. The last time he saw those wings, they hadn’t quite been strong enough to carry her.
Moving swiftly, now, he picks his way out from the thin scrub at the edge of the trees, loping by the time he hits the winter-brown grasses that thrust up through snow. She circles like an eagle; when the sun catches her right he can almost see the blossoms in her hair.
Lysander draws to a halt with a toss of his head, dark hooves flinging snow. Then he whistles, a high, clear note, and waits to see if this grown Florentine is as curious a creature as the girl he’d seen just a few weeks ago.
@Florentine
Lysander is not a creature made for winter, and it is as if the new antlers he wears itch and bleed in lament. His love is for places where sun and salt conspire to curl his dark hair, and the vineyards grow long and languid on sleepy golden slopes. It is for the tang of summer fish and the darkly sweet smell of growing things, unfolding, loosening, opening up to heat and light.
This place has wind that bites and moans and leans, and he shivers against his will. In the Rift he might fashion himself a bower of firs - or he might simply keep walking, because nothing lingered in the rift lands for long, least of all seasons. Here there is little he can do but keep moving, seeking scant shelter among a copse of trees.
He pauses in a stand of aspen, bold bone-white and grave-black, and relieves himself with rubbing each arch of antler against a trunk. The ensuing scraping sounds and momentary relief keep him from noticing that the birds have fallen to quiet. Only when he pauses does he note their absence; he steps back, black-lined ears turning, green eyes canny.
And then, above him, a glimpse of gold among bare black limbs. The stallion tilts his head back, arching those ragged, bleeding antlers, and his dark mouth shapes a grin. It takes a second - two - of watching, but he is already sure. The last time he saw those wings, they hadn’t quite been strong enough to carry her.
Moving swiftly, now, he picks his way out from the thin scrub at the edge of the trees, loping by the time he hits the winter-brown grasses that thrust up through snow. She circles like an eagle; when the sun catches her right he can almost see the blossoms in her hair.
Lysander draws to a halt with a toss of his head, dark hooves flinging snow. Then he whistles, a high, clear note, and waits to see if this grown Florentine is as curious a creature as the girl he’d seen just a few weeks ago.
@
Oh, it’s a bad, bad ritual
Oh, but it calms me down
