His favorite thing about the forest has always been the moment it comes alive again.
Always, at first, it is silent as he passes beneath the boughs. Whether god or mortal his presence makes the birds fall silent and watchful, makes the foxes slink beneath tangled brush and the squirrels find their homes. He does not mind the feel of their eyes on him, creatures sly and small and watchful.
But after a time it stirs once more, like a strange beast of many parts that all rise as one from slumber.
The first thing is the sounds; the leaves rattle beneath small feet and claws, the wrens trill and warble. A flicker of motion, a flash of sunlight on a blue wing, and then everything is humming, every creature returning to the endless tasks of survival.
Lysander is at ease in this world now, his slim dark legs folded beneath him with sunlight dappling his back. His eyes are half-closed, lazy; when his head dips his antlers nod like bare branches in a breeze. He has come alone on a hunch - that he might find a fungus that is no remedy for a wound, for something far stranger.
Once he traveled worlds; now he could only pretend.
But before he does he dozes, half-lidded eyes and ears twisting like a wolf’s, aware despite his current peace. The wind sighs in the canopy above him, and Lysander sighs too, content.
And then he opens his eyes. For the world has fallen still again, no whippoorwill or quail or humming bee, and Lysander looks up when even the slanting sunlight vanishes. It is no cloud, no limb of thick green leaves, and his mortal heart shivers between its ribs like roots, for it is a mighty wingspan that has blotted out the sun, and his memory whispers to him monster.
Lysander rises to his cloven hooves, his throat curving like a buck’s as he looks up and up to where the pegasus circles and dips like a hunting eagle.
Like any other creature of the woods (predator and prey alike) he waits, fully still, to see what will come.
the divine beasts ' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
Veer is slow to land for the forest looks like a lush sea beneath his wings and trees and rocks and river seem like ants against the width and darkness of his shadow. Over and over he circles, lower and lower each rotation. The forest quiets beneath him, like the trees and animals have taken one last gulp and air of sunlight before the end comes for them. He loves the silence, loves that way that him and the wind are the only things that make any sound at all.
In that between place between fear and air, heartbeat and death, he thrives. Veer is made for edges, for the between, for all the things that sing through the blood like shards of glass. He has come for the things on the forest floor that can sing to this blood too, open up universes inside the perfect cave of his ribs beneath a sky of his skin.
When he lands he's not sure what to make of the almost-stag stallion who stands in the copse of silence where the thing that he has come from is. There's a moment where he pauses, wings not quite furled and hooves not quite on the sand that he can't decide which version of him he would rather be, which monster. The killing one or the lion-lazy one? Both want blood and both want their blood to sing like ichor.
Veer chooses.
He tucks his wings back with a dagger-sharp smile that belies the hooded sleepiness of his golden eyes, The sun glints on his golden edges until there's a halo of light around him when he passes between the tree shadows and draws closer to the other stallion. Sound doesn't return to the forest until he inhales instead of roars like a predator might.
“Are you waiting for someone?” The words sound almost too heavy to be as careless as they sound and his eyes seems too like amber to be completely friendly. Overhead a robin trills a song as if it's saying, there is no predator here, no danger. Only singing.
His gaze, dark green as thick undergrowth, watches without expression as the figure circles lower and lower, and something eases in his chest to see the darkness of that coat, the size of it. Does it make him a coward, his relief at not meeting the kelpie again? Perhaps he just wasn’t looking forward to upsetting the pattern of his day.
At any rate he only moves as the stallion prepares to land, taking first a step then two back to give the large male more room. Even so he can feel the little breeze from his wings, can almost taste sunlight and sand and gold on it. Lysander’s dark mouth shapes a smile.
It is no dagger to flash and match the edge of the stranger’s expression, but something sleepy and slow, curling and curious.
Lysander knows what it feels like, to have his veins sing with ichor. To bleed gold, so that each carved mark left a gilded line. And it is a want he shares now, in his way.
Slowly the forest relaxes again, slowly the rich green scents of it return, lapping up against the memory of heat and stone and sand. And Lysander’s gave never wavers from the stranger, so he sees when those languid amber eyes move briefly to the stalks and caps of the Panaeolus cinctulus, blooming like strange and unprepossessing flowers.
Because of this his smile does not waver at the stallion’s question, and he inclines the neat arch of his tines like branches dipping in the wind. “Apparently I was.” With a flick of his tail he at last turns away, stepping delicate as a doe to the patch of mushrooms, nosing at their caps as the birds sing again overhead.
“I thought this was a secret - which is only a good reminder about secrets, I suppose.” His gaze flicks again to the stranger’s, quick and bright as a fox’s, secretive and sharp.
“Shall we see if we can find where the gods have gone?” he says, with a strange and crooked grin, and eats of a mushroom, its cap cupped like offering hands.
the divine beasts ' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
Veer watches the other stallion move as nimbly as a doe. He listens to the way the stallion's hooves make no more sound on the loam than a sparrow's wings might make through a cloud. There is a sharpness in Veer's gaze, beneath his long and thick lashes. And for a moment he is no stag, no horse, no mere pegasus. He is a wildcat, an eagle clocked in a skin of silk and feathers and gold.
His voice is a secret of the sands and his teeth each seem an oasis when he smiles, moves closer and speaks. “Ah,” He says on a sigh, a whisper of a distant sand storm. “but this isn't a real secret.” When his opens his eyes and shakes off that sleepy facade, this revelation of him seems like the most secret thing in the forest.
“Only blood can keep a real secret.” His smile flashes and his chains jingle a tune that sounds almost jolly as he walks to the path of mushrooms. When he lowers to eat a single cap, there is in all his movements somethings that suggests he is as comfortable with opening universes inside him as he is tearing them out of others.
And if he takes a few more caps and tucks them between his feathers who is there to tell him 'no'? Who will bleed universes and secrets out of him?
His wings are louder than the birdsong as he beds down in the ferns and the moss (as if the whole forest has paused to watch him). In the moment before the cap opens up worlds inside him Veer chuckles and says, “Let us.” And the way he stretches out his wings seems to suggest hat he already knows where all the gods have gone, where they hide.
His smile says, not unlike a secret, they are here already. I ate them all.
All his smiles fade as the universes grow and roll inside him. The gods in his belly reach up their prayers in kisses along the knuckles of his spine. His organs turn gold and glittering and all the wealth of the world lives inside him.
Veer rolls back his head. He sighs and his chains fall in cascades over the arch of his neck and glow brighter than diamonds in the thin tendrils of sunlight that shift through the trees.
When he sighs all the gods sigh too, cracking all their joints in repose.
He knows about lions, too, and even a little bit about unicorns - he has no shortage of experiences with monsters. But most of all Lysander knows gods, and it is a god he thinks of as he watches Veer, as he feels the burn of the man’s eyes on his back.
All gold and want and blood; no fear and no humility. Violence like a blade sheathed in embroidered leather, beautiful and deadly and made to cut. The antlered stallion did not think that the bay’s grace was only ornamental.
Yet he does not fear, to turn his eyes away from the stranger. This is as sacred a ground as he knows, and besides, Lysander has never been the kind to fight. It is how he survived so long among stronger gods, hungrier for brighter things.
He only glances up when the stranger speaks of blood. Still he says nothing, only smiles in a way that says then there will be no secrets between us today. Lysander has not come to the forest to spill more of his ruby-red blood -
only to make it sing.
Oh, and it does! It takes some time (as all the best things do), but slowly the magic of it begins to unfold. Every color, every sound, is magnified; the forest is a symphony again, as it had been in his godhood. Even when it is quiet it is a cacophony; he thinks he can hear new leaves unfurling.
When the stranger beds down in the grass, he does not do the same; he sees universes not only within himself but everywhere. His curiosity is a whetted blade, sharp as the dark man’s smile. A cobweb discovered reaching between two ferns suspends dew like diamonds and he thinks of Isra, and sighs only enough to make the web tremble.
Sunlight filters down through the new-green canopy like spilling coins, like Zeus in a column of gold. There are gods everywhere, he thinks, if you only know to look - and oh, he misses his divinity then, for the things he might build in this moment.
But his wonder cannot be sated on the forest alone; he knows so many of its secrets already (has won them through blood). At last he turns back to the other man, steps near him with his head low and his eyes far away. Lysander bends his head near enough to blow a breath that stirs the other man’s dark hair, and watches the gleaming chain wink back at him as it moves beneath the dappled light.
“Tell me a thing you know,” he says, and his voice is lazy enough with a wine-thick ease to hide any edge in it. "That cost you dearly to learn."
the divine beasts ' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
The pathways of his body are gold and black, glitz and darkness, and when he lifts his eyes back to the trees and the moss all the world is made of him. Everything around him carries bits of him as if the whole forest bends to the wind of his feathers when he lifts them up and rustles them through the air just to hear how they sing. Each leaf on the ferns around him looks up and turns to glass until the earth around him is black and flecked with wealth.
It's better this way, he thinks, better that the world be made of gold and violence, instead of leaves that can burn and rot. He will never rot. This is knows as well as he knows wine and hate and blood.
And when he watches the other stallion come closer a little of the gold melts and turns back to a river of blood. Veer wonders at the shadows that hang between the stallion's antlers like oil. He wonders more at the way he can cast them both in more oil and shadows as he lifts his wings into the dapple sunlight.
The still sing like silk in a hot, summer breeze.
He can feel the stallion's breath. It whispers like ichor and rot between the strands of his mane. Of course it does not sing as his whole body does. Nor does it pause on an inhale like the forest around him. But it does burn a little and it does rise something that feels a little like violence, blood and gold to press like an itch under his skin.
“There is nothing in the world that would cost me dearly.” He watches each of his words and each of his breaths pour from between his teeth like fire-coated blades. Everything about him rises in a chorus, as if the world is paying and paying just to hold the shape of Veer inside of it. Something in the way he says no more on costs suggests that he will just take and take and take until the world is dead in fire.
“But for you, I think..” Veer pauses and lowers his feathers from the sunlight so that the world might be bright again. And in that pause he smiles and the look is as cruel as it is hot, hot, hot. “there are some things that are very dear.”
Veer knows the world is made of him and he knows the lack of violence and fury when he sees it.
Up and up spread the stranger’s wings and each feather holds a world. Each little shaft of light that breaks through the space between them is a new star, and he is nothing but a traveler, here to witness a thousand new beginnings, here to taste the wine of the air and leave a story behind with each drop of blood he sheds.
Lysander has seen worlds, and he will see more. The only secret ever truly kept from him is death.
So he wants to laugh at the gilded man’s answer, even as each of his words burns on the air and leaves a dare behind it. Lysander can hear the chorus, too - or maybe it is only the songbirds, oblivious to the worlds folding and unfolding below them.
“Yes,” he agrees, grinning. Lysander is not ashamed to admit it, or to think of lines of gold and a spill of lilac flowers as he does; he is not ashamed of anything. “It was boring when it wasn’t so. And I hate boring.” Had he once thought otherwise, when he was a god and the world was his to bend? Had he not spent his days searching for more, helping his followers out of their minds, looking for a way to be freed from his own?
And now, ah, and now - he could die at any moment. Twice he’s come close. And that feeling, adrenaline rush and blood-fade - oh, he has found it more addictive than any offering, any ambrosia.
At last he draws back again, with the sunlight washing over him, trying its best to chase away every darkness. But the stallion lowers his antlers, rubs one tine and another absently against his knee, remembers the catch-and-tear they had made in the kelpie’s ancient, ragged sail-cloth wings.
He does not think this man’s would feel the same - but he wonders. Lysander is always wondering.
And some of that curiosity is there in his laughing green eye when he glances like a jay into the hot gold iris of the stranger. There is only a little space between them; Veer’s scent and his own are still the strongest things he can smell. Around them the sky spins, dizzy, a kaleidoscope of leaves; he knows if he looked up it would instead feel like falling.
Easy enough to avoid - he doesn’t look up.
“Aren’t you bored? If there is nothing dear, then there is nothing to lose, and if there is nothing to lose then life is not a game at all.”
the divine beasts ' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '
Veer wonders what it is that makes each of the stranger's words coagulate in the air like blood and spoiled wine. Her wonders if it is a curse of plain bay horses with antlers on their heads to stand in a copse of trees and spew blood like rotten, oiled religion. Once again he's grateful for his wings and gold and his violence.
He is glad that he is a man to chew up worlds instead of ponder the meaning of them. There is blood rushing between his skin, fire between his flesh and fury beating a steady war-drum in his heart. Veer has all the things he needs.
Never is he bored, for each drink tastes a little different and each inch of flesh has to is a different musk to age on his tongue.
And oh! If he knew that death kept itself a secret from the stranger and that the reaper was nothing more than another drug to slow. If he knew he would have happily spread his wings to span the entire forest. Veer would have anointed the stranger in the religion of him
Instead he only watches him with a strange gaze that smolders and burns and looks a little heavy with pity. “If you found it boring you do not know how to live.” Veer lets his lips seem crueler and for a moment he could be a sun that's as frozen as a winter solstice moon. Even the hallucinogen running through is blood like acid can barely stem the brightness of how well 'he' knows how to live.
“I could teach you,” He says and it's wicked the way that his words don't coagulate like blood. Each of his syllables hangs between them like small suns-- hot, hot, hot. “If you're brave enough.” When he smiles he wonders if the spaces between look like plants or if they look like small, dark universes born of Veer.
And something in his gaze suggests that life isn't a game at all. Because if it is he has already won.
It has been a thousand years since Lysander was a young man, one who listened to the blood and ichor in his veins and did the things it requested of him - consumed, destroyed, rebuilt. He only just remembers what it was like; he has learned so many things since then (most of them taught by a girl with flowers in her hair, and by a unicorn once saved by the sea, and a handful of other mortal creatures with their lives like mayflies against the long unbroken line of his).
But he recognizes the look in the stranger’s eyes, however drugged they both are, however lazily they glance at each other. The gold-and-dark man is a lion, but Lysander is a fox, and he knows what runs through the minds and hearts and rushing blood of men.
So he is not bothered by the pity in the gaze that holds him then, the slow liquid of molten gold. Lysander is too old for jealousy, too content to feel threatened by the way the man assures him what he does and does not know.
He is near enough that if he wished, he could reach out and run a pale tine along each flight-feather on the stallion’s wings. He could strike him the way he was once struck, hunted like a stag in a midwinter forest, one bold blow against his poll. He thinks of the scar running along his side, thin silver, and the other ones that have joined it since that night. Oh, he knows how much living and dying have to do with one another.
At last he leans back, shakes his head and shoulders like a wolf beneath the filtered sunlight. “I’ve found there is a thin line between bravery and foolishness,” he says, and does not add which side he falls on (so often both). “But I do so love to learn.”
With a last grin, curling like a new fern and wicked as a blade of bone, Lysander turns away. Galaxies still spin around him, and the sounds of the forest are a quilt of noise, and the leaves whisper as he passes through, and when he is gone there is no sign he was ever there.
