For all its newness, the island does not scare him. He'd alighted here once--briefly--and quite obviously hadn't died. Elchanan has never known fear like he should, and besides, he arrives for the second time under cover of night, when he is always at his most comfortable; the kiss of the moon says it’s alright, it’s alright.
The wind is cool and easy, and it doesn’t take much effort for Elchanan to go soaring through it on outstretched wings. The cold ruffles his pale feathers and sinks into the bare places underneath, and a shiver rides up his spine as the salt of the sea rises upward and lowers the temperature another few degrees. It should not be this cold in spring, he thinks to himself with a modicum of concern, and then reminds himself that rules—seasonal, realistic, spiritual—don’t apply here, not in this world full of magic, not on an island whose only base is that magic.
From above it could almost be beautiful. The clumps of dark, glossy jungle trees shine bright-silver where the moon touches them and true black where it doesn’t, wafting the clean, pure smell of leaves and dirt up into the air. The bone-white sand ripples in shades of cream and ivory against the blue-black sea. Although he’s too far up to see them, Elchanan can hear the animals—jungle cats snarling and growling, birds chirping, the general rustling of movement. Even when the rest of the world is asleep, the island is teeming with life, teeming with opportunity.
Which he has never been one to turn down.
Somewhere past the southern edge of the island, Elchanan swoops down, dropping a significant amount of his gained height, and banks a hard left with the flick of one wing to turn back toward the shore. As he dives the wind seems to pick up speed, and he feels it bright and cold against his face, tangling the long cream length of his tail, pressing his dark ears against his neck. The world comes tumbling upward in a curving, swirling mess of blue and white and green, and then, a little faster than expected, he’s landing on the sand in a full-tilt run with his wings stretched horizontal behind him, trying to push back against the momentum of his dive. After a few strides the force dies down, and Elchanan slows to a canter, then a trot.
The whole of the shore is a pool of moonlight, now—turning the white sand to silver, turning the crashing ocean to a splash of grays and blues. Elchanan takes a deep, deep breath and smiles as the scents come to him, salt, damp earth, ripe-to-bursting fruits.
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
It transpired by fortune that Maerys glimpsed outwards with her mauve sights to behold the stag that thrust through the skies with comprehensive precision and expertise. He shuttled through that well-developed canvas of midnight and ebony with feathers that appeared to powder the dark cloak of nighttime with pinpricks of trembling shine; sequin-silver stars like scattered embers of a dying blaze. He was a heaven-bound bird, gliding as a free soul. In each wing arc, his appendages were the tip of a conductor's wand, music for both eyes and soul.
There where the world unraveled and the wind crooned. There where the skies thundered and the sun caught fire. There where she sometimes wished she could soar.
Oh, how it would taste to be a pegasus.
When he landed just a way down the beach, her eyes traced the dips and curves of his slim body. He was composed mostly of the color of a newborn petal, the color that loves the sun so much it radiates the same hue even in the nighttime darkness. Other parts of his body reminded of her of winter - when her breath was pale against the numbing air as the frost patiently kissed her face and settled in her lashes. Maerys observed him openly, with no qualms about being sly and inconspicuous with her gaze.
In the twilight, the beach was tinted iron, the sand matching the moons elegant radiance as the briny water ran murky. The girl moved towards the stranger as her silver hair ensnared moonlight, the light bouncing off of each silky strand. Engaging someone new was always a divine pleasure for the girl. Regardless of how things turned out, she loved the dance that was to transpire. She didn't know if he would shift to silence and withdraw or if they would waltz there in the moonlight, taking in the nighttime sky as they chatted, the titters and the pressing intermingled.
After driving imminent enough, she paused as her eyes tended briefly to her surroundings, the breeze caressing her skin more affectionately now. Wordlessly, her eyes traced the treeline in the distance and examined the overhanging branches of those neighborhood trees just to find swelling buds that would soon crack open to release the soft papery leaves of blooms she'd never seen before. When her eyes descended once more on the stallion before her, she softly tells "how fares thee?" The timbre of her chords was velvet and rich, her artistic pronunciation lilting through the air with pistillate compassion.
She is unassisted now, with no monster at her heel and no ax in her surroundings. Her pearly body in the pale light seemed to be only one of two on the enduring shore now.
Elchanan is… comfortable here, in a way that he hasn’t felt comfortable for weeks, maybe since he first arrived in Novus. Here it’s comfortably strange; here magic whispers through the air and kisses him just like it did at home. Here the moonlight laps at him like a lover’s tongue. Here he is nothing but the suggestion of a man draped in silver and covered by stars, and the wind, when it does caress him, is as sweet and as cold as being reborn. He closes his eyes and tilts his head up against the waxing moon. In the places that the light comes down on him, though it should freeze, it fills him to the bone with warmth.
He cracks his eyes open again, and by the time he’s done blinking the stranger is watching him again. Intently. Her eyes glow wild mauve, and she is looking with unending, rapt attention, as if marking down every line of his body down to the way he stands or flutters his feathers. (He can’t blame her. He’s doing the same, though attempting to make it less conspicuous.) The space between them is short enough that he can make out the fine lines of her face and the blaze that slips down it like a river. He can see that she is starting to move—toward him, and not away. With a little grin like moonshine he does the same.
Her voice is surprisingly formal; he can’t help blinking, startled, as he hears it. Somehow it manages to be both clipped and song-like, the timber of her voice arguing with the tone. It confuses him. But Elchanan has always been good with people, and rather than remark upon it he only dips his head and sweeps his wing into a bow, one knee bending into the iron-white sand. It’s a practiced motion. “Charmed,” he says, and grins; the sound his voice reverberates in the night air like a plucked string, somewhere between a song and a purr.
When the archpriest pulls himself back up, a shower of white sand falls away from his feathers, purer than the foam of a waterfall. “I’m Elchanan.” In the dark his eyes are mottled, patterned in so many rings like the finest, richest wood, and when he blinks at her it is with sultry, heavy lashes that suggest more than he bothers to say. “What brings you here, Maerys?” And if his mouth rests a little long on the syllables of her name, or draws it out just more than needed—well, there’s no one else to notice it, nor the raise of one pale brow.
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
Charmed, she repeated in her thoughts, feeling each letter tease with the softest pressure on her mind.
There was something magical about him and his word, something that pulled Maerys' velveteen lips into a small smile. He bowed like a knight would and it is with tightening nerves that she watched the action. It dawned on her then like lighting - a brilliant shock of white in a graphite sky, forking silently to the unsuspecting target with a thunderous boom following mere seconds after - he was poetry defined in the endless expression of what his body didn't reveal but his voice tantalized and teased.
Maerys did not know who the man was or what he did, but she envisioned him as some sort of spiritual figure with tresses so neat, a body so polished, and a staff so biblical. (Very different than herself.) The girl was a warrior now and though she wasn't renowned, she would be one of few in this world's history to draw forth weapons and deliver such furious slashing blows that would be capable of splitting and clefting opponents asunder from nose to tail.
But who was Elchanan?
She watched his legs continue to dip as his wing extended and though it didn't show on her features, her pumping heart raced and her breath was lost on the salty wind.
She recalled when the common folk years ago used to bow to her. She never had understood it - why were elders and children alike greeting a filly in such a manner? Her father had always said it was a sign of respect (you are a royal, he would say), but part of her had always felt as though it meant one was inferior to another. Even still, it now felt valid and stirring to be greeted in this way, almost as if she was home once more.
(She was sure no one in Delumine still bowed to others.)
"Elchanan - I hast known no others with yond moniker," is all she quipped at first. He speedily moved into questioning the girl of dawn, asking her what brought her to the island which left her little time to dwell on his name - on anything - because the tone his words leech onto suggests deeper and darker things Maerys had not experienced. The girl was one of love and connection. She wanted someone who would become more than her anchor; someone who would also be the boat and the glowing sunny rays that kiss her flesh so softly so tenderly so that she may be the same for them. But there was a little voice in the back of her head that spoke nothing of boats and the sun, but instead, spoke of things mothers and fathers do at night when their children are fast asleep.
"Curiosity hath brought me to the sand tonight, Elchanan." Maybe it is dangerous to play a game she has never played, but her eyes are not afraid to roam the contrasting lines where tawny meets ivory along the slow dips of his body. "What hath brought thee?"
Elchanan has bowed often: the motion is as familiar to him as anything can be. In his homeland, it was the standard greeting, regardless of bloodlines or title, and the easy sweep of his bent knee and wing brings him back (against his will) to the days when that was all that was expected of him—a bow, a nod, a smile. How different things are now! The people here are unmannered and uncouth, their greetings barbaric, their accents knife-sharp. More than once he’s found himself taken aback at the way Novus’ citizens herald each other.
So it does not surprise him that she is surprised to see him bow. He does not say anything, only lets his lips quirk in a little smile, as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking. (He might. Who’s to say?) In the sweet blue light, they almost match—two sides of the same pale coin with their long white hair and bright, grinning, colorful eyes. The slender builds, their neat ankles and hooves. Elchanan tilts his head. Perhaps they have met before, or share some golden drop of blood. Not that it matters. (Not that it matters.)
“I’m not surprised,” he answers with a wry smile, and a dimple flickers in the corner of his cheek, matched by a sly bat of those thick, pale lashes. “Even in my homeland it was—is—uncommon.” If Elchanan is made at all uncomfortable by the mention of his country, he does not show it. The lines of his face are still smooth, the slope of his shoulder still relaxed. He debates telling her that her name isn’t all that ordinary, either. But it seems trite. And there’s no need for repetition. Not when there’s so much else to discuss.
The jungle behind them howls and moans in the wind, like a thing with a mind of its own, and out of the corner of his eye he sees the various darknesses shifting colors and shades against the moving leaves. “The same, I suppose. I’ve always liked to to figure things out. The magic here…” His smile deepens. “I am hoping it is something more special than the rest of this country.” Those bright-blue eyes watch the eldritch jungle for a moment longer, as if seeking something he cannot (will not ever) truly see. Then they turn back to meet Maerys’ gaze, and with catlike grace he takes a short, swaying step forward.
The sand shifts under his neat hooves, disturbed by the movement. It moves as easily liquid as quicksilver. Something chirp-chirp-chirp-howls from the trees; Elchanan’s gaze moves to it but does not stay. The smile that crosses his face now is bright and mischievous as Dionysus’.
she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
I'm not surprised, was a response that... well, surprised Maerys. It was effortless for her eyes to follow his lips move as vowels and expressions fell from their velvet clutches, but it was not easy for her to know what the man would do or say next (something that drew her deeper into their conversation). An askew smirk highlighted by the crafty dip of a dimple was what she observed with fascination next as his voice once more dawned upon the space between them.
Was, is.
There was a spark in her heart; a bright blast in this satin dark that dared to change the atmosphere of energy among them. Maybe the words hit her more thoroughly than they should, but the girl could not identify if her home was an "is" or a "was" at this point - could Elchanan not either? When questioned, she never recognized what to respond and alternatively could taste the moisture being wicked away from her mouth, her swallows gradually slipping into sandpaper rubbing against itself.
But she didn't want to consider her home again. She did not want to reflect on her beaten house or the cryptic terrors of blood-soaked treachery she had to witness as a meager child.
She didn't want to consider what parts of her life were is and was.
It was so much easier to concentrate on how his highlights curved into one another like sculpted porcelain. And how when he articulated it was with an invigorated vitality that Maerys could not offer in return because the glint of misconduct in his eyes was not something she had experienced in many before and it made her pulse thicken, thrusting harder and quicker through her veins.
He declared he savored in figuring things out, but more specifically he questioned this land's witchcraft. She could see the shadowy centers of his eyes regarding the forest, pausing for something miraculous to occur and prove him correct. The girl held no breath in anticipation for the forest, she had no apprehension it was exceptional and a considerable part of her did not want it to prove itself to the stallion. It was perspective-changing to see an island appear from an ocean that had never had an island, to see the island form itself a bridge for easy access, to see its waters infested with never before seen creatures, and walls built of seaweed that came from nowhere and ended nowhere (and pulsed). If it desired to, it could prove itself in a malevolent way that both Maerys and Elchanan would not be able to protect themselves from. Then what? It had proven itself to Maerys, and she wondered how it possibly hadn't for Elchanan.
And then she couldn't remember her own thoughts because he was stepping closer and she didn't know what to think.
Her eyes, so dancing and curious, fall to his hooves as they plant themselves firmly once again. "And what wouldst thee consider special enough to exceed an entire continent?"
And she doesn't know what he will say, but she wants to know more profoundly than she thought she would. It becomes easy then to match his step forward with one of her own.
M A E R Y S
@Elchanan literally sue me for making u wait nine years I am so sorry
![[Image: maerys-pixel.png]](https://i.ibb.co/kM48w8r/maerys-pixel.png){kind=tracking}
