some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
The hissing sound of blades upon ice slithers through the night. Leonidas comes, stepping out of the shadow of the trees about the lake. His aureate eyes drink in the dark figures, limned in moonlight as they appear to float through the silver-dark night. Laughter and screams bubble up from smiling lips and fallen bodies. He is in no rush to move and stands dark as a shadow, his body a stag, his antlers leached of their gold in the moonlight. They glow pale as bone.
Nicnevin.
Leonidas speaks the name, over and over within his mind. Then he lifts the parchment he holds and beneath the moonlight studies the words. Nicnevin. He speaks the name aloud, lets the syllables, the sound of it dance across his tongue and lips. He thinks of how he makes the noise and looks to the page and all the dark, cursive letters. The wild-wood boy does not know which pattern makes each noise. He does not know where that name Nicnevin, is written. He would like to… Though a year alone within a wood has taught him many things it has not taught a boy how to read. He found the letter pinned to a tree he passes day in and day out. He plucked the invitation from the bark and knew it contained words. He knew none of them.
It took him a day to find someone who might read it for him. “Leonidas,” They read, “You are cordially invited to a playdate with Nicnevin. Meet at night upon the Vitreus Lake when the moon is at its fullest.” And he peered at the invitation after, eagerly scouring the words for his name. He spent hours gazing upon the paper and its elegant type, wondering which pattern bore his name and which one said ‘Nicnevin’.
The invitation is worn from his attention, its corners are bent and worried, and creases lie sharp across its face. When at last he tips his solemn gaze up from his invite, the lake is ever more full of horses. How would he find Nicnevin amidst them all? He turns, reluctant and defeated. The woodland calls her orphan boy back to her and he goes. Except…
Except for a flash of gold and bronze that glows beneath moonlight and sings like a blade. Oh, Leonidas knows the song of that body. He knows her laughter in the air. He smiles as he moves to her. The sight of her sets static coursing across his skin, he shivers in remembrance of their dance and the storm that framed their meeting.
“Wildling,” Leonidas breathes and presses his muzzle to her neck, relieved, emboldened by a familiar face.
BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
Oh, I’m enamored with this landscape, this moon-bright snow – it lines the hills in a near-unbroken coat of white, largely undisturbed where it fell, most likely, only hours ago. Frost clings to the dark branches of trees, which reach leaflessly up towards a luminous sky. The moon is near-full and heavy, and the sky is cloudless and spattered with more stars than I could possibly count, at least as Nicnevin. (I think for a moment of Maeve, and the way she told me that her ancestors are stars, and I wonder if they are watching, in their strange, eyeless way.)
I am here on a playdate - an adorably childish term. (It is always strange, being so young again.) The letter was a surprise. (I still haven’t the faintest how it ended up on Elena’s doorstep, or who signed me up for it.) Still. I thought that it might be a good way to meet new people, and I was rather excited to go to Denocte for the first time besides.
I am looking for a Leonidas, apparently. I don’t have the faintest idea of who he is or where to find him, but I’m in no rush to figure out who, among the throng of gathered figures, he is. No, I am too delighted with the landscape to worry. The lake is frozen solid and far more beautiful than I ever expected. The snow-through-branches is surreal, an elegant blend of black and white. The air is cold and crisp, but I can smell something sweet on it; several someones have set up booths offering different drinks, and I only recognize the apple cider from its sweet, mulled scent. (There is something else that seems all the more popular – dark brown, with fluffy white things, like cylindrical clouds, floating on the surface.)
Most of all, however, I am enchanted by the figures skating on the ice. A few of them stumble, and they have to cling to their companions to stay upright; however, others slide across the slick surface as easily as trained dancers. They are dark silhouettes in the moonlight, moving, in most cases, too fast to make out. I cannot help but look at them and think that I want to do that – that I want to possess that grace -, too.
Before I can go down to the lake, however, I am approached.
The dark-brown-and-gold form of the storm boy appears at the edge of my vision; he is difficult to miss, shedding gold sparks that gleam and burn out in the pale moonlight. I turn to look at him as he bridges all the space between us and presses his muzzle to my neck. Wildling, he says, whisper-soft, and I smile. (Wildling? Maybe a bit. I have certainly worn other skins, seen the world through other eyes – been the world I occupy, not just an occupant.) “Strangeling,” I say, and tilt my head to look at him. “Here on a date?”
(I could push him away, but I don’t – a friendly touch is a welcome warmth on such a cold winter night.)
@Leonidas|| aaaa <3 | "nostalgia for the present," andrei voznesensky "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
The wildling girl smells of smoke and sweet things he does not find in the woods. He breathes her in, curious. His touch is only momentary, a grateful press of welcoming lips. There is nothing here that brought him any comfort or familiarity, until he saw the curve of her wings, the colour of her skin. He had seen her body illuminated by lightning, shadowed by an iron sky and made hazy by the humid climate of the swamps. She was easy to pick out amidst the crowds here and he went to her, little more than metal caught within the magnet of her copper skin.
She had been watching the dancers, even before he reached her. There was a delighted gleam in her eye. It was a sharp look, full of challenge. Yet when Leonidas looks to the ice and those who dance and fall and laugh upon it, he feels no element of her joy. Only a nervous distaste sweeps itself through his veins. He hopes his partner is not so keen to take to the ice as this wildling girl seems to be.
“Yes.” The boy says somberly when she asks if he is to meet another. The wildwood boy lifts his invite, its careful artful scrawl of words gleaming silver and beautiful beneath the moonlight. “Nicnevin,” The name falls from his lips, boldly, clearly, confidently, as if he had not spent a whole afternoon repeating it until it fell seamlessly from his tongue. Leonidas gives no indication that the invitation is illegible to him. Instead he simply folds it away, until later, when he will hold it again and wonder what part of those scrawling patterns make up the name, ‘Nicnevin’.
@Nicnevin - Short because he is gunna have ALL the feels in the next one. Also, i made up the word somberly and i am shameless about it.
BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
He dances away from me quickly, like most wild things do – it is in their nature to never linger too long. His gaze when he mirrors me and looks to the ice is more disgusted than it is infatuated, but I barely notice it; I am too taken with the wonderful newness of this place, the lights and the sounds and the scents and the bodies drifting about the frozen lake like shadows, their features shielded by the moonlight. Unlike the boy, I am not particularly worried at all. (If I were troubled by the unfamiliar, I would have been very troubled for quite some time, now.) I can’t say that I’m comfortable, exactly, but the tremble of nerves and anticipation about my frame comes from excitement, not any kind of discomfort.
When I ask him if he is here on a date, he affirms my suspicions rather morosely. I haven’t the faintest idea of why; if he didn’t want to attend, I can’t imagine why he would. Perhaps, I think, he is simply nervous. I suppose that most people would be, if they were sent on a blind date, especially in their youth.
(I suppose that this is meant to be some kind of playdate, though, not a date in the sense that I am more familiar with. They are two rather different things.)
I lean in to look at the dainty, swirled writing on the note, a mirror in most every way of the one that I was sent. (I wonder again how and why we received them; surely no one signed the forest creature before me up for something like this, and I certainly never signed up for this myself. Someone must have arranged it, but I haven’t the faintest idea of who.) As I read the name written on the card, I realize abruptly that it is my own – so he is my partner. Although it could have been quite exciting to meet someone new, I am rather excited with this result. (Perhaps we can go and join the people who are out on the ice! I’d certainly like to, now that I’ve found the person that I’m looking for – or, well, he’s found me.) I grin at him, possessed by a sudden sense of mischief. My head tilts; a chestnut curl of my forelock falls over my eyes, almost coyly. “So,” I say, “you’re Leonidas?”
Hopefully he can guess what I’m implying – I’d like to think that he’s quick enough for that.
@Leonidas|| <3 <3 <3 | "nostalgia for the present," andrei voznesensky "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
You’re Leonidas?
The way she watches him makes him uneasy. The gold of her eyes settles upon him, sinks deep. But it is not how penetrating her gaze is, it is the gleam in her sun-bright eyes. It is the way she speaks. There is mischief there, something that sets him on edge, that makes him want to laugh or be worried. There is something painful about it, as if she mocks him, yet her eyes are too wide, too soft for that. The boy shifts awkwardly. His equally gold eyes flitting from her to the crowds and then back out to the wild peaks of the mountains and the snow capped trees. They call to him and whisper along his skin. That is where he belongs. There, nestled within the woods, or out amidst the howling winds he might have grinned at the way she says his name. He might have laughed boyish and wild at the way she looks at him, playfully.
But he is not. Oh, poor Leonidas is so far from his comfort zone he feels lost, confused. Yet his eyes trickle over hers again, back from his beloved wilds and into the strangeness of hers. She is the only strange and wild thing here. He clings to her, even as she looks at him in that strange and alluring way. “I am.” He says warily, softly. His voice cracking, dropping suddenly upon the last syllable. It sounded strange, his nose crinkles and he coughs, confused, embarrassed.
The wild-wood boy does not take his eyes from her. Elven and strange within this setting, he studies her though he feels how people watch him, look over every inch of his skin. His body is dirty, the woodland leaving its mark over every inch of his skin. His knees are scuffed, scratches across his back and shoulders. Vines and leaves hang like woodland jewels from the brace of his antlers. He does not look a suitable date for the girls who walk past, perfectly combed. Some watch him curious, others snicker and laugh. But looking at the girl beside him, he thinks she looks more like a partner for him. He had seen the way she ran through the woods, the way she danced beneath the lightning.
He goes to speak slowly, carefully, quietly lest the strange thing with his voice happens again.
“Are you Nicnevin?” Leonidas asks hopefully, his thick lashes lowering shyly over his eyes. He might have made it, had his voice not started to low and suddenly cracked again, his normal higher voice shattering the final syllable of the girl’s name.
BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
It takes him a moment – his gaze is wary at first, halfway uncertain, and flush with embarrassment when his voice does not act as he wishes. I keep my stare trained on him, softening ever so slightly in my mischief, and, when he figures it out, I can barely contain my excitement, no matter how shy he happens to seem in the moment. “Yes,” I say, grinning from ear to ear, "“I am – at least in this lifetime.” (I do not pause to think that that remark might be strange to someone who isn’t from the Gold; my speech patterns have barely changed since I arrived in Novus.) "“I’m glad that we were paired together. I was wondering if we’d see each other again.” This island – island continent, I’ve been told – is much bigger than my homeland, and the people that I know seem to be few and far between. It’s hard to imagine that I could meet someone once and not meet them again, but that seems entirely plausible here, especially considering that I haven’t the faintest idea of what happens to souls here after they die. I can only assume that they’re reborn. That is the way of things. I suppose that it is silly to doubt that something so fundamental has changed simply because I’ve traveled to somewhere else in the world.
(I am choosing to ignore all the ways that things that are fundamental at home – the perpetual autumn, the brilliant warmth, the sovereign - are not at all so fundamental here, and I know it.)
I eye my date thoughtfully, from his wrought-golden antlers to his dark hooves. I’m not quite a child, and I don’t much know what to do on a playdate besides; it seems awfully childish, for someone who’s lived so many lives before. I decide to think of it as an opportunity to get to know my new friend – we’ve danced in a storm together, so I think that he qualifies as one – a bit better, and that is when I notice that he appears profoundly uncomfortable, more evident in his posture even than in the cracked way that he said my name. (It almost makes me feel a bit bad for the teasing way I’d introduced myself to him.) I smile my gentlest, warmest smile, hoping that it might ease his mind a bit, and I step a bit closer to his side, reaching out the soft pinions of one wing to touch his side ever so softly. “What do you want to do?”
I know what I want to do, anyways (and I deliberately do not look over my shoulder at the frozen lake, because he seems nervous enough already) – it’s only polite to listen to him, first. It might calm him down if he can get excited about something.
@Leonidas|| <3 <3 <3 | "nostalgia for the present," andrei voznesensky "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
At least in this lifetime
The orphan boy does not blink at her strange words. Though he has been alone for much of his short life, his blood is nothing but otherworldly. He had lost his mother to time travel. His mother who has lived and still lives and has yet to live so many parallel lives. She exists in so many different planes. The boy still remembers tales of her adventures, they are so deep within his identity as the son of a god and a time traveller that they are engraved upon his bones and sewed into the threads that bind his essence together.
“How many lives have you lived?” He asks awkwardly, with his voice that is low and then at once high. The boy gazes out across the ice to the skaters who trip and fall and laugh and dance. Only as a skater floats by, their blades cutting feathers into the ice, does he turn his gaze back upon the strangeling girl. Her smile is bright and radiant, enough to rival the storm they danced within. Oh, she took to that strange night far better than he here.
Though Leonidas has grown up a boy alone and thus vulnerable to selfishness, he still feels the way the air changes, the way she changes when she asks him what he wants to do. Take you to the woods, is what the fae-boy wants to say. But he does not. Not when he sees how she smiles, small and earnest, keen, yet holding back. Nic had been watching the dancers too keenly and Leonidas is as observant as a stag overlooking his wild kingdom. He sees every threat. The way she watched the skaters had been a threat. Yet every great king makes sacrifices. This, he realises is his.
“Shall we skate?” He murmurs, at once relieved when his voice does not break in the strange way it is wont lately to do. Arching his neck, his body growing tall and proud as if his to face some strange and deadly foe, the wild-wood boy leads her to the ice. “Have you done this before?” He does not like how often he is speaking, he likes it less when he finishes his question with a voice low and deep and odd. He blushes and huffs his discontent.
BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
I know that I am not supposed to speak of my home to outsiders.
I know it, because I remember how they killed me, and I remember burning starlings, and I know of our heir, our most precious thing, stolen away from us. I know that they seek things from us that we cannot give, and that they misunderstand us, and that I risk endangering my home by letting them know of us. Still, since I have been here, I have found myself struggling to keep the secrecy which should bind me like a noose. I think, as I examine Leonidas’s face, my stare settling on his bright golden eyes, that it is because outsiders are so much nicer than I have ever expected.
He asks me how many lives I’ve lived, a hint of awkwardness in his voice. I find myself answering in spite of myself. “Oh,” I say, more easily than I expect, “so many that I’ve lost count, I think. Some of them are barely memorable.” Others are like a brand – but that, I think, is the way of them. Some lives were more important and dear to me than others; some were longer, and some shorter, and some of greater and lesser consequence, though, in the very broad scheme of things, I don’t think that any of them were very consequential at all. I shake my head, then, my lips twisting up into a sheepish smile, and I add, almost shyly, “But, ah, I'm...sure that must sound rather strange to you.” After all, outsiders do not believe what we do of life and death, and I know that they will not believe me simply because I say that I have experienced death before.
(They will say: people have believed many things and been wrong before.)
When he suggests that we skate, I feel my expression light up, a bright smile curving from edge-to-edge of my dark lips. “Oh – I’d love to.” He might just be saying it to please me, but, if he is, I’m not about to question it. (However, I do hope that, with some coaxing, he might enjoy it, too; he seems so uncomfortable here, out in the crowds and the noise.) As we begin to walk towards the ice, he asks me if I’ve ever skated before, his voice crackling in a way that he clearly finds embarrassing and I find rather endearing. “I’ve never done it; have you? I suppose that I should be grateful to have wings…” I test them out, flapping their wide pinions at my side considerately, and I hope that they will prove adequate to catch me if I fall.
(I am sure that I will fall.)
I prod the ice tentatively with one hoof, feeling the slip of it beneath me, and then I toss a grin back over my shoulder at the woods-wild boy at my side.
@Leonidas|| <3 <3 <3 | "nostalgia for the present," andrei voznesensky "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
Too many to count.
That is what Nicnevin said about the lives she had lived. Even for a boy who was sewn together by time magic, it seems like an awesome statement. He is, after all, only into his second year of life. A life that is endless, yes. Just one. Unlike his mother whose creation is a mystery and whose births and deaths are repeated throughout eternity.
Leonidas wonders quietly if Nicnevin has always been as she is now: coloured copper and bronze and made to dance in the storm hewn sky. Or was she different? Like his mother when she was reborn or changed in the passing between worlds. The boy muses over how he remembers so littel of his dam, yet he remembers those small things. How she is changeable and flighty. It is no wonder she left him, when all she was made for was changing worlds and new lives. Was he (and his disappeared twin) merely too constant for their mother of Time and Space?
They drift out onto the ice, slipping and sliding. For a boy adept to creeping undetected and stalking nimbly through the wood like a stag, there is nothing elegant to him now. The wild-wood boy is far from leaves and twigs and rocks underfoot. He clings to Nicnevin, his gold eyes wide, wide with anxiety and fear. But soon, soon the fear slips away like his feet from beneath his body. He falls, and rises and falls again until his fear is cast out and left spilled across the cold slick surface of the lake. In its place is laughter - that of a man and that of a boy. It is a growing sound, a rift in time, adolescence and adulthood combining, creating a ruckle in the span of his ageing.
Leonidas skates with her until his bruises are too much and too sore. He skates with her until exhaustion has him slipping and sliding his way off the ice. His laughter is that of a boy who has never known loneliness in a deep, dark wood. When he reaches the solid bank and his feet no longer slip, the orphan boy turns to his friend and smiles, “Hot chocolate?” He asks, too tempted by the smell. If she said yes, he would lead her to a stand and come alive with the taste of sugar and chocolate upon his tongue. If not, he would leave, no less content, for laughter from skating is already singing in his bones.
Leonidas thinks that dating girls is not as bad as he first thought it might be.
@Nicnevin ~~ Leo is out, I am finishing Leo’s replies here but I thought I would let you decide how their ending is! Thank you so much for yet another wonderful thread <3
BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
What surprises me is that he seems to believe me without question. Then again, I think, if anyone would – it would be someone like him, the kind of boy who runs wild in the undergrowth and dances in lightning.
I resolve to myself, as we crunch across the snow, to enjoy these precious moments outside of the Gold for all of my other lives, and for the life that I will return to after I find the heir. I resolve to myself to enjoy it for all of the people I’ve loved, too, all the ones who are already gone – for the lord who I’d devoted all my lives to, the reason why I was here, and for my older sister who would have loved the snow, and for my first mother, who would have certainly tried to get recipes from all of the vendors.
Leonidas and I go out onto the ice, and, predictably, we are not so graceful. I think that we get a handle on how to skate by the end of the evening, but there are countless falls and scrapes and bruises before then. He clings to me, at first, and I try desperately to keep both of us steady, my wings sticking out at awkward angles; that does very little to keep the both of us from falling, and I worry, at first, that the falls will scare him off, but he seems to take them in stride until he finds his pace, and he finally, finally seems to enjoy himself. It takes me a bit longer, unused as I am to this body – which is larger and ganglier and winged and horned in ways that I have never been before -, but I finally learn to glide across the ice with some semblance of grace. It makes me admire the people who glide past us with practiced ease all the more – keeping your balance isn’t easy at all.
We keep trying until we are both sore and exhausted and the night has grown even longer and darker than I might have imagined, and twice as cold. (My breath trails white wherever we go, and I think that it is beginning to flurry; I watch the small white flakes dance with delight.) It is then that he asks me if I’d like to get hot chocolate, and I laugh and I grin and I agree with him, because I’ve never had chocolate (hot or otherwise) before. He leads me to the booth, and, when I try the chocolate, I discover that I don’t even know what to compare it to. I nearly burn my tongue in my eagerness to drink it down.
I don’t know what I expected of this world – but it is sweeter than anything I could have imagined, and, as I watch my friend’s smiling face, I can’t help but feel warm in spite of the winter chill.
I came here with a mission.
It is important, regardless, to love all the little things.
@Leonidas|| <3 <3 <3 | "nostalgia for the present," andrei voznesensky "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
