[open] a rhythm and rush, any

[Leoniidas]

some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.

 

It is a glow, bright like a star within the lovely deep, dark of the woods that captures Leoniidas’ golden eyes. It moves like mist, no - he thinks - like a phantom. This light, this soft glow of winter, has form. Slow, slow and feline the other-world boy slinks closer to this new light.


Ah, it is a boy, not much younger than Leonidas. They are opposites, one boy sculpted of winter ice and the other, the heat of the earth, the gold of a brilliant sun. Already this wood is becoming familiar, the great cathedral trees echoing hymns and lamentations of magic and peril that he has come to recognise and know. They make his bones hum as roots and leaves, flowers and vines tangle themselves into the crown of his gilded antlers. 


It is fitting, Leo thinks, that a boy with a halo should be here in this cathedral place where leaves are stone floors, trees are pillars, glens are cloisters and boughs the vaulted ceiling. Yet, despite light tumbling through stained glass leaves to dance upon the pale skin of the ice angel boy, there is something darker, wilder, unholy. Icicles hang from that wide halo like the foliage hangs from the tines of Leoniidas’ antlers.


Slowly, silent as wild cat, watching, watching and steady as a stag with the proud arch of his muscling neck, the otherworld boy steps out before the other. He stands in a pool of emerald light and like fingers his gilded eyes trail the cracks of the boy’s skin. Dustmotes tumble slow, slow and slower still, caught in the rare pool of light this deep, dark wood offers. 


“Are you cold?” Leoniidas murmurs, low, low, low. The avian tilt of his head is the only sign he was an orphan prince left to raise himself in the wilderness, growing up amongst the feral animals and monsters of his home world. Leo knows the settling of frost on his skin as the dawn chases away the frigid grasp of midnight - is that how this stranger boy feels with his ice skin and frozen halo?


Time slows and slows and slows until the dust motes hang around them, until the chanting whispers of leaves are lost to silence and stillness. It is easier, Leoniidas thinks, for time to be still than racing away from him, slipping through his grasp, erasing friends and families and girls he had grown to love.


“Speaking.”

credits


@[Selaphiel] <3