09-28-2017, 12:25 PM
The moonlight shone where it could through the canopy, the air thick with the aromas of spring blossoms that always preluded the warm nights of summer. It was a clear night, a good night… Heh he blew out softly, bittersweet. Such a strange and light-hearted thought to have had after so long a time.
He’d hidden himself within Hyaline’s multihued forest for more than a year. Slinking out from the charred trunks only when he’d become aware of his own smell and he’d had to bathe the stink off him. It shamed him to know his brother had found him in such a way only nights ago. And now that Amet had found him once it was likely he’d do so again. Suddenly a quick dip within the waters to shed his scaled body of smell and grime seemed fitting.
He waited until less and less stirred before creeping out of the forest and down to the sparkling waters of the lake, Hyaline’s watery heart. The initial icy bite of the water unpleasant as always as he waded in deeper and deeper until his chest and then shoulders sunk beneath the rippling water. Some nights he’d let himself drift out beyond the grounding of the mud underneath and paddle beneath the moonglow. On those nights he’d never had the tingling sense that anyone had watched him. Though what would he know? He’d always been either too deep or numb of thought to be aware of anyone else’s eyes. But he felt something now, or rather, he saw.
Strange zaps of light appeared on the bobbing surface before him, they dazzled, tiny flashes of brilliant bright before fizzling away into nothing. He cocked his head and stared with puzzled wonder, gawking until his fascination transformed into a frown when it dawned on him those little lights weren’t from the water. They were a reflection, reflecting something from somewhere up and out there.
It chilled him with an iciness that wasn’t solely from the water. Argh, I’m not alone… And with an awkwardness unbecoming of him, he swished around in the water like a frenzied fish, clamouring for the shallows and then onto the shoreline. Most of him wanted to race back to the trees. Most of him, not all… that small defiant part kept him rooted ankle deep within the water, his eyes finding her easily in the night as he watched her through the tangled, wet mess of his forelock. He did not know her. But there she was, red enough in the darkness to draw the eye as she leaned against that crooked tree… watching him? He wondered, as she played with her electrical pulses of light.
I hope his interpretation of what Jah’s doing with the fireflies is alright