I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world; hourglass

[aureus]

Aureus

oh, these wings, they flicker and my feathers stir
'til I'm an ancient soul in a cascade world

Time has been kind to Aureus. He has grown in the months since he has seen the girl of glass, although he is still coltish in his build. He races past a year old and his body has grown more muscular in that time, his tail lengthening, the coltish softness of his face beginning to bleed away. He is nearly adult in the way that he walks, but it is the changes in his mind that are the most profound—the ones within him.

His fathers have taken him and his sister to the island, and he has grown there.

He has swam along the shallowest edges of the shores and raced his sister down the beach. He has spent nights with his father and Astrum, watching as the stars begin to dapple the night sky, turning their silvery light downward and washing them milky in their glow. He has grown more confident in that time, although never quite broken through the shyness; still, he is more studious than panicked, these days.

When he finds her, it is as he wanders through the meadow, the sun hanging at its peak.

It always feels strange to travel without Astrum, but when the sun catches the glass of her, he cannot deny that a part of him is grateful to be without the jealous star. He would explain to her later how he met the girl of glass again; he would let her pout when they were by themselves.

Instead, in the here and now, he feels nothing but a quiet joy warming his chest as he walks toward her.

“Hello again,” his voice is deeper, but still quiet, his eyes nearly hidden by the swath of forelock.

“What are you pretending today?”

He says it without thinking and then pauses, wondering if calling back to their earliest days of make believe was a childish thing to say now. Embarrassed, he falls quiet, although the smile doesn’t leave.

and I'm quick with the bullet when it comes undone
I got a head like a turret with a mouth for a gun