oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.
He has thought of her since they had last met.
He has dreamt of her.
She with that delicate, frothy beauty. The kind of mature beauty that lives outside of those his own age; the kind of beauty that does not belong to this world. Something so fleeting in her smile, in the way that her wings had touched his own. He holds onto it, buries it deep within the soil of his soul and lets it grow wild and untouched. He carried it within him during his quest to the island when the monster of the sea had gripped him tight and dragged him down deep, when his wings had severed its mouth.
He had carried it within him when he finally returned home, the clinking of onyx shells in his mane.
(He does not enjoy them, that faint noise they make as he moves, but he doesn’t mind them either.
Perhaps they will go away with time.)
But none of that matters because the dream he carries with him becomes reality when she steps out of the crowd. His grey eyes go stormy and quiet all at once as he focuses on her, his head sweeping upward with the growing reach of his antlers stretching. “Irisa,” her name is softer than he had intended, something cherished in the way his tongue wraps around the syllables. He doesn’t soften the intensity of his gaze as he studies her, not blinking as he takes her in, as he feels the space between them as a tangible thing.
He has grown, now sitting upon that precipice of youth and maturity, but he is not yet full grown and she is—she is. But that doesn’t stop the wild and dark hunger that spreads in him, that sharpens his gaze, that brings everything wild within him to the surface, a stark contrast to the dreaminess of her curves.
“You look the same.”
A compliment, in the only way he knows how.
@[irisa]