[private] wanted and wild

[Leoniidas]

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

 


Though he had vowed to never touch another girl (as Elliana left him and he succumbed to the lonely call of the forest) if he knew how another girl would come with a past that told a tale so similar to his own, he might risk breaking that vow to bury his nose in her neck. His is a past filled with an absent mother and open portals and a twin who seemed not to care about the loss of their parents. Aster was a heather upon a moorland, beautiful, able to withstand the changeable weather, the cold and harsh realities of life. Leoniidas, for all that he is a wild wood boy, feral and so very alive, felt more like a daffodil wilting with the coming spring. 


But the forest boy knows nothing of a past that writes a story of sorrow behind the girl’s lovely, sky-bright eyes. In fact, he does not even know she has come, for he is lost, drowning in the touch of petals across his lips, the scent of flowers blooming sweeter than wine. Only when she speaks does he stir and draw himself from the tangle of wild meadow flowers. Golden eyes tangle with blue; a mirror of the sky above.


The boy’s gaze does not linger on her eyes long. He drinks in the rest of her, skin as mahogany as his, her mane cool with frost where his is hot with gold. Leonidas wonders at the paradox of her body, warm earth skin and chilled with a frost. He has seen dawns like her. 


But she is looking past him, to his back where a smudge of white sits. Startled the boy turns, abashed to have been caught unawares. His nape arches, wary, protective. Ears crumble down to bed within the tangles of his hair. Leoniidas’ eyes grow steady and leonine as they study the fox. She is smiling, the young girl of this world whose eyes, he realises only now as so much like Elliana’s. 


“It is not yours?” Leoniidas murmurs to the girl, surprised when she asks whether it is his. “I have a tiger.” It is a whisper, as small and hush as leaves drifting to the ground in the bronze of autumn. 


Wild flowers reach for the girl, leaves and petals brushing against her legs, tugging at her hair. Slowly the boy lowers his chin as the fox merely watches, “Are you sure it did not come with you?’ And oh how he frowns, wonder creasing his brow as he glances between girl and fox. “I think it is watching you.” Leoniidas whispers small, rough as grasses blowing in spring. “I am Leoniidas.” And it is good, he thinks, to have another to talk to, if just for a moment. 


Already the woods are reaching for him again. Reminding him, warning him of girls and their strange, strange ways.


“Speaking.”

credits


[@Roselin]