(no subject)

[the_cupbearer]

Outside, on the beach, there is a storm. It's only a spot of one, really, but the crack of lightning is hard to ignore. From the rain, only a second after it starts--and it started in a downpour--there steps through a young man and a horse being led by the bridle.

Ganymede comes into Milliways like stepping through a tear in a fluttering curtain, and as soon as he crosses that invisible threshold, the rain stops. In the middle of throwing a stone to skip across the water, his arm still swings and the pebble simply tumbles in the sand until it rests half-buried in the grains. He's still soaked: he was always intending to be, it was forecast to rain all day on the coast, which was half of why he went for the ride.

He wanted to think.

Milliways is as good a place as any for it.

Comments

[intoaman]

There's a young man sitting on the beach tonight, as dark of hair as Ganymede is pale and heavily, but almost symmetrically scarred. He manages to miss out being rained on and shies back when the horse come near him. "You're all wet. Do you want my coat?" He's shirtless beneath it but doesn't seem to mind the cold.

[the_cupbearer]

"Won't you be chilly yourself?" Ganymede asks, holding the horse back a ways.

"I'm alright for a while, really. It wasn't all that cold where I just came from."

[intoaman]

"I don't feel the cold so bad. Even in the snow. Sometimes I forget to put clothes on when I change and people have to remind me." Diaval shrugs. "And there are warm places here, even in winter. Here on the beach, inside by the fire, up in the mountain on the other side of the magic maze."

[the_cupbearer]

Ganymede chuckles. "Change into what?" he asks. "I don't mind nudity, don't worry."

[intoaman]

"I'm a raven. I'm not actually a man. I just get turned into one." He lifts his foot and shakes the gold and gem band around his ankle. "But now I can change myself."

[the_cupbearer]

"Why a man?" asks Ganymede. "Or did you not pick the form?"

[intoaman]

"My mistress chose the shape." He holds out hands, equally geometrically scarred. "I was caught be the farmer and his dog were about to tear me apart. She made me into a man to save me."

[the_cupbearer]

"And what kind of mistress is that?" he asks.

[intoaman]

"Maleficent, queen of the fae. She saved me so now I serve her." Diaval explains with a shrug. "But she doesn't know about here, or about me being able to change my own shape now."