Serpent Lake look toward your golden towers

tag for reference! :-)

as the morning sun begins its ascension in the distant horizon, the early morning sky morphs into colors of candyfloss blue, pink and purple, tinted with candied citrine orange; and while hadrian isn't infallibly certain he thinks he has finally reached his destination: teekon wilds spoken about often and reverently by both his father and the emperor himself. an abandoned legacy just waiting to be claimed, the place were his dearest sister @Saarthal presumably still haunts, a not-so mythological place of untold adventures. still, there remains a part of hadrian that refuses to settle, that seethes and festers like a wound that refuses to heal. unfettered worry for aeneas taints hadrian's satisfaction at finally making it to the wilds. word alone was unfortunately not enough assurance that aeneas — fool that he was ( fool that hadrian loves ) — would not do something suicidal and stupid again over reyna.

not that there wasn't plenty of women ready to fawn and throw themselves at aeneas or anything, but the way aeneas had acted one would think that reyna was his only option.

hadrian puts thoughts of saarthal and aeneas out of his mind, for now. instead, he focuses on the path before him, shying away from the bank of the twisting serpentine lake he follows as he notes the gleaming scales of a black garden snake as it lays coiled on the flat stone of the lake bank soaking up the warming rays of the morning sun, considering his next course of action now that he's finally made it to the teekon wilds.