All Welcome child of dawn, born in the dark

Winter was a most torpid affliction to a serpent such as the Night Court emissary, and yet despite this brazen fact Lothaire did not abstain from admiring the white savage beauty all around him. In the ice and the bitterness he found there was something bewitching to be acknowledged; how could a season claim so much life? Stealing it away with freezing tapered fingers to bury it beneath six feet of earth turned to stone. The world was brought to a standstill at her command, as though hanging on her last word, waiting for her to relinquish that ruthless grip to Spring at last. As he stood idle against the stone wall of Denocte's keep, overseeing the bustling twilight market, Lothaire recalled a particular night during his first winter with disconcerting clarity, one forever etched onto the awnings raised in his hallowed head. For among the seclusion and long dim days there had been moments of respite - he could still resurrect that memory of his grandfather's hunched silhouette against the fireplace, the woodsmoke permeating the skin of both boy and man, seeping into their lungs and their blood - but, in the brief absence of his mother, there had been silent peace in that little room, in that little house. Their existence was meagre, but somehow beside those hot crackling embers a sense of modest contentment prevailed.

His life was, now, countless worlds away from that little house; now he walked the lavish halls of a castle - watching the constellations not from a bed with damp broken slats but from high in the east wing of the emissary's chamber. Often Lothaire caught himself glancing in the looming panes of glass hung throughout the citadel, and wondered just who he had become? That dark-eyed voiceless child turned politician, delegate, for a kingdom he had known for what seemed like a mere fraction of eternity. There was a time when he had wished, quite simply, to become a part of the night sky - another star to decorate the perpetual, amaranthine black. What now?

The sound of laughter and music jolted the winged man into the present once more, clearing his throat as he turned languidly toward the sound. A lightless gaze surveyed the jovial scene and despite his stirring apathy, Lothaire could not deny the fascination he held for the court's ancient culture and tradition. It seemed, however, that he was not the only spectator tonight - for his cold eye cinched to the face of a girl he did not recognise. She was made from a kiss of gold and cream, with glittering eyes and a pair of wings set high upon her fine shoulders, and she moved with a sense of purpose that pricked his muted interest. Had Lothaire been a mere commoner of the court he would have been more than content to simply observe this smooth she-wolf, but, alas, he supposed it was about time he enacted the very duties he had promised the King he would uphold. Silently he drifted towards her, his face a wide formless mask of aloof detachment before coming to a halt. With a slight upward tilt of his head Lothaire announced his presence, and he took a moment to search for words of greeting only to find the empty vacuum of nothing; so, instead, he stared and he waited indifferently - for her to speak, or leave; he did not care which.

@savera rushed ending sos and ye he's weird c; !