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Girl of winter. It had been one of the many names Messalina had heard whispered like a curse behind her back, when the maids had thought she wasn’t listening. Which was strange, because how could one choose what to hear and what not to hear? They’d shown little care of hushing their spiteful voices, and she was not deaf. 

Regardless, during her days in the king’s court, Messalina had taken a peculiar liking to the supposedly ill-intentioned moniker. Girl of winter. She liked the way it rolled across her tongue, lilting yet eerily foreboding. Like it belonged to a pale-eyed princess of snow, with frost coating her silver curls and ice lining her frozen smile. Born in the throes of an unforgiving winter, the snow had never fully melted from those eyes of vast, crystalline blue. Messalina’s skin and hair were of the palest ivory white, like the frost had leeched her color away with a glacial kiss. They’d described her porcelain smile as cold, and her eloquent words as frigid. The title fit her like an ice-carved tiara.

Under the halo of the spring sun, however, winter felt like a distant memory. The scent of wildflowers clung to Messa’s skin like perfume, as the slender dancer drifted quiet as a doe through the blooming Illuster meadows. Every which way, flowers as blue as sapphires, as red as rubies, fluttered like jewel-encrusted butterflies in the scented breeze. Delumine’s flourishing spring enthralled her. Algernon had been too far north to ever enjoy more than a few weeks of snowmelt, the only plant life being Mother’s precious rosebushes that had encased the castle in a cage of thorns. 

As she walked deeper into the meadow, a soft hum drifted like a lullaby from her lips. The song was one she knew by heart, one she had performed to too many times to count. Each twirl and leap was etched into her bones, and suddenly, she ached to dance. A slender limb stretched forwards–and then, the spring was no longer around her, it was in her. Like silk in the wind, the glass-hewn ballerina sprang into riveting motion. It had been too long since her hooves had stepped with such freedom under a dazzling sun. Each twirl she spun elicited a wave of scattering petals, soft as satin across her skin. And gold–flecks of scintillating gold flew across her vision like stars.

Gold? With a start, Messalina ceased her dance at once as wide cerulean eyes fell upon a figure laying along the grass. Eyes of the brightest yellow blinked as wide as her own. "Oh," Messa gaped, valiently straining to contain a cough of embarrassment from permeating her voice. He saw me. "I–I didn't notice you were there." Shifting delicately on light hooves, a silent agony overtook the girl as she looked down in an attempt to regain some composure. Out of half-lidded eyes, she noticed with a soft breath how blooms were twined delicately through hair like ivory silk, softer and finer than her own. He is as beautiful as a doll, was her immediate realization, as Messa marveled how his skin was more exquisite than porcelain.

"Would you care for some company?" asked Messalina, as she dropped into a dainty bow. A reluctance to leave lingered in her gaze. She had to know–how did he work such magic?

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@Eros | notes: she wants to learn all his secrets ;u;