The ice crystal hovered in the air in front of him, glistening and unmelting.
It had taken admittedly far longer than he’d expected to craft such a small arrangement. It was hardly the size of one of his canon bones—and yet…
It was a tulip. Beautiful and icy in its frozen display, complete with a long stem boasting a pair of serrated leaves.
He had carved it from the compacted ice he’d found in the northern parts of the Rapax, where he’d been wandering prior to coming to the festival. He’d managed to keep it alive with a combination of his frosty breath and sheer will: it turned out the new magic that coursed throughout his veins was useful for something after all. Not that he intended to spend his life carving out figures from ice; but it was something.
It was supposed to be his gift to the celebration—the invitations had all said to bring something of his own artistic talent. He’d nearly scoffed when he read the sign because he never had been the creative child, Aion was far more likely to buy a million paintings to frame his walls than to so much as lift a finger to a paintbrush. He almost hadn’t made anything at all, almost hadn’t even come. But once he’d first started molding the ice… he found he couldn’t stop. Not until it was finished.
Yet he still couldn't convince himself on that stage with it.
He’d nearly thrown it away instead—it was useless, after all. Not to mention it required a fair bit of work to prevent it from melting into a puddle of water, and Aion wasn’t about to spend the rest of his days breathing frost on a carving of ice to keep it preserved.
But something stayed his hand, and kept the frozen flower close to his chest, where the chill of his body might protect it from the warming spring days.
The tulip wasn’t perfect by any means, a better artist may have made its edges smoother and more even, may have peeled away the petals to show the flower in bloom. Aion wasn’t an artist, and he didn’t have the skill to accomplish perfection. Nonetheless, he was proud of his creation, and of what it represented to him. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t been able to get up in front of the crowds: a fear of his hard work being mocked, or worse, that he’d be asked to describe his muse. His muse that had been missing for over a year now, no matter how many places he looked.
Still cradling his flower within his invisible grasp, he turned away from the stage and the crowds. He wasn’t going to present his creation, nor was he in the mood anymore to see what any of the others had to offer.
After a short walk he found himself in the fields, where thousands upon thousands of blossoms greeted his eye. Almost without thinking, he held his frozen flower out to another far more vibrant and lively one, as if to compare the two creations.
He already knew the real one would be better, but still he couldn’t help himself from at least looking, comparing the two side by side. A frown slipped onto his face, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he scraped away one more imperfection from his tiny sculpture.
@eros
empluvie art
