elif
It is too cold for horses born to sun and scorching heat, too cold for sleek thin coats like hers.
As strange as the plunging temperature is the echoing hallways of her family home, empty save for the once-servants who still live there. Since her parents left (after the latest Davke attack, after her brother’s death) she has barely darkened the door, but now she glides past each archway, glancing into room after room of lesser treasures.
She has written to her parents only once since their move to the Summer Court. She told them of the gods’ coming, of the blizzard, of the Summit and all the strange whispers that followed it. When her father’s reply came, it took her only a heartbeat to scan his thick penmanship: Do not shame our name before Solis.
Elif stops outside a small room that has only been used, as long as she has known it, as a storage closet. It is piled high with decorate scarves and thick woolen rugs, lavishly made but seldom used, musty with the smell of cedar and sandalwood.
She thinks of the cold and snow outside; she thinks of the things within, numerous and useless to her. Elif isn’t sure if her parents will ever return, though she does have an idea of what they will do if they come back and find all their belongings given away. Grinning (guilt a shadow over her, but a thin one, the kind that makes her heartbeat feel like a dare) she steps within.
The basket of blankets is lighter at her side hours later as she makes her way down to the docks. Despite the scarf she wears around her own neck (well below the woolen alaja) she shivers from the wind that comes slicing off the water.
A dun colt the color of the Mors at noon eyes her curiously as he passes with his small cadre, and Elif raises a brow at him in return, her lips already pulling in a grin. It was not so long ago that she was the age to play along the docks, though her noble name kept her from groups like this, save for when she’d slip away from her home like a wolf pup from its den. All things young enough to be half-feral were alike in this way.
She asks them, too, if they would like any of the blankets she carries, but they only laugh and part around her like water. They are too young and hot-blooded to be cold, and she is still smiling as she continues on, though the wind lashes her cheeks and throws salt in her teeth.
It is a woman the same color as the gunmetal sky and silver sea that she comes upon next. Her hair is down and wild as the white-caps, and it and her clouding breaths disguise the band of silver around her throat. With all the commotion of the docks and fish-sellers and merchants, Elif thinks nothing out of the ordinary as she approaches the mare, fluffing her feathers against the cold.
“Blanket?” she asks brightly, and her grin is girlish and crooked in the heartbeat it takes her to recognize that it is her sovereign standing before her. When she does her green eyes widen, summer sun on new grass.
“Oh, your highness, I-” inelegantly she extends a leg and dips her chin in something that might be a curtsy if it weren’t so hurried. Then, lifting her eyes once more to that keen, dual-colored gaze, she says, “Well, I suppose the offer still stands.” To cover her sheepishness she tilts the basket toward Seraphina, rolls of silk and wool in deepest blue and warmest yellow, a dream of summer.
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<3 good to write with you again
