saudade

[Avdotya]

You're a survivor,

it's written in blood across your lips

---

Snow was never Avdotya’s cup of tea - in fact, there is little in this world that truly is, but among it all it is the icy touch of winter that seems to grate against her tolerance with magnificent ease. She can feel regret as it rattles her frozen bones with every frigid footfall and there is a look of utter disdain painted ever-so perfectly across the sharp edges of her face; what a waste, she thinks, for her time is lost to curiosity’s fruitless hold.

But is it really so unavailing?

Somewhere beyond the trees comes a haunting cry, one that draws the mare to a stop. It’s a sound she doesn’t recognize from a beast that is foreign to her desert mind, yet it somehow pulls her deeper into the white-washed forest until she is upon the glen at its sunlit edges. She remains there, watching from the pines while a herd of antelope-like creatures (‘elk’ is no word to her) move steadily across the snow.

They are an intriguing sight, the animals, enough to briefly steal Avdotya’s attention away from her incessant brooding over this supposed wonderland... however, there is something- someone who catches her eye even more so than the beasts as they disappear into the trees. Opposite of where she stands cloaked in shadows is Solterra’s new king, emerging so fatefully into the clearing as if Solis had wrapped him up and set him down right before her.

And off he wanders, leaving a path for her to follow which she so readily does.   The viper stalks him from a distance until he is stopped at the banks of a gently babbling brook, reveling in its seclusion from the world that bustled outside of this strange island. How unfortunate, then, that that world could so easily follow him, even among the nothingness there lingered the weight of duty.

Avdotya was more than happy to remind him of that. ”Is it heavy, the crown?” Her voice rolls from her tongue with a wisp of cold air, a simple murmur laced with pestilence and malignity; it reached out from her place behind Orestes and caressed him with gnarled fingers. Turn that painted cheek, dear king, she thought, let me learn the face of the man who has already stolen from me.

@orestes

THE DESERT VIPER

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