“You can never be sure of your way.”
The snow’s so thick
And the ice so slick.
With your life you will surely pay.
-------
The swan boy is grace but the swan boy is cursed.
He descends from the sky as a great black shadow; a pegasus borne of sky and water.
The mirror waters had cried to him. They had been but a still, blot of ink and yet their voice was a waterfall’s roar within his ears. His approach, from the star strewn skies, had grown it into a puddle, then a pond and lastly into a great lake.
It lay so still… just a jagged piece of broken glass, silver sleek and so deeply black. Beneath the midnight moon it slept, so still so silent, but ever watchful.
It’s waters spy the swan boy land and laps forwards upon its shore, questioning, asking, chattering. It longed for the newcomer, for the recipient of its call. It coaxes him close and upon its surface paints him as elegant as any swan.
It calls to him again, watery fingers reaching, pulling. He heeds its call again, for who cannot? And eases himself into the water. He is the black shadow that shattering the glass yet more. Above the stars do blink to better see the shivering, rippling lake.
His swan wings, with feathers like knives in the night, arch over his spine. They are so large, so grand, and lure the eye as if forged of cathedral stone, held together by more than just magic – religion.
The breath of Hiemsterra, whispering ice that branches up his legs, melts away beneath the touch of this warm, warm lake. Upon his wings, hoar frost remains, proud and valiant against the warmth of Novus. Out and out they crawl, like spider webs spun by winter spiders of ice and snow.
Polunin, a silent ghost of swallowing black, drifts his way across the glassy lake and feels the bite of winter thaw.
A noise sounds upon the bank, it is another shape to stir the darkness. It draws his eye and arches his neck: chin to chest and eye unblinking. Still and quiet, he watches and waits. Obsidian lips pull tight, muzzle parting as his eyes begin to blaze, silver fierce and wildly black. Lips part, as his ears fall back, with his coarse, coarse song of a hissing of breath.
Aggression is a whisper breath away and declares itself within another rattling hiss of the wild swan’s voice. How long he drifted upon the lake, no one is quite sure, least of all Polunin himself. But the sunlight has begun to crest, bright and brilliant, as he drifts toward the shore. His feet have just touched earth when a figure appears upon the bank.
@Reichenbach And any others who wish to say hello!
