morozko
and all our footprints in the snow.
He goes out before dawn, when the air still feels cool enough against his cheek to be a faint memory of winter. Even so, Morozko would be a fool to mistake this place, this season, for anything other than what it is; there is no frost to texture the green grass beneath his feet, no halo of ice crystals around the setting moon. Instead there are crickets and nightingales, singing themselves to sleep as the stars fade away.
But he has the pre-dawn stillness of the court to himself, and that is enough for the unicorn. With the capitol a dark spire behind him, a shadow against shadows, he begins to run - great, reaching strides to stretch the stillness from his muscles. As a guard in Heimsterra, he had worked out with his regiment every morning; even taking a few weeks off had changed him, softening his muscles, filling out the winter-lean places of his body. It felt good, then, to run. Even as his lungs protested, as his breath came in long pulls and a sheen of sweat built on his lilac-dappled coat.
Eventually he’d have to find himself a sparring partner, lest he lose all semblance of his battle-skill. For now, his only observers were the deer his pounding hoofbeats disturbed and an owl that swooped low overhead, curious on silent wings.
By the time he returns to the citadel, the sky is awash in pink and coral and he is satisfactorily exhausted. The other benefit to exercise he’d always enjoyed was the way it served to quiet his mind, too, and for the moment his duties here were forgotten - all he wants is to bathe, to eat, perhaps to nap.
A pale figure stands before the dark mouth of the doorway, and for a moment those wishes are pushed aside.
The stallion isn’t one Morozko had seen at the court meeting; his presence would have been unmissable. He’s a grand figure, tall and white as a ghost, crowned with antlers and gilded with golden scales. The unicorn eyes him for a long moment, caught between admiration and suspicion, not at all self-conscious about his own sweat-slick body. Finally he offers the stranger a careless smile. “Thought all Dusk citizens were late sleepers,” is all he says by way of greeting.
@Isorath hello!
|
