morozko
and all our footprints in the snow.
“Well,” he says, as a sharper sort of smile works its way onto his dark lips, “neat or not, I’m sure the females find it charming.” It hadn’t been his intent, to conjure thoughts of Inkheart with the statement; but she rises unbidden to his mind, anyway, and he wonders what she might think of such a man as this, all gilded and golden with his bedroom hair and his mighty crown. The thought makes him surprisingly prickly. Morozko has never considered himself a plain man - never really considered himself from an outsider’s point of view at all - but surely, compared to this draconic figure, he was as drab as a snow-covered field.
On the heels of that thought, the stranger stretches his wings, leathery and clawed and just as impressive as the rest of him. Morozko’s smile tightens, and he finds himself itching for another workout or a sparring match, as exhausted as he is from the one he’d just finished.
The sun was risen enough now to turn the world more golden than rose, and to feel warm on the unicorn’s dappled back. There was already the promise of a hot summer day, a prospect he had not yet come to appreciate. His body still longed for the kind of cold that made his breath silver — but summer was just another thing he was going to have to get used to.
Like meeting strangers who hailed from worlds far different than his own.
“Isorath,” he repeats, and thinks the name suits the stallion well. It was both strong and lithe, fierce and soft. Morozko gives the slightest dip of his muzzle in acknowledgement, and does not miss the unspoken question in the rest of the creature’s words. “I am Morozko, a commoner in the Dusk Court, and not much less newly arrived than yourself. I imagine I’m not much more ahead on names than you, either.”
He considers asking Isorath what drew him to Dusk, when surely those wings could have carried him anywhere in the world - but that might bring the same question on himself, and it was not one he was prepared to answer. Instead, he flicks his tail nonchalantly and says, “Where were you headed, if you don’t mind the question?”
@Isorath :)
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