“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.
-------
He does not lessen the arch of his neck, nor ease the strain from his great wings.
Moonlit teeth click to join the clack of feet upon the lake’s shale shore. Like the hellhound dogging her companion’s steps, so the tide pushes forward to flank Polunin’s steps. The waters hiss over still sun-warm stone and the sound pulls another warning hiss from parted swan lips.
A tongue wets his crimson mouth that twitches and tenses and then pulls tight. It is a grimace that slashes across his mouth, lurid red. He makes no effort to move, those swan eyes the only part of him to turn, to watch. Starlight air, cool with the nearby water, sinks into his lungs as he drinks the air, deep and deeper still.
There, playing across his tongue, was the stranger’s smell. It is a taste of velvet black and glimmering stars. But suddenly there is more, a bitterness, a bite as sharp as pointed teeth across his ebony tongue.
Canine.
His head tosses upon his arched neck, whip fast and whip sharp to better rid the smell from his senses. But oh the hellhound is still there and her presence sets his amber eyes to blaze, a vow to consume, like fire across grass.
His ears do not stir from where they remain pinned to his skull. They do not lift in welcome or acknowledgement. Not even as his muscles itch and his neck at last extends out, serpentine and savage, to snap a warning bite into the crisp midnight air.
Only then does he draw back to let an ember eye fall upon the hellhound’s companion. “I have come,” He begins in a voice as coarse as stone. “Because there is no ice here.” Indeed, only a line of branching frost still lingers along his spine, a final siren’s call to his Winter Court. The rest is melted away, consumed by the body of the lake. “I have come because my vow to a queen is complete and I am my own servant now.” It is both more and less than the stranger likely ever wanted to know, yet Polunin delivers the words with the arrogance of a prideful swan.
Shadows, once still, begin to shift. They draw Polunin’s eye, alert, wary but oh so fierce. From those shifting shadows a creature is birthed, darkness melting from their body like mist before the dawn sun. They approach and he watches, even as they enter the water and it rises to meet them. A wing snaps out, long and elegant, a knife drawn in a silent, sharp warning, as his eyes smolder across the curve of their soft, soft smile. His gaze would linger there, were it not for a third creature that also births from the darkness.
She comes in haunting white, a wraith that drifts through the ethereal night. The girl was tentative and slow, no rush, no haste about her. Wariness is in the graceful step of each frost-white limb. She is dusk light across untouched snow and her body beckons the fire of his eyes to burn ever hotter. Distaste gives way to anger in his breast and if it is a wing he holds like a knife towards Seree, it is nothing compared the violent inferno he wishes to inflict upon this girl of ice.
“That is close enough.” He says to her as she comes closer, her greeting disregarded for the displeasure of her presence. The demon mark upon his neck burns with frost-fire so fierce a chill splinters through his skin. Content only when the wraith girl stops a distance from him, Polunin’s eyes finally leave her. They fly across the lake’s border and out to the lands that stretch far, far beyond, casting themselves before shadowed mountains.
“Denocte.” He says at last, not sparing a glance at the small gathering about him. “These lands are linked with the Night Court then.” He says softly, his indifference a smother upon the amiable greetings of the trio. “Where is the Dusk Court?”
The swan says nothing of Veteris, nor his old Winter Court and its young prince Rannveig had set him to watch over. Instead, when no responses to his questions come, his eyes descend the mountains, sweeping back to settle upon the trio.
“Well?” He asks of them with a snap of crimson lips and a proud, arched neck.
@Rostislav @Seree @Rorschach - well, what a pleasure he is! Sorry guys xDD
