LYSANDER
It’s well after midnight, now, and the snow has stopped falling. Tracks criss-cross the soft shroud it makes, but the setting moon still sets the untouched places to a diamond shine.
There is wine like a sweet slow hum in his veins, an old friend keeping him warm. For Lysander it had been a fine night, a reminder of times too long ago to count. Only Florentine kept worrying at his mind like a bramble in his coat. The antlered stallion had searched for her, after splitting off from the kirin, but there had been no trace of the golden Anthousai. Even the breeze had no trace of hyacinths; it was overwhelmed by woodsmoke, by spiced wine, by jasmine.
And so he walks alone, content to wander and observe as the last of the fires burn down and the noise of the revelry fades. Over and over his mind turns to her, to the way her face had fallen at the sight of her gypsy-king, the hurt writ plain in the lines of her mouth, her lashes, her amethyst eyes. Oh, he had warned her, long ago, that love could be a troublesome, painful thing; what he did not expect was for her hurt to wound him, too.
Even so, deeper and deeper yet beneath the slumbering soil of his strange old heart, there is a god’s jealousy and god’s curiosity, green and vital as sap from a weeping tree.
If he were to remain mortal, what else might he grow to feel?
He has wandered far from the festival, now; the cold has crept in again, enough to make him shiver. It is dark, the fires distant. The stallion pauses, breathes a stream of silver into the winter air, stands poised between the forest ahead and the castle behind. Lysander isn’t sure where he’s going, but he isn’t afraid.
He has never been afraid in his life.
@Reichenbach @Raum @Lavinia and any crows I missed
