BUT I BITE AT IT AS AT A MYSTERY
nostalgia for the impending present / and I'll never catch hold of it.
What surprises me is that he seems to believe me without question. Then again, I think, if anyone would – it would be someone like him, the kind of boy who runs wild in the undergrowth and dances in lightning.
I resolve to myself, as we crunch across the snow, to enjoy these precious moments outside of the Gold for all of my other lives, and for the life that I will return to after I find the heir. I resolve to myself to enjoy it for all of the people I’ve loved, too, all the ones who are already gone – for the lord who I’d devoted all my lives to, the reason why I was here, and for my older sister who would have loved the snow, and for my first mother, who would have certainly tried to get recipes from all of the vendors.
Leonidas and I go out onto the ice, and, predictably, we are not so graceful. I think that we get a handle on how to skate by the end of the evening, but there are countless falls and scrapes and bruises before then. He clings to me, at first, and I try desperately to keep both of us steady, my wings sticking out at awkward angles; that does very little to keep the both of us from falling, and I worry, at first, that the falls will scare him off, but he seems to take them in stride until he finds his pace, and he finally, finally seems to enjoy himself. It takes me a bit longer, unused as I am to this body – which is larger and ganglier and winged and horned in ways that I have never been before -, but I finally learn to glide across the ice with some semblance of grace. It makes me admire the people who glide past us with practiced ease all the more – keeping your balance isn’t easy at all.
We keep trying until we are both sore and exhausted and the night has grown even longer and darker than I might have imagined, and twice as cold. (My breath trails white wherever we go, and I think that it is beginning to flurry; I watch the small white flakes dance with delight.) It is then that he asks me if I’d like to get hot chocolate, and I laugh and I grin and I agree with him, because I’ve never had chocolate (hot or otherwise) before. He leads me to the booth, and, when I try the chocolate, I discover that I don’t even know what to compare it to. I nearly burn my tongue in my eagerness to drink it down.
I don’t know what I expected of this world – but it is sweeter than anything I could have imagined, and, as I watch my friend’s smiling face, I can’t help but feel warm in spite of the winter chill.
I came here with a mission.
It is important, regardless, to love all the little things.
@
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
