It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
W
inter fell away.
Spring came forward, bursting with life through the bitter cold. Giving promise to a new beginning. A beginning of life. Elena has ached for the spring, to show her daughter the flowers coming forth, to show her the green of the trees, and to introduce her to the warmth of the season. But for all the newness that has come with the season, Elena feels herself performing all too similar actions and the wearing the same emotions on her sleeve.
She runs with all the grace of sunlight, weaving easily through the trees and around the enormous stones until her shoulders darken subtly with sweat and shadow. Her thoughts are singular, an echo of the pain in her chest, pushing her faster and further. The vivid of her blue eyes bright.
They are dead, dead, dead, dead. They are gone, gone gone.
In another world, one where Elena continued to grow wild and free, she may have never felt as broken as she did. In another world where her parents did not die, where this time of year did not fill her with both hurt and rage, guilt and sorrow.
And before she knows it— she is at the ocean again. Throwing messages in bottles and praying they reach the shores of Taiga. Lilli once asked her why everything had to be so complicated. They had been tucked together under a Hyaline night sky. There are too many ways that life can hurt you. Fire and ice both burn, Elena knows this best. So Elena knows not whether to freeze out the world or blaze through it. So she stands there frozen to death and a pile of ash.
She thinks of Elliana. Sunlight and shadows. Opposites, and yet they came together in the perfect creation. Can fire and ice co exist to create something as beautiful as her own daughter? Elena doesn't think so. She knows fire hurts, fire destroys, but fire, fire is alive and grows and breathes. Ice is the quiet killer, the assassin, the murderer. So much more deliberate than fire. And Elena knows she would rather go up in smoke than wait for her blood to turn cold.
Those painfully blue eyes look out to the ocean. She should be getting back. There are responsibilities she cannot ignore, no matter how much she wishes to on a spring day like this one. She turns and as she does, it is then the chill creeps down her spine, as cold as an icicle glinting in the sunlight. She has felt this chill, once, twice, in her life. But Elena remembers it well: ice magic. She turns to face him with winter in her eyes, she doesn't recognize her face, though she is still quick to pass judgment on him, if maybe more so for his lack of familiarity. She takes a single step towards him, tries to keep her voice steady. “Ice does not often reach the shores of Terrastella. Do you have a reason for traveling this way?”
ven to a creature born of ice, of glacial winters where the moisture froze in the corner of your eyes and summers where the sun never dropped below the horizon, the warmth of a new spring day felt good on his back.
Amaroq knows he is unwelcome among the peoples of Novus; he is too clearly set apart, a hunter, something other and strange. He doesn’t need his recent scars to remind him of his status, but his behavior does not change; no ocean could be closed to one such as he - and no stretch of coastline either.
The unicorn is only sunning himself the way any well-fed wild thing does on a warm day after a long winter. There is no blood to darken the pale lengths of his hair; the saltwater is dry on his skin. He dozes, lulled by the crash of the incoming tide, flicking an ear at the occasional call of a gull or trill of a meadowlark.
He smells her first, and even then he would be content to ignore her - but then she steps toward him. Languidly, like a stretching wolf, he turns toward her, and the curiosity of his gaze quickly sharpens to meet the winter in her own. He recognizes that look: your kind is not welcome.
For now, his expression remains even, unbothered. Ice does not crawl down his skin, or breath patterns up his horn. But there is a warning in his tone when he answers her. “No? And yet I am no stranger to these coasts. But the only frost I hear is in your voice.” Amaroq does not respond to her question - his reasons are his own, however innocuous - but responds with one of his own. “Am I not welcome to go where I wish, as any citizen of these lands?”
She looks harmless enough. He does not yet show his teeth.
Home isn't where the heart is. It's wherever the wind feels right.
S
he nearly collides with him, stopping in time and looking over her shoulder one last time before turning to face him. “Sorry, I was, I thought I saw something,” she is breathing hard. “And what do you think you saw?” He says reaching out to touch her shoulder. “I’m not sure. I was just scared.”
She moves out from beneath his touch. “And you didn't stay to find out?” He asks “No, I just ran,” she spits back at him. “Not everyone can be as fearless as you.”
“You assume I am fearless. And what makes a person fearless, Elena?” He asks and for the first time she does not recoil at the sound of her name on his tongue. She grows quiet as there is movement in the trees and the shadows turn ugly. Elena moves instinctively towards him, slinking into his chest, finding herself fitting beneath his chin in much the same way she had with another man that she says she still loves even if she doesn't believe it. She is so close to him, the first time she has truly touched him like this and she feels how truly dead he is, the way he chills her skin. Her body is steady but inside she shakes with a coldness she cant explain. She wants to move away, convinces herself that is what she wants, what makes sense, but suddenly finds that she can’t.
So she doesn’t. Instead, she stares up at him with eyes of fire, enough to thaw death a hundred times over. “It’s looking into the eyes of a monster—and staying all the same.”
Elena has a childhood of monsters. But they did not follow her over to Novus (it is a blessing that they should never know Frostbane, Ostere, or Tunnel). But she is not so free, for monsters can be created any where, by anyone.
A wind comes of the sea smelling of salt and clean clear air. He looks at her and she knows she should just leave him, she should, but his words are like hooks. “Maybe because I was not expecting such a cold morning,” she says with narrowed blue eyes. It is unfair of Elena to assume, to act this way, but ice has never brought with it any good, any kindness, she would not expect such things today.
“If within reason,” Elena says coolly. “And intentions are pure,” The Champion tells him. “Can I expect as much from you?” She asks, hardly blinking for there lurks fear beneath that golden sunshine skin of hers. And then. “I thought ice thawed in the spring.”
t is impossible to look at her and see a threat. She is much smaller than him, and softer-edged, and the color of malleable gold. There is a heart-shaped mark on her brow, and no horns or antlers or teeth like the ones that line his mouth.
And yet she is still needling at him, glaring at him with eyes blue and cold as a winter morning. He wonders if she is one of those with hidden magic, dangerously strong. Either that, or she is mad.
Amaroq licks his teeth, the bones and shells wound in his mane chiming softly in the wind. They sound a little like laughter, but he is not smiling. He does, however, raise a brow when she mentions the cold of the morning. “I’ve found it very pleasant.”
He almost does laugh, when she says and intentions are pure. It is ridiculous, her statement - the audacity of making it, and the fact that none of the land-horses would ever call his intentions pure. The seal does not wonder at the intentions of the orca, nor the hare the wolf; one thing was made with teeth and a blood-hunger, and the other made to run.
The unicorn steps nearer, and this time when he exhales fog curls like dragon-smoke up around his muzzle. There is a glint in his eye like frost hung in a pane of glass, caught by dawn. “All I’m seeking today is to enjoy the warmth - or does the sun belong to you, too?” Amaroq continues to advance, unhurried. “And what are your intentions, mare? Or are you the only one who can ask?”
He wonders if she will retreat, or flee, or reveal her magic. And when she says ice he extends a little more of his power, so that the blades of grass at his feet begin to freeze, and the white carpet reaches toward her. It will melt in moments beneath that midday sun - at least once Amaroq has decided whether he’s in a mood to be provoked. “Not for my people,” he says.
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