Meadow

His words were the hammer, and Nicholas sat the anvil. Against him, Anawar beat the blade into form; ready to sharpen and grind against the foul glories of the status quo. The stretch of his back was tickled by the passing of the winds, breathing a flurry of snow against their figures and tightening them with its frigid dance. A sigh levied from his lungs; the vapours caught in the frothing wind to scrape back against his face. He considered these things presented, held to his chest as tight one might with cards at the table. Nicholas eyed him carefully, skepticism pinching at his mouth and eyes in quiet regard.

The moment passed and pulled from him the beginnings of his reply, and the innerworkings of his own resilience.

“For a fortnight I had the Shore, bested by some wayward nag who lost it just as quick.” He never caught her name. But it did invoke some tenderness, a memory of a damsel that had needed him once: Ofelia. It was meant to have been a blessed start, a chance to replace the wrongdoings of his past and piece back the shards of losing his Evfimya, the mother of his own grown children; and the last smiteful memory he’d had of her. Snow. And Blood. Heartache wound about him as a snake might. Pulling its scales across the rugged dark of his coat and inspiring a soften touch of near defeat. “Pretenders with their erroneous successes are just as much of a nuisance as the best of gladiators.” It grumped from his mouth, given with spite and ire. It pooled at his feet, seated in appropriate grievances and made for him a foundation for reprisal and want. Eyeing Anawar, it seemed better to present honesty over blind bravado. Nicholas had always been the careful sort.

“Not sure if I’ve the temper to lead any longer,” he breathed in the insistency of his newfound kin’s strength, the urgency of this storied offering. He felt Tinuvel come from across the Isles. He felt her breath whisper to them hearth and home. He felt her fingers in the silk of his mane, and pass across the velvet of his ears. He closed his eyes, tasting the brine and winter, the frost, the rime, the cold stone beneath his steps. It filled him with visions of the Arch, the Bay, the Cove, and the Bay. The many places Lyov and his family had stood, the many thrones they built from seaweed and ice. “But you are right. The winds are fortuitous, brother Anawar.”

With gelid kisses of snow planting across his brow and down the bridge of his face, he felt it as much as Anawar must. “Tinuvel is calling us home.”