The moments were given a breadth to expand and pass, time exhaling them into wintry tides—he would not wait long, no. A figure soon joined with a second swiftly emerged, surfacing from nothing as though materialized from stone, shadow and the silt of winter. He was cautious with his expression, held quietly and without the prompting of machoism and ego. The question was fair, and from the directness and claim, it seemed certain he had been come upon by it is king. A breath fled his lips, Nicholas taking a moment to assess his own intentions and weigh the impulse that had brought him there. Too much like his mother, too much pulled from water and not enough like the steadfastness of his earthy sister. She was giving, but a better foundation for forethought and might. Whim had never been his downfall, but he rarely could read the roadmaps to his own instinct. He tested his teeth, clenching them in thought before greeting Warsaw with the drop of his chin.

“Curiosity I suppose, sir.” He, the interloper; he could see how one might find him the fox in the henhouse, the vermin in the stockpile. The roach to be crushed beneath the wheel. This was a kindness being paid, in offering query over act. The stranger before him seemed to be in no rush to elicit the folly of ill tempers; not swayed into act without the concession of prudence and strategy. A diplomat first, Nicholas decided; and that was enough to draw the same conciliation from him. He glanced to the mare, feeling the writhing of his own grief and pained reminders of what had been and what should have come to pass. Goaded not by the phantom ache, he gathered etiquette, giving to her a wide bow of his head in regard and greeting. “Good day to you, miss.”

He understood the explanation was far too vague, lacked the minutia of true intention and offered too much room for sordid leanings and salacious implications. He was not there to inspire violence or draw the whip of any’s ire to lash his otherwise peaceful wanderings. There came no sport in it, levied nothing towards the yearnings of his heart and soul. It would only rend and harrow the pieces of the future he was attempting to hewn, to perfect, to urge himself into accomplishing. Words warmed his tongue, their syllables collecting in a gyre of care and consideration before it being offered to his host.

“I wanted to see who held dominion over it,” his eyes lanced past Warsaw, though mindful to evade a predatory glimmer. His mind reached back towards his sparse time there, beneath the eye of what could have been a loving father, a doting figurehead—some one, better equip for the family he had deserved then and even now. “And perhaps torment myself a shade over the childhood I’d lost.” His heart lurched, and his jaw echoed it with a clench. He never enjoyed the softness of expression, the elicit coil of hurt and love and passion. He was made of stone, perhaps not the water he felt, but his mother had always said. Stone. Then again, perhaps, in all her callous nature, she had intended its meaning for something else. “My mother wasn’t one to stay in one place for very long, and my sister and I suffered for it.”

He paused, again the niggling feeling of diplomacy lifted beneath the gelid stretch of within. The wanderer offered another bow of his head to both. “My name is Nicholas, my father once held claim over the Arch, a place that no longer seems to exist.”


three shades of black is where i come from
lyov x magdalena