I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

Finally, he is cold. Cold enough that the breath plumes before him. Cold enough that he can feel it begin icing over his hooves—the frost digging in and yet feeling no pain. That is perhaps the part that he loves most. He loves the numbness. The way it soothes him, wipes him free of it all. He closes his eyes and feels nothing but the endless ice and fog and winter that he calls, ignoring the thrashing of endless summer and writing his own desires into existence. 

It is beautiful to be cold. To be numb. 

He stands in silence, deep in the forest, and listens to the critters that scurry away from the winter of his own making. He sends it deeper and deeper into the roots of trees until they too shiver and crackle and protest the ache that he drives into them. 

Better than him. 

Better than the endless anguish of a soul tore clean in two. 

It’s easier this way, he reckons. Easier to turn a blind eye away from the sins of his past and embrace ignorance. Ignore those he has hurt. Those he has abandoned. Ignore the women and the children. His parents. His siblings. The wolves that howl in his dreams. 

A muscle jumps in his jaw—the only sign of pain buried so far beneath the ice. A twitch on his shoulder as his russet wings rustle and then settle. Another breath as he centers himself and draws the cold back into him. Directing it into his veins. His heart. Freezing whatever he can. 

When he opens his eyes again, they are as cold as the rest of him. 

And finally, finally, he feels peace. 

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

Cold begets cold and if he were a man made for softness, it might appeal to him. The likeness echoing from her might pull at him like gravity. Might pique his interest. Might pull him forward so that he might dip his head toward the mirror and then fall beneath it. But he is no such thing. He is no soft man and he just stands there, quiet and still. He tilts his antlered head to the side and looks down to the greeting of ice that slithers across the floor like a serpent.

His own branches from him, but it lacks the grace of hers. It is not gentle or probing. It’s a violent crack, like a deadened tree finally succumbing to the heart of winter.

It nearly makes him startle, the prey instinct in him not so smothered.

It is only by pure stubborn will that he doesn’t move. That his own ice jumps toward hers in a violent burst of speed and then a quiet stilling. It meets and recedes almost immediately, as if he could not believe he would have allowed a touch, separated from him as it was.

“I am many things,” he says and wonders at how it sounds like a snarl. How such a simple interaction can leave him like a cornered animal. How weak and vulnerable he still is, even with this raging blizzard now trapped beneath his skin. “Cold is one of them,” he allows, softening his gunmetal voice so that it sounds more cordial and less like an attack.

There is silence, and he is once again brought face to face with his own ineptitude. Would she interpret the silence in some way? Or would she look through the veneer and see a man who has never flourished in company? Who has only ever known the wrong thing to say?

An ache in his chest, a painful swallow.

“Brigade,” a bullet, a greeting, the only thing he knows to offer. 

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame

I was a poor boy; you were a bright light
I was a sinner and you were a snake

He is numb, but he was never meant to be an unfeeling thing. Heavens, how he wishes that he had been—how he wishes that he could have been. He wishes that he could simply put his heart in a box and never hear from it. How he wishes that he could simply amputate that useless muscle from his body; simply dig a knife into his chest until it pops out—a poor, dull beating that thrums uncontrollably in his head.

But he has no such luck.

No such kindness.

He is, instead, constantly wore down by the thing that thrashes against the ice that encases him. It sets fire to him, protesting the winter that now bears a heavy hand upon his spine. He grits his teeth, burying deeper in the cold so that he can continue to wear this mask of indifference.

There is a flash in his storm grey eyes as they look to her, something that belies his stony expression, and he schools his features as quickly as he can instead. Thinks about the girl before him who is sculpted from the thing that now defines him. Oh, how natural it rests upon her shoulders. How delicate winter looks set upon her brow. He is so graceless in his fight against nature; he nearly cannot recognize it in her.

“So many things,” he says, an attempt at delay poorly disguised behind his steely gaze. This would be the natural pause for a chuckle, for a breathy exhale—something charming, perhaps—but he has no such skill. Instead he lets the silence stretch to a nearly uncomfortable degree before allowing:

“Disappointment, if you were to ask most people who have crossed paths with me.”

shook like some old souls when our bones broke
swallowed the sickness, a fever, a flame