lepis, comtesse of taiga
RUN AND TELL ALL OF THE ANGELS; THIS COULD TAKE ALL NIGHT
i think i need a devil to help me get things rightLepis often walks the border. The Comtesse is a rather unimposing sentry, but she is what they have. In the past it was even a task she enjoyed, a way to acquaint herself with the edges of her realm, to see what she should not look for otherwise. She does not find pleasure in the undertaking today, not with the frozen ground and the bitter wind and the frigid swelling inside her chest.
The wind whips at her over-long navy hair, tangles it into knots and snarls the smooth fade of navy to white. Golden wings, clutched tightly to her sides, are warm enough. Yet Lepis seeks shelter frequently, and tells herself that these pauses allow enough snow to build that she might see the tracks of anyone passing into Taiga that she has not seen. A few minutes after leaving a small copse, she finds such a trail, one that leads farther into the woods. The trees there grow closer together, providing far more shelter from the wind, and even though there is a moment of worry (who has slipped in unseen?), it is counter-balanced by the relief from bad weather.
It is a foal she sees first, and her heart clenches. Not alone, surely.
But no, it responds to a call she does not hear over the wind, disappearing down a path that Lepis swiftly follows.
“Hello?” She calls out, knowing that the child and its guardian must be nearby. Her mouth opens to call again and then falls further at the sight of a familiar red face.
“Noah?!” Lepis exclaims incredulously – her presence here, in winter, with a child that is surely hers – all this and more flickers across her face, and then disappears. Disappears because that expressive face is buried in soft coppery wings that smell of every flower Lepis has ever seen a hundred she hasn’t. “How lnog has it been?!” She exclaims, pulling away with a smile that blurs between the joy of reunion and the guilt of the answers that she knows is: too long.
Gale’s funeral, she thinks. When Noah had scattered flowers across the fresh earth of his grave. The memory strikes a newer chord, a different death – no less painful than the first. More so, even, and her voice quakes uncharacteristically when she admits:
“I’ve missed you.”
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