07-20-2016, 04:51 AM
silence, like a cancer grows
At last, he is alone. Within the thick blanket of darkness, he has finally crept away, his sinewy muscle and growing limbs carrying him off beneath a starless sky as he slips past the icy barricade that has become his imprisonment. The brisk evening air soothes his pounding, beating heart as he glances behind him with dark eyes, peering into the shadows behind him as he listens closely for anything - anyone creeping behind him. Alas, he is secluded, left alone to his own devices - and a deep, weary sigh is breathed heavily from the depths of his fragile chest. He does not pause, nor does he hesitate. This is his moment - a moment to breathe; a brief reprieve from the suppression of his insufferable parents and siblings.
He adores them, deep beneath the simmering resentment and anxiety that dwells within the pit of his too-weak heart. Yet, he has grown tired of the constant affection, of the lingering worry within their eyes - none of them look upon him as an equal, but a lesser. He is a burden - flawed and broken; something to fret over. Someone to pity. He has never known the freedom of exploration, of adventuring. He has been kept captive, protected and sheltered from the danger of what looms beyond the icy barrier that surrounds his birth land. He cannot blame them. He understands why - he is fragile; a danger unto himself. Too weak to flee peril and too broken to fight it off.
Finally, he has descended from the very peaks of the mountains and the depths of the forest, and as the sun slowly peeks from beyond the horizon, his alabaster and obsidian pelt glimmers with pale yellow and soft periwinkle skylight. He is bathed in its beauty, awed by its unrestrained glow. His breath wafts before him, but the icy chill of morning hardly disturbs him. It is nothing in comparison to the frostbitten dawn of the tundra. He admires the frost that clings tightly to dying blades of green, which will soon be buried beneath a blanket of snow. An altogether too familiar sight for the grown prince. He presses his nostrils to the thick brush, inhaling the faint scent of pine and dirt that linger. He savors the way it tickles the bridge of his nose; he revels in the way that it bends to his will.
And suddenly, with his painted cheek pressed against the taut branches of a thicket, he stops. The sweet breath of another overwhelms him and he startles, dark brown eyes wide with uncertainty. His heart pounds again - badum, badum, and then it skips, as it always has - and he studies the figure lurking within the shadows of morning.
"I'm sorry, I .. I didn't see you," He stammers, suddenly uneasy as his confidence wavers.
ARGO
the fragile ice prince.