Pale sun rays colored the darkness of his closed eyelids, face upturned to the sky and smile curling peacefully at the edges. There was no formal patrol tying him to the meadow’s boundaries, no request or command to fulfill with his presence. Instead, the Prince merely soaked in the sun, energizing and relaxing simultaneously. Ilaria was sunbathing on his back, the crisp wind tousling hair, fur, and feather alike. Soon the sun’s warmth would not penetrate the shell of frost and snow, and he would be left strolling beneath grey-painted skies and flurries of snow. His scars ached subtly in his muscles, and Cera opened his eyes to the sun, wings lifting and arching to stretch the stillness out of his shoulders. His limbs followed, carefully arching his crest and his hind left leg, feeling the scars pull in that familiar, aching way as the skin was pulled taut and reluctant across his canvas. The cold had never favored him, so small of frame and with no meat to protect him from the elements; he was a child of the Sun, and the only favor he’d been born with was the abnormal span of his wings that valiantly sheltered him through every winter.
 
Cera prayed this would be a mild one.
 
A feminine bellow rang across the snow and dry stalks of thistle, causing pale ears to twitch amidst the mass of braided tresses as emerald eyes sought the harbinger of battle. Ilaria awakened alongside the trumpeting, scuttling up and down his spine in curiosity. Turning towards the sound Cera trailed after it, both intrigued and hopeful. His attempts at sparring his fellow desert-dwellers seemed to always fall flat, and if this stranger was offering an invitation to battle, Cera would at least investigate the proposition. He was a crafter, an artist. Nobody could deny his talent and passion for metallurgy, but they often forgot that he was Cera, Son of Midas. He had grown up shadowing the golden General, and then had taken to trailing behind Gaucho and Hector in turn. He had watched his father send himself off to war, lost and helpless upon the sands, incapable of joining him. There would always be a portion of his soul reserved for the survivor in the Prince, the one that bore the scars on his body with a grim sort of pride. Cera had vowed to work harder, to make Gaucho see him as more than a permanent Forger. There was diplomacy just within his grasp, but this? Perhaps he could begin this part of his plan as well.
 
The figure that approached at heightened speeds was at first distinctly unfamiliar to Cera, but just as the woman cried his name an old memory crackled to life before his eyes and he knew her. “Cirrus?!” he cried in return, grin splashing upon his face as he hiked his knees high through the thick snow, running to meet her. A responding whicker warmed his throat as they drew closer, not quite familiar enough to bump and brush muzzles but the greeting unnecessary anyways. Cera instinctively knew the devilish toss of her bare head, the static energy that seemed to leak from her pores and infect him, and he knew then that she had been the one to call out for a challenger. Cera’s grin twisted, mischievous in a way he so rarely revealed, a golden kitsune peering out from behind his eyes. One wing dipped and Ilaria threw herself into the snow to scamper away and out of the impending battle.
 
“It would be my pleasure,” he assured playfully, lunging for her with excitable energy, buffeting himself forward and through the snow with a lunge of his wings. It was a friendly spar, but he would not go entirely easy on her, and so he hoped to catch her off guard by leaping into the fray immediately. Hooves poised for the meat of her right shoulder, eyes gleaming like emerald fires and grin large and infectious, hoping to batter her in the face with his right wing when he crashed back down to earth – regardless of whether he struck her shoulder or not. 

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Attack: {1/3}
Words: 693

OOC HERE