hellsparkle

[ Apologies for the wait. ]

Peace—the temple for your thoughts—cannot last. He knows this, a certainty as deep as the bones of the world, and yet, it fills his heart with dark anger and vicious flame when the serenity is shattered. The veil across his black gaze draws back.

But his head does not lower; not yet. Pitiful gray clouds ghost across a distant sky, felling their burdens like soft, white tears, and the black, bony fingers of the crown-less trees arc across his vision. No one has spoken yet, but they are there: he can sense them, heartbeats in the darkness, like a presence touching the edges of his awareness.

Their existence is a blemish on this peaceful evening.

The first one to reveal itself is tall, undoubtedly hairy, with twin horns rising like cruel peaks from a thin skull. He reeks of male, of cold winds and bitter northlands, his voice a cruel, disrespectful memory lodged deeply in His mind. He had seemed to assume Hellsparkle knew anything of what was going on here, for he had pitched a question obviously relating to whatever happened here in this forest, but the myriad of scents tell him nothing. Is the stranger here to claim his loyalty?

Or his body?

Perhaps he has strolled into the grove of prostitutes.

His inner smirk doesn't touch his face, but it offers him a certain amount of dark glee to imagine this brusque stranger ridden for coin. A dirty thought pleasantly at odds with the purity of snow.

"Buying," he offers with a white breath, a purr trembling just beneath his smooth voice. Upon his haunches, his little pet rolls her molten eyes and her mouth splits into a wide, feral grin. Hot paw-pads knead his black back. She's laughing, silently.

Alas, for the good of all, he is not left alone with his conquest. A mare, spotted black and with wings he has never seen on a horse before, is coming up out of the shadows; she's young, he can tell. Give her a year or two and she'll have shed the last telltale gangliness of youth. She looks like she'll always be nimble, but it's just that disproportionate slimness of her chest and hips—his dark gaze sweeps over her once, satisfied but uninterested. And her greeting is almost as peculiar as the old one's, and one dark 'brow arches. "And, pray tell, am I or he the gentle one?" But the smile touching his dark lips is rather kind, while the feline on his back sinks to her belly with a sigh, furry tail drooping down his haunch along with her splayed wings.

To think, that just five minutes ago, he had stood alone, undisturbed, this new corner of the world laid out before him: and now he was the center of his own little crowd. He isn't sure whether to be pleased or not.

Perhaps his little moment of tranquility was nothing but fate's preparation for tonight: cold snow, crystalline and pure and dry with chill, falls thickly from the boughs above, cascading to cover them. Hellsparkle's ears flatten for a moment, and something dark courses through his eyes as he spits on fate and searches the sky.

She could've been nothing but a dream, floating lithely on pale, wide wings. She could've been a sprite, but she's laughing, and his pet swipes angrily at the fallen snow heaped upon his back; it melts at the touch of her hot pads.

What was it he had thought earlier? She is ferocity, and he pretends at calm—so with a hiss carrying his annoyance too she launches from his back, black form speeding up through the confines of branches with ease. He soars with her, unclenching his ears, offering his company a sympathetic glance from dark eyes while his hellion chases the pearly wraith, spitting gouts of flame after her pretty tail.

"I suppose she was not the gentleman," he observes with composed amusement, ruffling his folded wings a little to shed snow.

[ While I do believe that "gentleman" instead of "gentlemen" was a typo, I capitalized on it. Shamelessly. @Albrecht @Erthë! @Myrrine ]

hellsparkle

He's used to mortal sins and folly. He has lived long enough to learn of these things, greed, love, lust, kindness. He knows what gritty darkness can lurk behind radiance. He knows he can't trust anyone—but himself.

So it doesn't surprise him, not really, that it turns to chaos. Subtle, social mayhem, as the old lanky man cries out in foul language, and the pearly wraith on her wide wings laugh even as hell chases after her, and a stranger marches onto the scene with a kind of confidence and dedication that is, in a world such as this, admirable. In the gentle snowfall he seems nearly white, and he doesn't stop until he is face-to-face with the beast itself; Hellsparkle stares evenly into those eyes of pale blues, refusing to be cowed. "I am Cem," he says as dragonfire scorches the little sprite's pristine tail and sends her away.

And thus, it has been laid in his lap, a choice he did not expect but now has to make; the lanky girl makes her way away from them, leaving the men alone, and his black eyes roll over the stallions present. They are tall, both of them. Is that a perquisite here? White smoke plunges from his nostrils. Surely this Cem, bold and brazen, represents another nation.

Aurora Basin, or a land of courage?

He does not want to make this choice, not with his bones gnawed clean in such a way. The blunt offer is appealing, it calls wickedly to the darker sides of his soul—come, come away, and it is almost as if Cem knows that He is God.

But to give that game away, or not?

His pet settles back onto his snow-laden haunches, giving her fur a shake and the tall, pale Cem a disconcerting grin. He stalls; she knows. He tries for caution, for tempering, for not tipping his hand so soon—she is a beast, her heart yelling for the hunt, her senses roaring out her conviction.

It is like a black storm rising inside of him, brought into life from bloodstained pages, a hymn bleeding out from the slit throats he has left behind. Black wings ruffle against his sides as he grapples with himself; does he dare to whisper an oath of allegiance so soon? Does he dare to follow one who sets his blood running in such a wicked, wicked way? He doesn't know this land; he has no plans, not yet, but...

"Yes," he responds, mere inches from Cem's face that he is. His voice is white smoke and bleeding little drops of arrogance, and black lips curve into the ghost of a wicked smile—he is trying, oh how he is trying, to contain that which bubbles deep in his prideful soul. "Let us go."

[ I'm sorry this is very late, my life really, really hated on me for a long time and I chose to prioritize Mauja. Sorry if this throws some weird kinks in a timeline. @Albrecht @Knox ]