#wilccard

the blue-white ice underneath her boots shined too bright for her to look at directly. she had to trust her next steps would fall on steady ground; she had to believe the ice would hold them both. the magnificence of the icebergs had always intimidated her --- how deep they stretched beneath the water, how they moved and grew and shrank with regard for nothing but the cold. yet she had never been one to let intimidation keep her away. it was why she climbed one of the bergs now, intending to reach the top by spite alone. a challenge to god, to herself, to the chill of this land: i am here, and you will not be rid of me so easily. 

“if i had known you were so slow, i’d have brought absolutely anyone else with me.” she turned on her heel, flashing a grin at the boy behind her. “come, little soldier. surely, you were trained better than this.” 

♣ for a drunk text. 

“we’re all writers of history in our own way, silly. there is still time to change what is said  —  there always is. mine will always have you in it, just so you know. i hope you are okay with it.” 

slowly, Edward turns to look at the soldier. His brow is raised, as if he took offense to the words personally (a bit, perhaps), though a moment later, a corner of his mouth turns up. “Say, were you speaking with anyone particular in mind?” he asks. There’s a playful tone in his voice, a touch of joke behind his words—play a game, they can. “Besides—the older you get, the less of a priority joy becomes. Trust me.”

the sound of drunken laughter and revelry carries in swirling tides of joy and uninhibited freedom from the shores of godhvn all the way across the baffin bay. the air is beginning to shift, as celebrations like these are wont do, as the liquor flows swifter and the trade and barter for local spirits and improvised moonshine makes its way through the gathered crowd. in the center of it all, the eye of a maelstrom, is augustus. augustus in his napoleonic burnous, racing rings around the tracks laid out with ropes and brilliantly coloured ribbons upon his noble stallion that he has aptly named zeph (short for zephyros, naturally). augustus, surrounded danish and promethean alike, sweeping the card table in a stroke of deus ex machina luck. augustus, making friends everywhere he goes with promises to return and make merry with the local sailors and fishermen in summers to come, yet thinking of the one friend whose face he hasn’t seen amongst the sea of familiar ones all evening. 

he makes his excuses from the card table to a cheer of raucous teasing and jeers, and finds his axis of gravity tilted by a few degrees by the whisky he’d taken several swills of from a burly danish sailor’s flask. (hans, terrible at games but had a flair for distilling housemade whisky.) he manages to swagger his way to the exit, lifting the flap of the tent clumsily and letting it fall. the brightly painted tarp flicks at his cape as he steps out into the night air, as if to make one last grasp at the heart of all its easy merriment.

above the tents tapering endlessly higher, the stars are brighter than they have ever been in london’s skies. entranced, he finds himself a spot on the grass a few feet away from the entrance of the tents and splays himself out on the ground. more out of the drunken inability to cling to gravity than a purposeful dismount. and perhaps it’s because they know each too well to stay apart for any length of time (or that vladimir happens to stumble out of the tent of wonders and catch the torchlight gleaming from the gilded crown askew upon his head), but he whirls in staggered delight at the sound of his name.

“dimor!”  he cries out, waving both arms above his head in greeting.  the sight of vladimir sends a brilliant grin across his gilt-kissed face, a solar flare elation.  “old boy, it seems you have jousted with dionysus himself and lost. come, come, sit and tell me of your exploits this evening and how you managed to find a liquor strong enough to knock you off your feet!”