Black Is The Color of My True Love's... [private]
Near Darkening, 12 of Kalendryas, Winter, PF XV
A cruel combination of snow and sleet paved the streets of Vortex, crunching and slipping beneath the tread of its ambivalent citizenry. This unkind cold was commonplace as the moons, awe inspiring but easily forgotten.
Anora looked a raven pacing over the winter ground as she waited outside the doors of the library. She wore a black habit over her gray gown. The habit was snug about her torso, fastened up the center and lined in black fur, possibly a wolf's. It showed from her high collar and her cuffed sleeves.
Darkening was settling its haunches on the horizon, and only torchlight protected by eaves illuminated those who passed. The woman floated between light and mottled dark, reckless when immersed in her element. Eyes plucked from a portrait would occasionally deflect the glare from the silver streets and alarm a passerby. The winter light fell so perfectly into her eyes, vain stars unafraid of whatever the darkening could produce.
Anora breathed momentarily into her gloved hands, more to bide the time then warm her fingers. She adored this merciless cold, and would not cover her face or black hair before it. It would be akin to wearing gloves into a lover's bed.
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"I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken."
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