The pain was there, clinging above his shoulders, where nothing stood, nothing rose but the terribly heavy void. Around him lay the scattered feathers of a snowy owl, mummified by the biting cold of the plain. How could such a creature have succumbed to the very season that was its own?

Between his clumsy fingers, the man in white (Arthur) gathered the bird’s feathers, drawing them close to himself. Drawing everything he could in toward his body: his limbs carefully tucked beneath him for warmth, his tail pulled against his thighs, his head nestled against his own flank.

There was only him now, alone with himself. With that solitude, the heavy absence that loomed above his head like a sword of Damocles.
His body remained strong; his mind lay shattered into a thousand fragments, as fragile as spring ice, ready to give way and swallow him whole.

But he still had the feathers, into which he buried his face, contemplating with quiet admiration the care with which the Creator had fashioned them, each one so perfectly wrought.

---

A weird dog sniffing his feathers for you, Satale lol!

So she is not the only feather-thief in these parts.

Sal does not care that she went to sleep in one place and awoke in another. She does not care that the air tastes strange, that gravity weighs ever-so-slightly heavier on her shoulders. That her fur feels thicker, her limbs feel fuller. She cares only about the thief, a dragon atop a pile of priceless gold...

( How pretty they'd look in her fur instead! )

She stalks him like a cat—tail-wriggle and all—but without the keen grace of one. Her tan-and-tawny coat is easy to spot against the endless billows of snowy-white and frost-dusted trees, but her steps are light and soundless. Her eyes, wide and round like rubies, observe the slumped creature for just a moment. Just long enough to hesitate.

To feel a strange, aching pang in her chest.

Then, it's gone.

She stops just shy of him, stealth forgotten and given way to curiosity. The scar that cuts across his shoulder gives her pause, makes her shiver—what a painful prize that must have been. A reminder of old victories, or past failures?

That's a looot of pretty feathers, she drawls, carefully sneaking a paw forward to grab at the nearest one she could. Certainly enough to share...?

---

tags. Arthur