Winter Scholar's Prize

[taichara]

Title: Winter Scholar's Prize
Challenge: [53] Literature
Wordcount: 406
Characters: Vexen, (Riku)
Spoiler Warning: References events in CoM [reverse rebirth].
Notes: What is it like to see in another what one so desperately desires?


He smiled, hair shivering with frost, and turned to face the moon-haired fury
that whirled to face him grimly, sea-fire eyes narrowed in anger and razor-winged death held high in silent warning.

What mattered the brief agony of that black winged blade now?
There was such a promise and a power held locked within the heart of this silver shadow --

He smiled, and struck between like the winter's midnight wind,
and laid the little darkness-prince's heart asunder like a precious opened book.

And such sweet, pained verse came tumbling from the torn and fragile pages of this precious work!
Such a prize, such a sweet and precious thing; and the frost-master felt a stab of brilliant diamond desire like an icy dagger in this throat,
a winter's hollow hunger for such a bright and vibrant life.

Here, he read of emptiness and betrayal; here, words of envy and bitter anger.
Here, also, was the blood-sharp tang of pride, sorely wounded; and, the very bindings
holding the dark-torn pages yet in their place --
the fluttering of a soft faint light not quite given up for lost.

For the briefest bitter moment he is tempted to tear the fragile leaves asunder, feed the hollowness inside with the stolen self of a dying heart.
What right had this untried boy to such a precious thing, this strength of twilight power ..?
But -- still -- to steal away this darkling power, these stolen shards of a heart betrayed ..

From such a thing -- shaped, carved away into the cold purity of winter --
shall the frost-master forge a sword of ice, perfect mirror of the sharp silver shadow-prince,
as once the sweet disciple copied his wise master's words.

This heart will not be his; but from it's blackened husk he shall carve another, though the ice-sharpness goad him unendingly.

A sword of black-winged frost to set upon the child of light, toy of the blighted rose ...


All this and more the frost-master read between one moment and the next, cold dead eyes closed as memory flew by
and the endless hunger keened like winter wind within his empty breast.

He caged the plundered power within -- to still the desire buried deep -- as one would a litany,
and faded from the world to draw a false heart from the dark.

Comments

[osmandias.livejournal.com]

*purrs contently* I do love this. Your writing style is so poetic, and it gets so much across with the imagery.

[taichara]

Bless ye kind ^_^ I'm glad to hear that the imagery in this one worked out well; there were a few patches where I was not quite so certain ..

Thanks again ^_^

[3irien.livejournal.com]

Beautiful... but I wonder if this is a drabble or a poem?

[taichara]

It's cast in much the same vein as one I posted recently (Guardian At The Gate), which was allowed ...

So I suppose I shall have to wait and see once again ^_^