prompt 13 | “follow the bell home.”
in the same rhythm as the turning of seasons, lars felt his own self turning.
it started small. piecemeals of effort that began as simple as the habit of keeping the windows open at night to let the air in, as no longer letting old muddy clothes heap at the corners of the room. then it was letting others through, reaching out and reaching in, lowering his walls of ice for passage. his very first day, he loathed most here, answering the call only as a possible way out of his unthawing grief. now he wanted to protect each and every one for the warmth they brought him, standing in the way between all and ruination, shield upright. from wall to path, from barrier to opening, it started small and steady until he was ready for the full overhaul. he was ready to let go of certain things. but the very idea of letting something go had always come across as a hidden form of betrayal to him. to let go, lars so plainly supposed, was to forget. and yet he had been shown it to be false. he had been shown that grief could be gathered up and cast into the wind like ashes, yet the love can still be kept as a beautiful urn on the shelf. that shelf could hold other keepsakes, too. there was room in him, he had found, for both loves lost and loves earned. helene and simon. tusk and now, a new companion. they walked to the edge of the woods, hands laced together. the air felt dewy, the trees stood in the threshold between spring and autumn, and the evening had languidly begun to seep into a nightly chill. all around them, the forest creaked and swayed and burst: sounds he would treasure before winter came and silenced it. yet the warmth around his hand would remain even then. lars had faith in that above all else. over the call of the woods, tinkled a small, silver bell he had brought along for the ceremony. tusk used to wear it around her collar whenever they went on walks through snowy days, the sound always telling him where she was, and to hear it once more felt as though her ghost was at their heels, tail wagging along. as they neared the place of the ritual, lars pored over the words simon had told him to recite. not master or servant, but equal to equal. he believed that to be true of any bond between a human and their pet animal. a pet was no servant, no lesser, but rather a friend and ward and companion. they brushed past a few, reaching branches and paused in a clearing. the trees now ringed them, silvered at their tips by the first inklings of moonlight. a cold wind raked through leaves and branches, breezing past with no pause as lars called onto his divinity. the thought of the cold in his veins as a divine birthright still mystified him, yet blood was blood. he knew the cold well because he was born of it. he had never reached out to his father since his first prayer, seemingly unheard. he had thought of never making contact again, jilted by the silence, but his stubbornness refused. if boreas hadn’t answered the first call, then let him be shaken by the second. hands locked with simon’s, he suddenly felt the rush of moonlight through him, flooding every part until it found the ice deep within and refracted off it. the silver bell was whisked by a blustering wind, tinkling wildly. frost bloomed over the metal, yet the ring of it kept on and on, calling and calling. a faint dusting of wind appeared on nearby trees. his hands around simon’s, however, kept their warmth. in fact, he felt imbued by a strange warmth, pushing past the borders of his cold magic in a heat signal. the bell rang and rang and rang. then it clattered to a stop on the now frozen ground. after a pause, he slowly breathed out a plume of white. and something, somewhere, in the woods did the same. @roguelunatiic