Some Princes Don't Become Kings

Crumbled buildings; ivory spires, washed with dust and grit and gray. Roads, empty, echoing. Moss and grass between the tiling in less cold seasons. Snow, now, piling into drifts, the wind funneled between the walls, roaring, biting, but today, only biting. Long tendrils of dark hair blow about your hocks, flakes drifting past your ankles.

You hold your wings loosely against your side, your surprisingly thick winter coat insulation against the biting cold. It seems a flimsy defense, but unless the wind blows, you're fine.

You're not used to snow.

You're used to having a home, but you're not used to it being this home.

So, a ghost, you wander the streets. You peer into ruins. You watch the spires, and how the bleak sunlight strikes their empty windows and glitters upon frosted, sharp peaks. You see all this, and despite your fondness for those you now call herd mates, you cannot see it and think home.

Home is a rain-washed, temperate plain. Home is the wailers's mountains on the horizon, a red-tinged smudge. Home is summer thunderstorms and long, warm nights.

Home isn't ankle-deep in snow. Home isn't downpour after downpour after downpour. Home isn't a cruel sun beating down from a cloudless sky.

Home is with your Ma, your friends, your mentors.

Home is lost.

You clamp your jaws together, striding through the snow. A lonely, dark thing, leaving a lonely trail.