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NADIR
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Snows usually came quick this time of year. It was as he'd said to Aesling; going to sleep on a perfectly dry, albeit cold evening, and waking up to six inches of powdery snow in the morning was not an uncommon occurrence in the City of Light. He found that he preferred the city most when it was like that, smothered in a thick blanket of white. It was almost like Regalia was as new; like the events of the past year were gone.
That wasn't the truth, of course.
A fresh coating of snow wouldn't magically return Rhoen to life, nor Alicientella to the form she was born in. It wouldn't un-burgle his home, and neither would it grant him back his arm or his Magic. He considered the snows to be moreso a convenient facade- a distraction, like a layer of paint over a crack in a load-bearing wall. The crack was still there, doubtless, still dangerous, but nobody would have to pay attention to it until either the wall buckled and crushed everything so it wouldn't matter anyway, or the paint flaked away to show the same old breaks in the bricks and holes in the mortar, warning of what was to come.
And that was all he needed, really- reprieve. He could return to his mournings sometime later, sometime when the world was back how it usually was, but he didn't need reminding now. Not yet.
Aeralaanys had long ago decided that the cathedral was his favourite part of the city. It was massive and sprawling, built of grey granite and grey stones, shaped into grey towers and grey spires. He considered it to be one of the more beautiful constructions in Regalia, for, in spite of its inherent greyness, it refused to present itself as drab. Great windows of glass stained tyrian and gold, carpets woven of violet threads. It wasn't bright, not by any means, but it was visually pleasing beyond any other building in the city.
He couldn't decide if he favoured it so because it reminded him of older, better days, or because it staunchly did not. After all, the spires and citadels of his childhood were all veined marble, with roofs of azure slates and beaten bronze or gold, not black and grey with sparsely scattered flashes of Imperial tones. And yet, for its lack of vividity, the cathedral's great, reaching towers were as close as the Empire's capital came to recapturing any Allorn splendour, excepting perhaps the Imperial Palace, and even then, neither structure could truly mark itself as equal to the marvels of old Allorn.
It hurt to remember them somewhat, those old marvels. The colossal palatial complex of the Empresses- Alar Talea. He'd visited before, no more than half a dozen times, never as long as he would have liked to. A testament to the glory of the Allorn; a monument to their power and grace, crafted of marble and magic. And, as with most of the great wonders, Alar Talea was gone. Some part of his mind, the part that still clung onto those ideals from a thousand years ago, wondered if it was his turn, next. No item or place or person could last forever, and as he had been made keenly aware, neither could he. What few remnants of that old Empire that persisted were falling away from Aloria like a handful of sand.
He'd prided himself on being one of those remnants before. The "Last of the Allorn", "the Forerunner", "the Primogenitor". All titles he'd adopted at some point, all titles that had some strain of truth in them, like a tapestry depicting legend; doubtlessly overstated, unquestionably false, and yet, as with any legend, there are threads of fact woven amongst the fiction, sobering reality rubbing shoulders with exhilarating fantasy, enough to obscure the real event, but not to wipe it out completely. And, yet, Aeralaanys considered them necessary. The world was merciless; it took tenfold of what it gave, granting no quarter, offering no reprieve. And, in this time, reprieve was what he needed; to retreat into the embrace of an old lie and forget the world and all it had taken.
For now, the world was white. For now, what was wrong and cruel and dark was blanketed and smothered. For now, he wouldn't have to pay attention. The howling winds of winter are cold, he thought; he need not focus on more than warmth. Everything else is periphery. He could stay at home with his books- avoid these rumours of imperceptible clickers and house-robbings. He hoped. For now.
