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The frost submerged the floor with its frigid crush in the bleak dead of the Midwinter night. Trees meant for rosy cheeked apples only cowered from the ice with broken, brown branches and bleached soulless leaves. The emergence of the new year had become a moment merely saturated into a memory of another washed out Yule, with dust disguised as pearlescent grass, belonging to the colder seasons of joy; though unfound, simply breathing with no heart or life, only lying dead in the world outside the cold, sheer windows of Dawn Winery.
Slithering inside, the cold blew out the single specks of warmth from the empty fireplace, ash and wood melted together into an icy meal, soiled with a dull grey. From the windows came the slanted pencils of hoary light, emitting an empty morning mist.
It floated above everything as if it belonged there as an observer, watching the world below as if it wasn’t just a few feet away. Highlighted by the chilled silver sun, a strand of that empty haze landed softly on the pale cheek of a sleeping figure in a bed for a king, who was once meant to be the proprietor of a crown but no longer.
Stirred awake, his gaze shifted to the unwelcome light of day rudely intruding his bedroom, engulfing the room in its flood of a terrible piercing gaze of sallow. Shrill and stabbing, Diluc shifted away from the glare and curled into himself, praying for sleep to return dutifully as soon as possible.
Though maybe he could pull himself up and drag his feet to the door, venture into the bathroom to wash up with a bowl of water, wipe it off with his worn out towel, fix up his unkempt hair from the night, place his hollow corse into nice clothes and have a fulfilling breakfast. Maybe he could say hello to Adelinde in a not so weary manner, greet Elzer with more than just a dreary nod and perhaps help Turner out with picking some grapes like he used to as a child. Maybe he could make something out of today.
But not now– just not now. Maybe tomorrow. Two days later, a week later or maybe after another four years.
He shut his eyes and pushed tomorrow away for another day.
A consecutive set of thuds came shuffling in from beyond his door; Diluc felt his eyes shake wide awake and eyed the door to dare to make another sound, as if his morning glower could intimidate it into being quiet.
But instead of abiding by his unspoken command, the wood creaked with footsteps childishly stomping over them in a hurry, followed by a laughter Diluc horrifyingly recognized with a hitched breath escaping his cracked lips– as his own from the years before he grew into a shell of a man and a boy.
Urged to, Diluc felt his skin twitch, screaming in retaliation to throw himself right at the entrance and look but despite his curiosity, he wasn’t one to jump into situations as he wished to at the moment. By no means was he superstitious, however in a world such as their own, he was sure hauntings were no stranger to the lonely but surely, there was nothing outside to be gawked at.
But much to his own dismay, it didn’t seem to matter if it was a taunting ghost from the past or the harrowing visions of a never to be achieved future for a man such as himself, he couldn’t control himself when he pushed his sheets off of his body and wrenched the door open.
Only to find an empty hallway, leading down a few rooms inhabited by the housekeepers and archaic smog still slinking in and out of the winery every day. Heavy and sharp, the lump in his throat tightened like a myriad of icy strings crossed over splinters jutting out of his dry and coarse fingers. Diluc felt his breathing calm itself as he looked around, only met with nothing at all and a sense of disappointing relief.
From down the stairs to his right, there came that familiar giggle of a child he once used to know, see in the reflection a mirror, watch in the water that came rippling back towards him when he’d throw a rock in to see it skip along the surface only for it to plop into the depths of a lake– It was that child again, the boy with cinnamon scattered on his patchy, pale skin, a missing tooth and sunshine bright on his grin.
He took a step further as his blood ran colder than the ice embedded into ugly scars and gaping blisters over his hands. A wormhole opening itself in his stomach swallowed and spit out a wagon of horror, his breath hitched and there stood a boy by the window downstairs by the front double doors with curling flames for hair and a rosy nightgown.
Unwilling yet adamant, Diluc took a step forward, watching in a blur until he was right by the edge of the final step, with some sort of invitation at his feet urging him to come forward and witness the play he once played a long time ago.
Beside the boy, Diluc walked towards the window, wide eyed with no awe present in his gaze, but the certainty that outside beyond the cold of the interior they were standing in, the snow outside had climbed up a feet higher than their ankles and the rime on the glass had perched itself permanently on the bitter visage of the pellucid limestone. From above, snowflakes came hurling down at a rapid yet gentle pace, soft and sweet as it used to be until the winery became his alone.
A series of giggles came from the boy, Diluc peered down to see that smile he had adorned a thousand years ago. He murmured something to himself and that grin only grew brighter. He jumped on his toes and without a glance at the man beside him, the boy ran back upstairs and yelled out obnoxiously and freely to everyone throughout the house to wake up.
Perhaps in a trance of some sort, or just unsure– he really couldn’t decide, Diluc turned back to face the slow transition of a translucent view to an opaque meaning he couldn’t decipher. This was most absurd, perhaps a dream or a trick from the wind. He wasn’t one to drink, the taste was a burn too brisk, a cutting bite of ice too staggering, a reel that took him years to adjust to and swallow without his throat lurching. He wasn’t one to dream either.
But it didn’t seem to matter at all the longer he pondered it, the longer the wind led his senses to the chill of the earth, the bloated rings of smoke from burning snow on a lonely final day of Yule, a chimney left neglected and a dinner left unfinished, the more it slipped away.
The frost facing him across the wall between them sat outside alone, as Diluc stood by its reflection, where no one to watch the snow with him stood by his side. Not a glimpse through the porthole stationed in the rundown attic of the winery nor through the sense of a red nose and a shaky sniffle followed by a child’s laugh.
Not through waking up together, finding that the world had become a dash cooler, jumping up and down when the first fall of snow came. Not through breakfast with a family, making plans to run out before food was served to play. Not through leaving behind or rather, outright refusing the idea of dressing for the weather for the sake of mischief and their own fun, or maybe just to bother Adelinde and get a laugh out of Crepus.
Diluc shook his head with a dizzy breath, a gasp or a hiccup, something caught between his tongue he’d just bit on or stuck in his leather hard throat, crumpled up into a compact, wrinkled mess. The past didn’t matter, it was just snow.
But the boy with a summer’s flair, now running down and laughing with a much smaller boy by his side, with his hand intertwined in his own, did not believe it to be so. Just snow was surely a lie, Diluc had known it the moment he thought so.
He swallowed the cold and raucous tack of spit in his mouth and watched the boys run out the door, hand in hand, and Diluc could only stare at the flash of dark blue that passed him by with an innocent smile and a single eye visible.
For some sign, a subtle shake of a head or some kind of saying somewhere spread across the ceiling or the walls that were closing in on him, Diluc looked around for anything telling him not to, to stay beneath the covers of his bed and hide away in the winery that used to be a place he’d stay in for Yule or the summer, before it became the only home he had when he sold off the Ragnvindr manor.
Any glimpse of a God, denying him what he knew he didn’t want, for any approval or anything at all, he looked around for something to keep him bound by the shackles at his feet, to bury himself under the frost he had become accustomed to, the one that looked like dust withering away alone.
But it never came.
With a glance to the doors, Diluc took a step forward until he was against the ice on the doors on the other side he swore not to journey.
Uneven breathing caught the blowing fog of biting air in his throat and choked him with it repeatedly. Only adorned with his pink nightgown, Diluc felt every crisp of the frost gnawing and grating on the marrow beneath his gelid skin. Sickly veins on his hands and feet felt the ground freeze, snowflakes splattered all over his face and every step taken forward in the frost left his feet more numb than his torn hands.
He squinted his eyes, looking up at the sprinkle of snow from above before a childlike giggle came from somewhere in the distance behind him. Diluc spun his head towards the noise and from where he stood, he found two brothers seated on the snow next to each other, wrapped up in scarfs and sweaters while Diluc stood naked in grief at the scene.
The crimson mane of the older boy stood out sharply in the field of winter surrounding them but the younger boy by his side, holding his hands either to stay warm or because he wanted to, fit right into the space. Laughing and smiling, unbothered as the rest of the world went on.
An eye with a periwinkle pond glimmered with love as the younger boy’s smile grew when his brother pressed a darling kiss to his temple and told him he loved him, swore to protect him till the end of their days, and promised to watch the frost glow like wings on an angel every winter together till death did them part.
Staring from afar, standing in the distance where he could not move, Diluc watched the world he once knew drift away into the sea of sleet beneath his frozen limbs, crawling up his skin and stilling every glide of blood in his body. A dry and broken sob clumped in his throat and when the younger boy laid his head over his brother’s shoulder with a smile so loving, Diluc felt his hands reach to his mouth and become the cup for his cry and tears.
With a gentle look in his vermillion gaze, the older brother laid his head over his younger brother’s and slowly, as the storm of the frost captured them in its heart, they vanished into the wind along with Diluc’s cries.
Anguish clutched his very soul, fortifying him from the sheer frozen deluge of the world surrounding him. No– the shattering iceberg enveloping him in its glacial hold was not as painful as the way his heart clenched with an ache so petrifying, he wanted to sever his ties with it at once. The only thing that mattered now was the truth that the world in which he was bound to had no way to change, no way to reverse itself and bring back his best friend.
Weeping behind his crumbling walls like glaciers over his heart, Diluc sobbed knowing the brother he had once before was gone, no longer who he used to be and the memory of frost they used to share will now be no more. The fight was always to keep his wants away, but this morning, the view from the attic would make sure his wants would be shared to the frost he cherished with another.
A shriek of worry came from the door where Diluc refused to look, afraid his tears would kill him where he stood if another saw his vulnerable portrait, but once Adelinde had wrapped a scarf around his neck and laid her hands on his wet cheeks, asking her baby as if he were a child again what was wrong; Diluc fell into her arms and sobbed into the shoulder of the woman he loved like a mother.
He cried in her warm embrace, shielding him from the cold with her love but it was certain that despite this comfort, it was temporary. Tomorrow, he would appear as if he were a stone once more and the truth that it was him alone in this house would be all that would remain until he died with no brother by his side.
But when he pulled away and wept, Adelinde hushed his cries and simply whispered kindly, promising him that even if everyone had left, they were still here. Adelinde, Elzer, the housekeepers, Turner, Connor, they were all still here even if his father had left, and even if Kaeya was gone too.
Gradually, they began the trek back inside, but before the doors could close on the morning and today would become another memory, Diluc glanced behind him one more time.
And there it laid solemnly, the frost. Without his brother here to see.