Work Text:
He’s autumn’s barefooted shepherd.
The trees stain their leaves with brilliant jewel tones as he runs his fingers over them. As though they are burning from the inside out. As though yellows too muted to be gold and reds too bright to be ruby will shield their branches from the bite of his skin. Fall drapes itself in filigree and turns itself over to his care- his flock swells and his crook is always fast in his hand. But it’s a hollow symbol. A crutch of a companion.
He has walked alongside boys of sheepherders often enough, toes curling in the dirt their shoes keep them above. They’re mortal, fragile- their breaths ghost in the chill, the turn of the season, he brings with him. They carry their crooks to enforce order- his dances at the tips of his frostbitten fingers to swing his circle of influence wider. Tall grasses brown and die in wild, unruly bursts as he wanders through fields. As rootless as all the plants he puts to sleep. Ice crawls, claws, its way out from the edges of ponds and slow moving rivers as he traces their banks with his wind-chaffed heels.
He isn’t Cernunnos. He isn’t Herne. He does not wear antlers at his temples and he is no dark god. No trumpeting hunt horn announces his presence. Instead he carries silent eddies of wind at his shoulders. They call in the first frosts that he litters around himself freely.
Tenuous flakes of ice guide the world into his throne-less kingdom. Gold leaf to hide the lead core of statuary.
He’s winter’s lawless boy king.
His court is made of crop-bare, un-ploughed land. The snow keeps its stranglehold there through March. It softens the roughhewn edges of frozen soil into white marble- a floor for heels to click across as visitors trickle into the phantom ball.
He skips over the idea of a crown with a grin. His bitten fingernails curl into the wood of his staff. The shepherd boys and their crooks aren’t far from monarchs and their scepters. Precious metals and delicate gems striking, clattering out, against stonework to demand order. He strikes his staff against the asphalt of main roads. Against bells perched in church steeples and the moss ridden shingles of rural homes.
There’s everything except order in the needle ice left behind.
His gardens have no fences, no border hedges. They’re filled with frost flowers. Temporary things that feel like silk against the blue of his cuticles. The blooms leave their host stems petrified and dry. A study in the cost of rewards.
He is death and hibernation. He balances on overhangs and dances across telephone wires, laughing loudly into his blizzards. He hopes absentmindedly, that he can be heard in the swell of the snowfall. There’s a promise of a thaw in the joyous notes. The spring he doesn’t chance seeing
He lives in the cold, dark stretch of the second half of the year.
But he’s an eternal child- leaning into the company of his staff as he smiles against wayward breezes.