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Revelry.

Janatheil, as an orderite of noble blood, was certainly no stranger to festivities. Wild displays of light and dazzling, looping magics. Intricate melodies on ornate instruments contrived from some combination of mechanical genius and wooden carved craftsmanship. All these were common in the long halls of the wealthy in Ashen City, and given that it was an unspoken but obvious competition among many such families to one up the next and put on the ‘most’ dazzling of such displays, Janatheil could say with full honesty that he felt fairly thoroughly exposed to them. And on occasion, bored by them. Dovaa magic, on the other hand, was largely alien to him, and the culture of the winter city was comprised in large part of dovaa.

So, when they put on a show, it showed.

It was the evening before that which Janatheil’s ship would depart back to Serenia and end his ‘cooling off’ excursion to Aisko. Asi’wi had been tended to thoroughly after their encounter and was now all but healed, if still cautioned to be wary on his previously-injured leg, and most things were going well. The food intrigued him — a far greater variety than that served at the home table, with many sorts he had never tried and thus happily did. The show fascinated him. Not light and tinkering, but wild contrasts of the elements, fire, ice, water, green magic and dancing. Thunder on occasion echoed through the room like a drum beat to the pace of whatever was on before the eyes and Janatheil relished in it.

The show wasn’t actually for him — disappointed as his pride was to learn it — but for a festival marking of a certain portion of the season upon which his family had happened to decide to end his stay. It worked out well enough, he supposed.

After the brunt of the initial showing though, and once attentions at the long banquet table turned entirely towards food, Janatheil’s attention quickly strayed, and he grew bored. In his boredom, his attention flicked towards his company. Asi’wi, a mere casual annoyance at first, was now at least in some semi-circle which Janatheil would classify as a loosely-acquainted friend. It was entirely possible he would never see the boy again, but he enjoyed his company while it lasted and they had managed not to slit each other’s throats over the course of their time together.

He leaned sidelong and tapped his boot to Asi’wi’s. “Bored yet?”

A look edged up at the corner of Janatheil’s lips, too smug to be a grin, but too playful to be a smirk, his eyes dancing as he tossed it towards Asi’wi. “There’s always something to be done about boredom,” he said, and didn’t hesitate a moment before nudging Asi with his elbow and slipping free of the bench he was seated, head notching to motion his companion to follow. “Come on, I have an idea…”

Janatheil’s ‘ideas’ of course, were what they were, and Asi’wi by now surely knew him well enough to guess the sort of things his musings lead him to. But Jana felt confident enough that wouldn’t deter him from at least giving the thought a chance, and after several easy assurances to his aunt and keepers that he was only stepping out a moment and polite apologies to servants tending the banquet hall as he slipped between them, he made it to the edge and the first door out.

There, he leaned his weight, glancing back and waiting for Asi’wi. He would need a guide, after all.

“Well, as you said, the outside is out of the question…but who said anything about needing to go beyond the wall, mm?” Janatheil grinned, a toothy, teasing look as he caught hold of Asi’s hand — winding between folded arms to unfold them and get what he wanted — and tugging. “I wanna see the top. Can you get us there? I’ve wanted to see over the top since I first looked and couldn’t see the top from the bottom…it must be magnificent.”

“There’s stairs aren’t there? Surely you have guards patrolling the top, so there’s a ways to get up and once there, I think it’d take effort to actually fall…I just wanna see.”

They received several stares on the passage down the halls and up, up — without instruction, Janatheil tended to figure that any set of stairwells that lead ‘up’ was getting them closer to their goal in the long run. “So,” he said as they walked, once they shared a passage just to themselves. “Gonna miss me when I’m gone?”

Janatheil blinked, startled briefly by the open admittance, and then promptly grinned. “‘Course you will.” He reached over, ruffling a hand through Asi’wi’s hair before they came to the top of the steps.

It took some navigation after, but eventually, they made it to the set which lead out, onto an open, wintery passage only partly blockaded from the winds. Snow coated it, and Jana shivered, but squinted, his wings furling out and tucking in around him more as a shield than anything. Between the two of them, though, and some searching, they found another door leading to an inner-wall staircase. Janatheil wasn’t precisely sure why they had not yet been stopped by guards, which would have been an expected hitch in the plan, but perhaps most of it was unmanned when the focus of activity was elsewhere.

Either way, or whatever else the reason, they made it in and up without much hassle, and as they came on to the uppermost deck, surrounded by high protective ice railing, Janatheil raised a hand, and then laughed openly, moving to the walls edge and whooping to hear his voice carried off and over into the winter winds.

“Bet you twenty that I’ve never been this high…”

Janatheil glanced sharply over, startled by the unexpected words and tone. He opened his mouth, brow furrowing, but held onto his rebuttal for a moment and eyed the other instead, studying him, before speaking. “I’ll be happy to be home, yeah…I’ve missed it. I love Serenia…all its wilds and fields and mountains…the rivers and lakes and the feeling of warm wind under your wings, like you could do anything.”

He tilted his head.

“Wasn’t so bad here, though, while I was here. Y’know…after you stopped freezing my bed and such. Cool getting to know you…” He waited a moment, eyes skimming out, over the great white expanse and picking out features on the massive landscape. The winds were fierce this high, but lower, it was a largely storm free evening, allowing for crisp visibility of the sort that made Janatheil’s chest flutter with excitement at the raw potential. All that could be done. All that was left to do. “You could come see me. Make sure I don’t do anything, ah…” He glanced down the line of the wall, the full barrier and the space beyond. No one watching. He grinned. “Stupid.”

And with that, he hopped, hoisting himself up and stretching his wings to land in a crouch on top of the wall’s ‘fence’ separating the wall top from the great drop down.

“Wanna see a trick?”

Janatheil laughed.

The winds were fierce and wild, whipping about the top of the wall like untrained dancers, but between the adventure of that alone, and the added thrill of the great swath of space — so much space between the high wall and the ground below — and the prospect of the night in general, his last night, Jana couldn’t resist. He had a new friend at his side, a challenge at his feet, and a full, untampered expanse of open air just waiting to be tested. He twisted, propped his boot in a solid position to push, and leapt.

Out, out, into the winds, the span of three or four large ships end to end stacked above the ground. His wings spread, catching the dancing wind, and he called out into it, a whooping spin of sound as he funneled his body with the currents of gusts. Cold. Sharp. Beating, but powerful. He pressed, two strong beats of his wings lifting him up, up above the line of where he had leapt from and he turned enough midair to flash his companion a grin.

“One…” he called out, “…two, three…and—”

He pivoted, dipping and tucking his wings in close to give him a full, plummeting dive before, after a shrieking second of nothing but chilled ice winds, spreading his wings again, catching the full gusts and driving back up. Somersaulting was a difficult maneuver, even in good weather conditions, and his wings were still small enough that they couldn’t handle him for long distances at all. With winds this strong, however, it was all a matter of picking how to let them carry you — or failing, and being tossed to one’s death.

Janatheil decided, after several spins and a plummet or two, his audience had likely been through enough, and moved back for the safety of the wall. After darting in, he landed abruptly, inches before Asi’wi, and grinned, reaching a hand up heedless of the other boy’s personal space and touching it to catch at his neck and throat and rest there. “Your pulse is fast,” he observed. “Did you like it?”

Janatheil chuckled, his grin softening to a smile as he leaned in, catching his breath and letting his forehead come to rest against Asi’wi’s. The wind whistled around them, cold, but it seemed more distant now, as though it were cocooning instead of driving at them, and all the world up here was theirs with no one else watching.

“Your eyes are a really lovely blue,” Jana said, meeting the boy’s stare from under blonde lashes as the corner of his lips twitched, and he let their noses touch, their breath close enough he could feel the other’s as much as he could see it: white and warm in the frosted air. “White-blue, like the snow…” He leaned, shifting his weight so that for an instant, there was only a finger’s breadth of space between their lips, and then, he was kissing Asi’wi’s cheek and pulling back, catching at his wrist and tugging gently. “C’mon…let’s get you inside before anyone blames you for all my idiocy…”

One wink, and then he was guiding them back down the steps and back into civilization as it were.