Procrastination

He'll think about that tomorrow. (A/N: This is another snippet from the chaptered fic I'm working on about their time at Otsu. I may post some more, just sort of as experiments.)

A perfect winter day. A cloudless sky the color of a robin's egg. Air crackling-cold, still and dry, so that the breath mists into a cloud that hangs at the mouth, only to be sucked back in with the next breath. Snow glitters brightly in the blooming morning light, twinkling like stars where it clings heavily to tree branches. Somewhere a deer brushes against a branch, and the falling snow showers loud and long in the silence.

The melted snow tries to refreeze, icy and slick and the color of cherries in June, even as the river of steaming blood courses over it. He'd seen a lava flow once, and this reminds him of that: hot moving sluggishly over cooled, but ultimately surrendering its heat for good. It comes to him that they will begin to stick where they are if he doesn't move them quickly. But he lingers, delaying the moment when lifting her body, feeling its unresisting limpness, will mean he can never get back.