Characters: Ishida, Orihime
Summary: The virgin snow is beautiful tonight.
Pairings: IshiHime
Warnings/Spoilers: No spoilers
Timeline: No timeline necessary
Author's Note: Just a short atmospheric piece. Feedback is always appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
It's freezing out and he pulls his thin, threadbare coat closer about him, trying to lock in as much warmth as he can. Ishida's never had much use for the cold, nor for the snow beneath his feet as he trudges onwards.
The mixture of the street lamps and the full moon hanging overhead in an inky sky with scattered scars makes the dim light over the street strangely like burnished bronze, dull and coppery. The cold is intense and piercing, reaching with insistent fingers straight down to the bone.
Orihime doesn't seem to notice.
Whereas Ishida has no use for snow, she seems to love it, laughing, trying to catch snowflakes in her outstretched hands, boot-clad feet skating across the pristine surface of the snow like a dancer, leaving skimmed furrows in the otherwise unsullied snow.
Ishida paused, and watched her, completely unaware of anything else in this silent, frosty world.
The dimness of the world around them washes her hair to the same bronze color as the air. Her laugh sounds far off, distant strains of music, tugging at the ear and compelling.
Then, comes the snowball flying at his head, hitting him squarely in the right ear.
"What—" Ishida gapes, dumbstruck, at her, but Orihime is laughing to hard at his expression to answer right away.
She holds her arms around her sides, restraining aching ribs and trying to keep her balance, no doubt. The light from the street lamps and the waxen moon gives her face a gold cast, eerie and beautiful.
When Orihime finally catches her breath and pushes down bubbling chimes of laughter, she manages out, still choking slightly on giggles, "You make… the funniest faces… sometimes!"
Ishida bites his lip and looks away, taking this information in. He can feel a steady flush rising up his neck.
Orihime's still giggling as she walks on, still viewing the world with a sort of childlike wonder that Ishida wasn't aware even existed anymore. She stares up at a tree with boughs laden down with thick drifts of snow, then shoots a sideways glance at Ishida, slightly mischievous as though she's planning to hit him with a snowball again, but she lets up and just grins.
This golden light suits her.
Ishida decides that he can find some use for the snow and winter in general, as he smiles shyly back at her, and keeps on walking, wary for snowballs hurtling from the right hand side.