Painted White

[Aeriz]

Snow fluttered atop the dormitory roof, the breeze carrying it aloft the chilled night air. The ground covered in an inch of untouched powder. Sat atop a bench cross-legged and shirtless wearing a pair of black jeans and shoeless, Aokiyo breathed slowly. He stayed still, keeping his hand atop his sword as it remained sat across his lap. The temperature was still dropping. Currently reading fifteen degrees above zero it would only get colder as the night pressed on.

Each breath exhaled brought with it a subtle puff of fog. Steady in its rhythm it showed a grasp of control and mediated effort. "Slow and steady. Breathe." Aokiyo mumbled to himself, his eyes opening to look out across the campus grounds from his perch.

Aokiyo scanned the horizon enjoying the sight of the school covered in snow. The wind carefully sculpting the landscapes new cover with each licking gale. Snow danced in the courtyard and stuck to the windows of the girls dorm across the way. What beauty and purity snow brought out in the world once its all encompassing blanket fell to earth.

[Alida]

Mika looked at her unpacked things, items and art books cluttered in a pile and her supply of ink wells and calligraphy sets. Her relic was a brush after all that she felt a need to try improving both her hand writing and her doodles. Mika wasn't a born artist and the relic provided no means to suddenly become one of that rich manga writers in Edo so it was the bare bones hard method of learning. Bugei provided basic art studies and then some as supplementary classes but were taught more rudimentary like the main building ones. The girl sighed in a warm red robe for the winter as she shuffled in her slippers to and fro on the dorm room carpeting. Her mind stirring on what to draw.

The girl spent her times and days like this to indulge more into her hobbies to escape from the lumps of home and family. Bugei brought out what she hadn't thought would happen and that was placing a divide between her and her brother. Twins they may be and a sibling love there was, it was all deeply damaged since the quake. Their relation crumbled as much as the city did with repairs slow to a scar. The blonde took some ends of her hair and chewed on it unlike a princess of the Honda should do. The prim doll behavior wearing on her being while Mika placed her energy into her nightly ritual of arts and ink.

"This won't do," the girl huffed with hair falling form her lips. Pacing wasn't causing any ideas to surface. She went to her night stand to fetch the stamp for her haiku pieces to hold onto and squeeze gently like a stress ball. An idea wasn't coming if she remained stressed out. Unsure of where to go and who to turn to at this hour, Mika went to open the curtains of over window and sit there with the stamp in hand. Her room was fairly high up and closer to the central building. From where and the distance would she be able to see the roof of the boy's dorm and several of its snow and frost covered windows. It was quiet out but there wasn't much noise to be expected at this hour. Turning her head toward the roof though did she spy an odd rounded shape. From afar did this odd shape made her think of a snowman.