The prompt for today was High Fantasy and the song she gave me for inspiration was Sturm Und Drang's A Million Nights. It bears to mention that this is my first time writing BTS and I am not 100% thrilled with how this came out (when am I ever though?) but I had to call it done because OH MY GOODNESS, it was killing me. If I had time I would have continued but alas it had already taken me too long. Maybe someday I will revisit it. 

Enjoy! 

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The desolation of winter ate away at everything. Filling it all with the same shade of white-grey. Heavy powder glittered in sunlight that the clouds diffused and the whole landscape melted with the sky. There was scarcely even a horizon. In fact, there would be no depth if the barren trees weren't scattered around to mark it.

A cold so deep that the fond memories of summer had long since bittered wrapped around Yoongi, and hugged in tight with ice arms through the thick fur of his coat. Knee deep snow was slowing the mint haired elf in his progress but it didn't stop him. He pretended he was flying when his legs grew weary; imagined himself painted against the sky instead of trudging wetly through deep frozen winter . Even imagined he was a dragon breathing fire in the mid afternoon when his came out like wisps of smoke. He wanted it so badly he could almost feel scaly wings stretching out to touch the sparse warmth of daylight.

As the young elf crested the final hill on the edge of the forest he in a bitingly sharp breath and adjusted the leather straps of his pack cutting into his shoulders. Clouds had rolled in to his feet. The valley bellow was a soupy purple and white cauldron. Wind whistled through its hollow mouth, howling like the wolves. With strikingly soft eyes, the Winterling looked out upon the landscape through a thick veil of churning vapor to find the purple snow was fast approaching. A sigh passed through Yoongi's aching body as he counted the points of the pillared crags along the far edge of the chasm on the other side. Mist grew thick near the ocean but he knew from the maps that was where he would find the violet.

Another deep sigh rattled through his body like a prayer for salvation whisked out between parted lips. It had occurred to him several times on his three day trek that this was his year, but it was really starting to hit him then. Leather bound feet tipped forward and he he began his long descent into the valley of winter souls.

It was his year.

He could finally just end this drawn out process.

All his life he had lived by the laws of the high council to stay clean for his trip. To stay pure for his day of trial. As a Winterling it was his civic duty to the people to go on this trek. He and his kin all made this same journey at some point. They were born under oath and to honor, considered the highest of Elven kind despite their usual short stature...and societies general lack of respect for them.

Many of his pointless, useless teachers had had explained it to him. They, the Winterlings, were born to satisfy the hunger of the angry winter god. Given to the elves by the goddess Gukju, queen of revelry and summer. Basically she popped down with a short, chubby baby in her arms and said “feed one of these to Winter once a year and in like a million or so years he'll get over it and go away.” Winter is angry and vengeful? Feed it tiny elven souls for a one whole millennia and winter will end. Makes perfect sense right? Right...

So after about three hundred years of life spent learning the ridiculous history and having to participate in all of the ceremony while watching his friends wander out into the tundra once a year to die horrible, lonely deaths he had finally been relieved of his garish regalia and was on the road to Winter's alter. It was actually, finally, his year. And he was going to be a dragon in his head if he wanted to because he was walking to his ice cold, unjustifiable death all alone in the wilderness. Just like all of his childhood friends had before him.

He was so caught up in his ridiculous daydream that he didn't notice the snow changing colors as he pushed along through the deep snow banks in the valley. First it went from grey to lavender, barely noticeable and easy to ignore even when it got a little bit shallower. Then it went from lavender to amethyst and Yoongi took note of it because it meant he was headed in the right direction.

Sometime around when the powder beneath his feet changed from lavender to the darker pink-purple his teachers called 'orchid' he took the time to wonder why he was even doing this. It would be easy to just run off into the forest, become the rogue Winterling or something. Heaven knew he had the survival skills for it. But then he had time to think about what would happen if Winter came after him too. Plus, he'd have to build a shelter, and hunt, or domesticate something and for all of his magical swag he really did not have the required motivation.

Best to just get it over with right? Better than having some a furious winter god come chasing him down.

Hours later the snow turned violet. The horizon became those high purple crags and the mint elf stumbled his way across frozen ground. The powder grew a thick ice shell in the shade. It crunched hard beneath his feet and made walking three times as hard.

Yoongi was so exhausted when the sun started to go down that he revisited the idea of not going to the temple of winter. Surely Namjoon had had the same moral dilemma on his trek the year before.

Speaking of Namjoon, the freezing cold Winterling could swear he heard his old compatriots voice screaming an echoed “YoooooOOOOooooOOOOoooogi,” off the valley walls.

Maybe the cold was getting to him more than he thought it was? Because there was no way. He died. They all died. It was what the Winterlings did. They lived to be like three hundred at the most, got a terrible, biased education, ate nasty bland food, watched over the temples and then they went on the trek and died.

“YooooOOOOoooooOOOOOooooOOOOngi,” came again in a much higher tone, with a tiny lisp...and a little bit too much affection. Was that Jimin?

On the third “Yoongi!” That he swore sounded like JungKook the short Winterling started to look around in the icy landscape. There was nothing but snow, hot purple snow and trees and high rocky pillars.

The fourth “Yoongi!” shouted loud on the frozen air was a lot closer than the previous ones.

Suddenly warmth wrapped around his narrow, over burdened shoulders, knocking him forward into the hard icy purple powder. His cheek scraped angrily at the ice. The cold shoved its way up his nose, ice poured into all of the places it had not yet managed to freeze and he choked, trying to catch his breath. It burned down into his lungs and made the whole of his body ache in brand new ways.

“Yoongi! You made it!” A laughing voice giggled as he rolled over, “We thought it would be another freaking hundred years.”

He blinked once, twice, three times. Pale pink hair came out of the blur and Yoongi swore, absolutely swore, he was not going to cry at the sight of freaking Namjoon because that jerk just knocked him into the snow but secretly maybe he was crying. It was Namjoon. His big lips, the crinkle at the corners of his eyes and fluff of his unkept hair. It was Namjoon

Namjoon was alive?

“Namjoon?”

“Sure is,” the other nodded, adjusting the neckline of his light fur jacket. It wasn't at all suited for the tundra.

“Yah, Namjoon be careful. He's been trekking for three days. Don't you remember what that feels like?”

“TaeHyung?” Yoongi asked shoving the younger Winterling off him and into the snow beside him.

The subsequent, “Ooof,” and “Hey,” were ignored because Tae with his ugly green fringe was a sight for sore eyes.

“Taehyung and Jimin and JungKook and Namjoon and...well Hoseok couldn't make it out because he was busy but he swears to come see you at the party,” The lanky, oddly tall one replied, “Are you okay.”

As he looked around at his old friends three things struck him. They were all taller than he remembered...well except Jimin. Jimin was just as not-tall as he remembered. Second; they were all dressed in very light winter clothes, not the thick furs and leathers they had left in. And third, they were all looking at him with radiant smiles. Eyes squeezed nearly shut and gummy smiles threatening to blind him in the cold.

“I knew I shouldn't have eaten those mushrooms yesterday,” Yoongi said, “Man, I must be tripping so hard.”

Namjoon busted up laughing next to him. “I thought the same thing,” he said.

“He did,” the orange haired Jimin assured.

“Yeah but he actually did eat poisonous mushrooms,” JungKook muttered, running a hand through his short pitch black hair. The suddenly much taller boy offered Yoongi a steady hand. Before he knew it he was being hoisted back to his feet and paraded through ranks of massive purple pylons.

“What are you guys doing alive?” Yoongi asked. He was pulled to his feet lightly, and dusted off by oddly familiar hands before being passed around for hugs. All of which he tried, rather half heartedly, to avoid.

“Seriously,” the mint Winterling insisted, “I thought you were dead.”

“You'll see,” Jimin shrugged, grabbing at the slightly taller man's green hair with ungloved fingers.

“Yah,” Yoongi snapped, “You guys.”

“Welcome to Winter,” Namjoon winked, bracing his smaller friend's shoulders.

Leather shoes shuffled against ice as he was shoved, half dragged, half tripping through a maze of messily cut, cracked purple steps. The pillars got closer together and smoother, just like the stairs. But they never leveled out. Beneath his feet it began to glitter almost like...amethyst? It was amethyst. Dark, carved amethyst. The whole valley was carved out purple quartz blanketed in snow.

He was aghast.

His new-old companions chattered with each other, ignoring his astonishment. No matter how hard he tried to stop and look, they pulled him hard up those stairs. They might as well have carried him, or maybe they were carrying him.

“You guys wait,” he squirmed, “Look at the ground, it's all amethyst.”

“We have to keep going Yoongi,” Jimin pushed, “We're almost there.”

“Come on!” TaeHyung urged, pushing the group up the last few stairs. The taller boy did something very odd and grabbed Yoongi's pack, sliding it back off his shoulders. The wood bracing along the back squeaked and clattered as the bottom hit the hard ground. “You wont need it in there,” he shrugged, explaining only when the smallerWinterling turned around to face him.

The temple was a cave, carved out of the valley wall. There was no ornate golden door with sweeping white stairs to greet him. Instead the bumpy amethyst path came to a dais, plateaued and smooth. Just beyond that opened a mouth that was toothed and jagged leading deep into darkness he couldn't see though. Even with elf eyes it was murky.

“You wont need your jacket either,” JungKook added, grabbing at the neck of said garment.

“Or your boots,” Namjoon continued leaning down to untie his thick lined leather shoes.

Yoongi, for his part, managed to scrunch his nose in utter confusion as Jimin came forward and began to unfasten the buckles holding his thick fur jacket on.

“Wont my feet get cold?” the confused elf asked.

Namjoon rolled with laughter, “I sure hope not. Does it feel cold to you here?” The pink haired snark master asked, “We might need to make sure you're not sick if thats the case.

He took a moment to consider this as his jacket was peeled back. “This thing is twice as heavy as yours was Namjoon,” the youngest Winterling complained. It came loose and hit the ground with a wet thud and the thick warmth of a heated bath house struck Yoongi.

It wasn't cold at all anymore. It felt a little bit like a sauna actually. His light linen of his black shirt and the tight brown leather pants he had under his fur pants would be more than sufficient. In fact, he probably could have walked around without getting cold just then.

The mist wasn't blowing snow. It was steam.

With his boots pulled off and his jacket on the ground he made quick work of his thick snow pants...well...mostly he tripped out of them and if JungKook hadn't still been standing behind him the shorter man would probably have landed hard on the purple crystal. His companions smiled at him as he stretched. It felt like freedom from a cage, breathing deeply for the first time in days.

“Time to go inside,” Jimin beamed, flashing a toothy grin. “We'll see you when you get out.”

“You aren't coming?”

Sheepishly, they shook their heads one by one. Vivid hair swung back in forth and muttered apologies came spilling out. “Everyone has to go alone the first time,” the orange haired Winterling shrugged, “It's the rule.”

“But we'll see you on the other side,” Taehyung assured.

Yoongi turned, and let his eyes drag across the sharp spires that lined the mouth of the cave. His feet slid across the soft, smooth of the crystal plane. Many times he looked back to find his old friends smiling back at him awkwardly. They were such weird kids. When he moved past the flat plane to the teeth he stepped up and ran his fingers over the jagged poles. Looking back one last time, the mint haired elf found Namjoon giving him two thumbs up while Tae waved and JungKook put two fingers up like rabbit ears over Jimin's neon orange hair.

The eldest of the present Winterlings (by a good half a century) left a huge sigh skitter past his lips before he squeezed himself sideways between the shiny pillars. The cavern on the other side seemed vast. It was so dark that even with his sharp sight he couldn't hardly see more than a few feet in front of him. He had to squint and run his shaking hands along the uneven wall. Nothing was as he had expected it to be.

Thick steam got ever thicker the further in Yoongi managed to wander. He much preferred the fog and warmth to the blinding white and the freezing chill. It did make the ground and walls dangerously slick though. It was only then that he managed to wonder why he was going in alone, through a dark winding tunnel that smelled oddly of cinnamon and vanilla. Smells he knew, that belonged to spices he had never tasted.

What seemed like hours later the mint haired elf tripped through a threshold and found himself in the vastness of a room with a vaulted ceiling. His dark eyes scanned along the strikingly pink walls...and found Winter...

Winter did not appear angry, nor seem vengeful. Winter, in fact, was beautiful. With warm cinnamon colored hair and beautiful plush lips. Winter was astoundingly, breathtakingly, undeniably gorgeous in a pink shirt and dark black pants and no garish gold regalia. Just chocolate eyes and pale skin; sitting cross legged in the middle of a vast, empty pink room.

And then Winter smiled. The corners of his eyes curled and his lips thinned and he was...wow. Yoongi could have sworn his heart stopped, “Yoongi,” the apparent ice god piped, “I've been waiting for you.”

The brown haired man stood and dusted himself off, “I've been waiting for you for a really long time. I'm Seokjin.”

“Sorry?” Yoongi asked rather than saying, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“I'm Seokjin,” the round faced, rosy cheeked winter god repeated. “I've been waiting for you.” The ancient god made slow steps with an outstretched hand and a radiant smile.

The other thought to ask for mercy or not to be killed but something about this person before him calmed his soul. Words failed to find his mouth in the warmth until finally he found the right ones, “You're not winter are you?”

Seokjin laughed, and sky above, even that was pretty, “No Yoongi, I am not winter.” After a good few moments worth of pause three words slipped past those impossibly perfect lips, “I am love."

"Are you ready to join your friends with me?" Seokjin asked after another moment, holding out his hand.

There was no hesitation in Yoongi's heart, even though his whole world was upside down. He took the hand offered to him and waited for the world to change again.