Snippet #1857772

"This is it." Leto's breath came out as puffs of smoke, dancing playfully in front of him before vanishing into the gray skies above. "It's here. Whatever it is I'm looking for, I'm gonna find it here." A surge of excitement, of adrenaline, of fear, pounded its way into his bloodstream, spreading throughout his body like poison. He stood on a hill covered by snow, one moment a brown wolf staring down a city, the next moment a poor kid with flaming red hair that stood out against the saddened clouds. As a wolf and as a human, his crimson eyes never left her, never left Freeze City with her unnatural glow, with her seductive words and whispers that called out to him.

Destiny, she seemed to murmur. Her words whirled around him like a siren's song, twirling around his ears teasingly to rile him up. Destiny is here. Come meet Destiny.

Leto had been traveling from city to city, from town to town, from plains to deserts to lakes to rivers. He had been to a great many places, seen a lot of things he would never forget and things he would never remember, but in all his travels, he had never seen a city quite like that. There was a light surrounding Freeze City, a white light that seemed to envelope the place in its arms -- protecting it from the outside world or greedily hiding it from prying eyes? What could it possibly mean? Was it trying to tell him something? Was it a trick of his eyes, a trick of the weather, a trick of Mother Nature who had banished him from eden? Maybe it was none of that. Maybe something really was there in that god-forsaken place. Maybe something really was calling for him, reaching out with invisible arms that he could neither see nor feel.

"Destiny..." he repeated under his breath, mesmerized by the sight. Several seconds later, he shook himself out of his thoughts and descended the hill with the soul of a wolf and the appearance of a man, heart already smitten with the new destination before he had even stepped a paw through its front gates. The fur on his body stood on end, ruffled by the wind but was not dominated by its fierce howl; as he got closer, the more his body began to show his anxiety: the quickening of his pace, the frequency of the swish of his tails, the flickering of his eyes that never ceased to lose track of the light.

Leto stood in front of the entrance, digging his paws into the snow, feeling the difference from when he stood atop the hill and from where he stood now. There was a change, barely noticeable, but there. His suspicions had been confirmed, his hopes realized -- he was sure of it; he was positive. Something was here. Leto could feel it in his bones. All that was left to do was find it.