He was a thing of darkness, spun inside Time's visceral spindle. His pastime became plucking the fragile strands of reality, so that they shifted around with purpose, or sometimes chaos. Mortal kind thought too much in terms of Fate or coincidence, or even their precious God or gods as if to conceptualize them into something more than they were. Mankind tended to either put what they could not see or do themselves on a pedestal or they attempted to destroy it. It was the way the world worked; it was the way the world would always work. As his eyes looked into the annals of time, the world was a fragmented place, with many paths. The mortal world was only adept at seeing one path ahead of them.<br/><br/><br/>But his Queen's Timekeeper had made one fatal mistake, earning Winter's own frosty slap in the face as he was cast out and left for dead in the outcrop of forest between two worlds. His was an unnatural occurrence that had him suspended several feet above the ground where a wild rose bush had sprung up in a clearing, tangled and thorny, to wrap his nude body in its prickling embrace. Much like when Yeshua of Nazareth was hung from a cross to bleed to death while the vultures circled over his head. Only Yeshua had been a mere mortal, despite popular belief, though perhaps a little blessed, whereas the entity known as Tavyan Frey – or Timolane, in another life – could remain dangling there with blood seeping from his wounds for centuries before he passed into nothingness.<br/><br/>Days had quickly turned into weeks. Once the fifth week had passed, he no longer tried to fight the enchantment that held him there. The more he struggled, even, the tighter the vines wrapped around his torso and the thorns dug deeper still, making his plight all the more uncomfortable for it. Once, he had managed to cut through one of his binds using his teeth, only to have it grow back stronger. It left his arm stretched up close to his head with a trickle of crimson that ran like a river to puddle with the rest on the ground. The deepest was embedded in his side, where a thorn had grown like a dagger to pierce him. Thankfully, the wound had congealed and caked close, but no less painful for what it was.<br/><br/><br/>He slept now in his bed of foliage like some ancient god, with the vines wrapping eloquently around bronzed legs, a sculpted torso, and muscled shoulders like they sought to embrace him lovingly rather than maim him as they did. Still, they had not grown so high as to cover his face, merely scratch his cheeks when his head hung down in exhaustion – or simply defeat. Raven dark hair fell in a silken wave across his jaw and over his brow, limp now with the damp from an earlier shower. It was here that the Timekeeper counted the minutes, that would no doubt turn into more weeks, then years. He had accepted his particular Fate the moment he saw it.