It is a beautiful day.

The morning sun winds its way around the spiral staircase, driving the last of the morning chill from the old steeple, and I inhale deeply. Loving, as always, the scents of morning in this place. Old wood, creaking faintly as I walk up the steps. The faint hints of incense, long-steeped into the porous old stone from the braziers kept perpetually burning in the lower parts of the Stellar Church. Dust and age, dry and respectful; I can see the dust-motes glittering faintly in the beams of sunlight as I walk. Someone has already passed this way, it seems, stirring the dust from its usual complacency. I smile, and wrinkle my nose as a stray cobweb tickles it. He would never consider himself predictable, even though he has risen to greet the morning in this manner almost every day for countless decades. I suppose I am no better... I, who has arisen to greet him in this manner, every day for almost the same amount of time.

I open the door to the steeple's balcony and step out, feeling a gust of fresh air stir my coattails in greeting. Even after so long, the view is still breathtaking. I can never understand why---the Church has a dozen other spires, and all are far taller and indeed tower over this one, framing the landscape beyond the city's borders. Those other spires are creations of magic, great fingers of stone that have been not chiseled or built but grown, each a magnificent wonder of the world in its own right. The steeple, by comparison, is small and unimpressive, nothing more than a last vestige of the Church's humble origins as a mere castle. Each brick of its substance has been laboriously hauled into place and set by stonemasons. Mere mortals. And yet, somehow, I have always believed that this spire holds the greatest power, out of them all. I like to think that he feels the same way. I like to think that this is why he has chosen this place for his simple everyday ritual of greeting the sun. I like to think that, after all this time, I am learning to understand him.

Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

He is already on the balcony, of course. He has always beaten me here. There was a time when I tried to compete with him, to reach the steeple balcony at ridiculous hours just so that I could have the dubious pleasure of smiling at him as he walked out onto the platform, and teasing him about tardiness. I have never succeeded. I have wondered, on occasion, whether he sleeps. We don't need it, of course---sleep, the little death, is the province of those who live with death ever overhead. We have left both death and its imitations behind, and sleep only when it pleases us; a quaint nostalgia, nothing more. I still do it, every night that I am not on duty, but then Mirufi laughs at me and calls me old-fashioned. I suppose I am. But there is pleasure in sleep, in dreams, and while I am nowhere near the hedonist that Mirufi has become, I still enjoy my small vices.

I wonder, often, what vices he has. Tea and good literature, perhaps, instead of wine and fast women. Smiling.

He turns his head slightly as I approach, although he detects me with more than his ears. "Ohayou gozaimasu," he greets me, as formally as if we have not spent a half-millennium working together. It is the same every morning. I move to stand beside him, looking out over the city and the dramatic cliffs beyond, feeling the morning breeze stir my hair.

"Ohayou. Beautiful day, isn't it?" My usual response, whether the sun is shining or we stand in the rain, protected from the elements by magical shielding. He nods, verbose as always, and we stand there for a time. And after a while, as I have wanted to do, as I have always done for the last few centuries of this ritual, I lose interest in the view and look at him.

He is the tallest of us, towering over even me by several inches. Beautiful, as always: ramrod-straight, every long hair in place save the two cowlicks which stand sentinel over his head, expression serene as a high mountain lake. Untouchable, as always. Like the icicles he conjures, sometimes---cool and straight and crystal-perfect, although not by any means ephemeral. He is ancient even by my standards, and I stopped keeping track of my age when I hit five hundred. The powers that granted us our immortality selected him first of all, and he lived a lifetime before I was ever born. For the first hundred years or so, I was in constant awe of him. For the next hundred, I merely admired him. For the next few hundred, I was torn between unease and indifference. In the last few... I have been a man succumbing to a slow, burgeoning obsession. But I have not lived for so long by being overhasty. I am patient. I have forever, after all.

"It will be warm this year," he says, suddenly.

I stare.

"H-honto ka?"

"Aa."

And there is silence again, only the sound of the wind whistling through the spires echoing around us.

The sun has breached the horizon altogether; he draws a long, slow breath. I relax, sensing the return of familiarity. This is how his ritual always ends. I am still dazed by the deviation from the usual pattern. He is known for his silence. Even in the heat of battle he is as silent as he is swift, the assassin's blade in the dark. He speaks only when there is a reason to do so. Never small talk. Never about the weather. And so there must be a reason for this breach of silence. But what is it?

He turns, to leave. I turn as well, but not before I catch something, something fleeting, out of the very corner of my eye. It is gone when I look again, and he walks on toward the door, ignoring my faltering step, my pause.

I know I saw it. I am certain of it.

I know I saw it.

He opens the door and glances back at me, apparently wondering whether I am coming, and his face is as composed as ever, impassive and closed. I search his face, searching for some sign of what I saw. What I suspect.

A smile.

But there is no confirmation, and when he decides that I intend to stand there mooning at him for longer than he is willing to wait, I watch him turn away again and leave. I continue to stare at the door through which he has passed, feeling something like hope, something like dread, and something completely indefinable.

At last, I smile myself, as understanding dawns.

I have compared him to an icicle. And for the most part, this is accurate. He has suffered during his long life, as we all have. My response has been to laugh at every chance I get, to drive away the shadows and keep them at bay. His has been to become a hard, sharp, untouchable blade of coldness. Shadows flinch away from him. Pain rebounds easily. Warmth wisps away like morning frost. Wisdom would suggest that only a fool reaches willingly for what he knows will cause him pain. I suppose I am a fool. I am old enough to have learned wisdom, but too old to bother heeding it in every circumstance. Perhaps it is some foolish inner perversity that drives me toward him; I have always enjoyed a challenge. Or perhaps it is something deeper than that. It surprises me that, after so long, I do not know myself as well as I thought.

But I know this much: every icicle must melt, eventually.

And I await the coming of spring with great eagerness.

It is time to leave; I inhale deeply of the morning's scents, which are bright and exhilarating, even to lungs as old as mine. The dust has not yet settled as I open the door to begin the climb down. I stir it again with my passage, and laugh to myself at its agitation. "It is a beautiful day," I murmur to myself.

Only the sunbeams and the dust are there to listen.

Just in case you're wondering and haven't yet seen kan 10 or higher of the BH manga, this one is about Karuua and Shifon, two of the recently-unmasked Haz Knights.