[Aster]
Two long and miserable months had crawled by ever since they'd stumbled upon those men in the forest. Two months of nothing but walking, listening to every little sound, and being constantly exhausted. What little fat they'd managed to gain during their lazy days by the lake had long since burned away in the endless march through the deep snow that only grew higher and higher. The time was harsh, so much so that they now looked just as bony as they were back in the dark tunnels, if not even more so.
Eating just a fish a day wasn't even remotely enough to replenish the energy they'd burned to keep moving; they learned it the hard way. When the fish eventually ran out, it got even worse. Knowing that those men were searching for some kind of root that grew near water, they avoided rivers and lakes like the plague, not wanting to cross paths with whoever they were and to them alike. So, they had to rely on what little they could find in the frozen forest instead.
Not only did they have to spend energy walking as far east as they could, but they also had to hunt something as they did so. And words couldn't describe how exhausting that was. Every little bird they managed to catch, every squirrel and rabbit that wasn't quick enough, was a celebration, a little holiday that only they knew about. One that never lasted long enough.
Even with Nivalis's Blessing at their side, there just wasn't enough game to be stupid enough to wander through the forest during the worst of winter. Those that did were often more trouble than they were worth, not to mention that trying to be sneaky in waist-high snow was next to impossible. It's only when you start to wonder whether bark can be boiled enough to be edible that you truly realize how terrible of a hunter you are.
'It's decided. I'll find one of those super old, mysterious hunters that live in solitude,' Aster thought to himself with a determined nod as he trudged through the snow next to his mother. His face scrunched up from the effort as they both pulled a wobbly, clumsy sled with a trembling girl on it. 'The kind that never speaks and never takes apprentices because they're all unworthy. But when he sees me, he will change his mind immediately, just because I'm awesome. He'll teach me his secret hunting knowledge, and then we'll eat meat every day.'
After a few crunchy steps, he shook his head, sending his messy silver hair dancing around his bare shoulders. 'Yeah, no... knowing my luck, I'd probably find some creepy old hunter who teaches boys the other kind of secret techniques...' A sigh escaped his chapped lips, the white puff dancing briefly in front of his gaunt face.
"What's on your mind, sweetie?" Nivalis's quiet, tired voice cut through his thoughts, making him lift his golden gaze from the deep snow and look at her, to his left. With a clumsy rope in hand, she looked exhausted beyond words, hollow-cheeked and weary, with dark circles under her blue eyes. Yet, still beautiful despite all that, no amount of weariness could change that.
The boy managed a weak chuckle, little more than a puff of air, before muttering, "Nothing. Just... silly thoughts." He then turned his attention to the sled they were pulling, to the shape of his sister under a heap of pine branches, shivering so much that the entire sled wobbled with her.
Silvia couldn't keep up with the grown-up legs of her mother and the spell-strengthened ones of her brother, so for at least a few hours each day—mainly in the evenings like the one right now—she was forced to ride their masterpiece of engineering. "It's getting late," Aster added, looking up at the darkening sky above. "We should probably start looking for a place to rest soon."
Nivalis nodded in agreement, her gaze also shifting to the sky, her brows furrowing slightly at the sight of the sun trying to hide behind the trees. "Fifteen more minutes," she whispered back, adjusting her grip on the rope with a sigh. "Maybe we'll find a better spot than this. It's too open here."
Aster hummed in response, and they continued through the deep snow in silence, trying to find a nice cluster of bushes and trees for their little burrow, the only sounds being the crunching of their tired steps, the labored breathing, and the creaking of their clumsy sled. Snowflakes kept swirling all around them, getting into their hair, clinging to their lashes and brows, melting against their flushed skin.
After a while, Aster muttered, "There. Doesn't look too bad," pointing at an exceptionally dense patch of young pines ahead. It was so thick that they wouldn't need to waste any time masking their shelter; the forest would do that for them.
"P-perfect, yeah. I was about to suggest we t-take whatever tree nearby." Nivalis whispered back, trying to control the shivering in her body, but failing miserably; It had been quite a while since their last stop. When they reached the wall of green, she stopped, and both dropped the rope with synchronized sighs of relief. Blowing warm air into her hands, she turned around and knelt by the sled, pulling the pine branches away to uncover the shivering girl underneath. "Alright, princess. Your carriage has arrived," she couldn't help but tease with a small, tired smile, earning a pathetic whimper in response.
A scrunched-up face appeared from under the branches, two golden eyes barely open and looking up at her. "S-so c-cold..." Silvia complained right away in a weak, trembling voice while rubbing at her runny nose. Nivalis just chuckled softly and slipped her hands under her daughter's armpits to lift her, grunting quietly at the effort. "N-nooo, I don't wanna..." came another whine as the girl was hoisted into the air, away from the little nest that took her forever to warm up.
Aster just watched them from the side, trying his hardest not to laugh, and instead gave a small pile of snow a few kicks. "Just a little bit more, sweetie," Nivalis mumbled as she set her down on the ground, letting those small boots disappear in the deep snow. "We won't have to do much disguising this time. Look what we've found."
It took a moment for the girl to rub the sleep from her eyes, long lashes fluttering a few times before she saw the cluster of pines they were going to hide in. Then, an ever-so-quiet, "Alright..." came from her, along with the tiniest of nods, after which she stumbled towards the trees with almost no energy in those soft thighs of hers, hidden beneath the ragged cloak.
The boy and his mother exchanged a glance and a quiet sigh and, without a word, began shoving their wobbly sled into the wall of sharp needles ahead. The going was rough, the thing stuck more than it slid, their faces getting slapped by branches left and right. Huffs and puffs came with each push, along with a quiet curse or two, yet neither dared to be too loud, so deep in their bones was the fear from two months ago. Silvia did her part too, though mostly by pulling aside the larger branches, creating a small gap for them to crawl through, her small hands trembling from the effort.
A minute or two later, the three of them popped out on the other side, covered in green needles from head to toe, scratching wherever they could reach. But the moment they stood up straight and took a proper look around, they froze.
What greeted them wasn't the small, well-hidden spot among the trees they had expected. Instead, they found themselves staring at something so unexpected that it took them a full ten seconds of just standing there, like three half-frozen idiots, to process what they were seeing. "Is... is this...?" Silvia asked in a breathless whisper, unable to finish her sentence; there was no need to.
Right there, cutting through the forest like an old scar, was a road. A simple, winding trail, barely wide enough for them to walk side by side. Like everything else around, it was hidden beneath deep snow that hadn't been disturbed in a while, but there was no mistaking it for anything else. Nivalis cleared a bit of it with her foot, just to be sure, pushing aside the white blanket until her boot hit something solid. Hard ground, not a river frozen underneath. A real road. The first one since... forever. "Yeah, sweetie... I think it is," the woman answered in a quiet, shaky breath as she looked left and right. "Let me check with my Blessing..."
Aster stayed silent, his small scarred hand finding his mother's the very moment she closed her eyes to listen, Silvia doing the same from the other side. They both held their breaths as they watched her, every little change on her face making their hearts beat a little faster. "Honey, could you...?" she mumbled mid-listen, asking for a sound to make the world of grey in her head brighter, be her light in the dark.
The boy responded with a squeeze of his hand, took a lungful of air, and let out the loudest bird call he could muster—something between a dying chicken and a strangled cat, yet good enough to pass as a weird winter bird in these parts. Something that wouldn't attract much attention if anyone were to hear it, but would give his mother plenty of sound to see everything around. Silvia couldn't help but wince at how deafening it was, one finger flying up to her pointy ear to plug it.
Fifteen heartbeats passed in absolute silence, the snow swirling all around Nivalis's pale face as her head slowly turned from left to right, and back again. Then, the blue of her eyes finally peeked out from between her long lashes, dizziness instantly clouding them. "Well..." she spoke, leaning a bit against her son to steady herself. "Not a soul around, and nothing out of the ordinary. Trees, same old trees," she added, looking to their right, where the trail curved and disappeared into the forest. "That way... the road kind of slopes down. The other way feels like it goes up a bit, though it's tough to tell."
Silvia took a deep breath and looked at her little brother, then back at their mother, before asking the question they all had on their minds, "What do we do?" To which Aster just gave her a helpless shrug.
Roads usually lead to houses. Houses usually had people living in them. And the only people he'd ever talked with were his mother and sister; he had absolutely no clue what to expect, what to say, how to act. The only thing he knew was what to do if they happened to be hostile: burn. Aster looked up at his mother, hoping she had an answer.
But the way her brows furrowed, it didn't seem like she did. They had been trudging through these endless forests, places left forgotten by the gods themselves for so long that reaching the other side of it, reaching civilization, had become something of a distant dream. Something to talk about in the evenings to distract themselves, not something that could ever truly happen. They entered these woods in search of a better life on the very day Aster was born; that's how long it had been.
After a few more nervous glances around, Nivalis eventually broke the silence, "Let's... let's make a fire first and get warm," she said in a quiet, trembling voice. "Then... we follow the road down." Her gaze shifted to the darkening sky above. "We've maybe an hour left before it gets completely dark, enough to walk for a bit. If nothing shows up before then, we'll make a shelter somewhere near the road and continue in the morning." She looked down at her children, one by one, her grip tightening around their smaller hands. "Sound like a plan?"
Aster and Silvia just nodded, sharing a quick, nervous glance before letting go of her and getting to work. Nivalis pulled her rusty knife from the sled and began cutting branches that had just moments ago slapped them all silly, while the kids snapped off the thinner ones around her. It took them less than two minutes to gather enough for a small fire, after which they spent another clearing the snow from the ground right next to the road.
With a quick flick of his scarred wrist, Aster set alight everything they had gathered, the small, cheerful flame instantly bringing some life to their tired faces. They plopped down next to it without a word, with Nivalis sitting on the ground, Aster on her soft lap with his butt wiggling left and right, and Silvia on top of him, getting hugged by two pairs of arms at the same time. It was how they usually warmed up during the day, just a weird yet incredibly comfortable pile of Silverfrosts.
To warm the girls even more, Aster ignited enough mana in his chest to make himself sweat even in this cold, being their very personal heater. "Thank you, honey," Nivalis murmured into his messy hair, planting a kiss on top of his head, while the girl on top of them sighed contentedly at having something to warm both her face and her butt. He answered with a quiet hum of 'you're welcome', after which a comfortable silence settled over them, broken only by the crackling of their fire and the occasional rustle of branches nearby.
They remained like that for maybe fifteen minutes at most, not nearly enough for the girls to get truly warm, but just enough to stop the violent shivering they both had. Then, with a shared sigh, they untangled themselves and got back to their feet. Aster and Silvia quickly buried the fire under the snow to leave no trace of them ever being there, while Nivalis did another quick check with her Blessing, just to be sure.
Then, with a nervous glance at each other, they returned to the road and began walking along it. Aster pulled the sled from the back, Silvia in the middle, and their mother leading the way. They walked in absolute silence, the world around them slowly darkening as the sun disappeared behind the trees, the deep snow at their feet and on the sides of the trail turning from white to a dark, ominous grey.
Every hundred or so steps, Nivalis would stop, close her eyes, and listen, only this time without any strange bird calls from Aster. Just their usual walking routine that they had perfected over the last two months, to be as quiet and invisible as possible.
For half an hour that followed, they saw no one, and no one saw them. All they heard was the wind howling through the pines, the crunch of their footsteps, and their tired breathing in between. It was Silvia who eventually broke the silence with a quiet, "I wonder where it goes?" trying to distract herself from the pain in her thighs. "Could it be it's just super old and leads nowhere?"
Aster took a few steps to catch up with her and whispered, "Maybe to a castle? That would be cool," his gaze darting between the darkening trees. His chest ached terribly from all the mana he had in there, burning hot and eager to be unleashed if need be, ribs screaming under the pressure. And yet, not a twitch of discomfort showed on his face, not even the tiniest wince.
Nivalis shook her head without looking back. "It's probably just a hunter's trail, sweetie. Maybe leading to a small village or a farm somewhere ahead. Or perhaps a logging camp. No one builds castles in the middle of nowhere like this..." She was about to say more, but trailed mid-sentence when a different kind of rustle reached her ears, coming from somewhere to their right and slightly ahead. "Shhh!" she hissed immediately, throwing her arm out to the side to stop them.
The kids dropped to their knees in unison. A moment later, Nivalis did the same, their silver hair and pale faces instantly blending them in with the snowy ground. With their breaths caught in their throats, Aster and Silvia crawled to their sled and pulled their makeshift spears from it, the icy tips looking especially deadly in the dimming light. They then returned to their mother, handing her the third and largest one before huddling together behind her, all eyes fixed on the dark path ahead, all hearts hammering against their ribs as they waited for whatever was coming.
For the next dozen panicked beats, all they could hear was the wind howling through the trees, but then, a faint light appeared far down the trail. Dancing and flickering, coming closer through the forest with every passing second.
"Just... one person, I think," Nivalis whispered after a quick listen, her grip tightening around her spear. "Carrying something, and... there's something long on his back. It might be a bow." She looked back at her children, her features barely visible in the fading light. "I'll try to talk if it comes to that, but be ready, both of you."
Everything inside Aster twisted into a knot at that, his fingers twitching in readiness to turn the stranger into a pile of ashes if he so much as looked funny their way. "Alright," he mouthed, while Silvia beside him just nodded, swallowing hard.
The light bobbed closer with every crunch of boots against the untouched snow, coming through the trees along the road. Soon, they could make out the shape of a skinny boy—not much older than Aster, maybe three years at most—popping out of the bushes the same way they did not so long ago. He carried a bundle of wood under one arm and a rusty lantern in the other, a bow slung across his back that hung down past the back of his knee.
Wrapped in furs from head to toe, he had a dead bird hanging from a string tied to his belt, and a few arrows peeking out from the pocket of his pants. The boy came to a stop right in the middle of the trail, only about a dozen steps away from their hiding spot, and set the lantern down to dust himself off. "...damn it's cold," he mumbled to himself, looking up at the dark sky with a shiver.
With a tired sigh, he bent down, picked up his lantern, and cast a lazy glance around himself before starting to walk down the road, away from them. For exactly three steps, that was, before suddenly stopping dead in his tracks, only his lantern and the bird on his belt continuing to sway for a moment longer.
The creaking of the old hinges echoed softly as the boy slowly, ever so slowly, turned around to look into the darkness, past the swirling snowflakes. The lantern rose with a trembling hand, the light of it catching his face first—a pale, freckled one with hazel eyes full of confusion. Dirty blond hair peeked out from under his fur hood, slightly damp with sweat from all the walking, white puffs escaping his lips with every exhale.
Then, those puffs suddenly stopped altogether when the light found three shadows watching him back from a little distance away. Two pairs of golden eyes and one blue stared right at him, reflecting the light without a single blink. Confusion on the boy's face gave way to disbelief; his arms outstretched even more, just enough for the light to reach the silhouettes in the dark, revealing three gaunt figures straight out of a bedtime story.
Just sitting there, in little more than rags hanging off their bony frames, like it was the most natural thing in the world to be half-naked in the dead of winter. A woman with hair the color of the moonlight that spilled over her shoulders, the sweetest smile gracing her lips that didn't quite reach her eyes. Her children flanked her: a kid with a glare so mean it would make a bear think twice, and a girl with one so cold it could freeze the very winter itself.
The boy's face changed again, the disbelief draining away to be replaced by a quiet, weary acceptance that this was how it would end for him, altogether skipping fear as if there was just no point in it. Something an old man could have on his face after exhaling his final breath, like death was just an old friend finally come to visit; it looked completely out of place on a boy who couldn't grow a proper beard yet.
Clearing her throat, Nivalis slowly rose to her feet and muttered her friendliest, "H-hello, are you alone here...?" which sounded anything but that to the stranger in furs.
For a heartbeat, the boy just stared, his hazel eyes shifting from one face to another, then to their weird spears, and back again. Then, as if suddenly remembering that he had legs that actually worked, he spun around with such force that his fur hood flew backward, revealing more of that dirty blond hair of his. He ran, ran like never before in his life, the bird on his belt and the lantern swaying wildly with each panicked step, the wood he carried went flying in every direction.
The small family of three watched him do so in confusion, the light of his lantern disappearing along with him, leaving them in the darkness again. "W-why... why did he run?" Silvia asked in a whisper, scratching the back of her silver head.
...