[Aster]
The snowstorm, that howling, rattling bastard of a thing, had been raging outside for three whole days without a single sign of letting up. Three long, quiet days of hiding and waiting, of lazing around in their cozy hay nest, of endless games of tickling and wrestling, of exploring every little thing there was to explore, and of eating that same moldy porridge and trying not to earn a bellyache while doing so.
Boring, the word that best describes their time in here, as boring as it gets... and they liked it. The boredom, the safety, the warmth, all of it.
And so was the evening of that third day of them being here, with the fire crackling merrily, filling the dusty old barn with a pleasant orange light. Aster found himself sitting by it, poking at the embers with a stick and thinking about life—mostly about how to best annoy Silvia tonight, about ways of tickling, or maybe sneaking up on her. Simple, boyish things that filled that head of his while his appearance slowly but surely turned into that of a young girl.
"What are you thinking about?" Silvia, the silver-haired target of his evil plans, asked from beside him as she tied their mother's headscarf around his head. Her voice was barely audible over the howls of the storm that kept battering the barn.
He was getting dressed up to go outside and gather some more firewood for the night, while there was still some light outside. Brown tunic with the embroidered flowers on it around the collar, pants that were a bit too tight around the hips, a dark grey dress over it, a pair of woolen socks, and his old boots. All that, just to bring some wood for the night. "Nothin'," Aster replied, trying not to think much about what he wore, "just... stuff."
Silvia hummed at him suspiciously, but didn't say a thing and just finished tying the headscarf. Before long, a cute little bow appeared above his forehead, a nice finishing touch to his girly disguise. "All done," she whispered to him, smiling at his scrunched-up, annoyed expression while her fingers adjusted it. Unlike him, she was still naked, her pale skin reflecting the firelight much like freshly fallen snow would've.
A slight twitch appeared in his left eye. "I should've agreed to the braids," he mumbled under his breath, turning to the side and giving his mother a pleading look. "Mom, please, do I really need to-" the boy with a cute bun on his head tried to say, but she didn't let him finish.
"Yes, honey, we've talked about it. More times than I could count," Nivalis said from her spot by the fire where she was stirring their dinner. She smiled at the sight of him, all pretty and annoyed in that dress, then turned her attention back to the flames. "I'm sorry, but we have to be careful. Always. One little slip, and..."
She didn't finish, didn't need to. Her voice grew quiet, the worry in her eyes saying the rest for her. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts and continue, stirring the porridge in the broken pot as she did. Just a quiet, "You know how it is. Two and a half days."
A heavy sigh escaped Aster as he pushed himself up from the hay, the dress swishing around his knees as he stood. "Yeah, I know," he grumbled, leaning in to give her cheek a quick smooch before snatching the small knife from its place by the fire. But before he could take a single step from their nest, a soft yet demanding huff from behind stopped him.
Turning, he saw Silvia sitting there, arms crossed over her flat chest, her lower lip pushed out in a pout. "...right," he breathed out, then went over to her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as well, which made her smile sweetly and wiggle her hips happily in the hay, before finally heading out. "Be right back."
On his way to the barn doors, he passed by the hatch, that wooden square in the ground they'd found during their wrestle a few days ago. The cellar it led to, the very one he'd spent most of the evening rummaging through all by himself, turned out to be a huge disappointment. The only thing he got for his troubles was a spider in his hair and a bunch of dust to sneeze with. Not a single forgotten jar of honey, not even a few half-rotten potatoes, nothing.
And yet, Aster couldn't help but smile at the sight of it, at the sheer amount of ice Silvia covered it with to keep all the ghosts down there locked away. He shook his head with a chuckle and kept on going, the dress fluttering around his legs all the way to the big, heavy doors.
Putting the knife's handle between his teeth, he pushed at the weathered wood with everything he had, which wasn't much considering what kind of wind blew on the other side, but he managed. Just as Nivalis was about to get up and help him with it, the door creaked open, and he slipped outside, into the dark-orange glow of the late afternoon, a blast of freezing air hitting him in the face.
Everything that could possibly flutter on him did. The dress, the headscarf, the stray hairs peeking from under it, all danced wildly in the wind as he squinted against the snowflakes that swirled everywhere. "Alright, just a few armfuls... or a dozen, then dinner," he mumbled as he pulled the knife from between his teeth, the handle warm from his breath, and trudged forward.
A short, clumsy walk through the thigh-deep snow brought him to a nearby bush, one amongst countless others that grew up in the yard of the abandoned place, all heavy with snow. Having mana to spare, Aster first cast his strengthening spell on his arms, skinny and weak from the lack of food, filling the muscles in there with heat. It felt like dipping them into hot oil, only from inside, but not a twitch of discomfort showed on his face. It was pain he'd grown used to, one he barely registered anymore.
Once done, he gave the little thing a firm shake to clear the snow, then started cutting and snapping branches with quick, practiced movements, dropping them into a small pile at his feet. Huff after huff left him as he worked, each breath fogging up in front of his face before being blown away by the wind almost instantly.
A mere minute later, the bush was no more, nothing but a few sad-looking stumps left in its place. A few swings of a knife, and even those were added to the pile. "One down..." he huffed to himself, scooping an armful of the branches and turning back to the barn. There, he dropped everything near the doors, then turned around for more. "...many, many more to go."
And so it went, one bush at a time, each getting him a little further from the barn and closer to the road they came from. Aster lost track of how many bushes he slayed, how many piles of branches he brought. He just kept going, back and forth, through the snow and wind, with the sun setting fast behind the dark clouds, until it felt like enough to keep his family all warm and cozy through the night. To have them sweaty and complaining about the heat.
Just as he was about to head back for the final armful, a movement in the distance, at the very end of the yard, past the toppled fence, caught his attention. Not a bush or a tree as it didn't sway in the wind, but something tall, dark, and... breathing. Aster forgot how to do just that at the sight, every muscle in his body tensing up as he watched a cloud of mist blooming in the air from that figure, then vanished in the wind.
What stood there was something far more terrifying than any beast, any monster imagination could possibly come up with, even though it had no horns or claws, nor wings. A human. A man whose face Aster couldn't see from this distance, clad in black furs from head to toe, just standing there in the middle of the snow-covered road, unmoving.
Panic, cold and sharp, shot through him, and that was exactly what Aster needed to snap out of it and finally react. 'Oh shit, oh crap...' he thought, the silly bun on his head bouncing as he ducked behind the bush he was about to chop, his heart beating so hard that it echoed in his pointy ears, safely tucked beneath the scarf.
With his knees deep in the snow, Aster went completely still and silent, doing nothing but stare at the dark figure through the gaps in the branches and hope that he hadn't been seen. Hope that whoever that was would walk away, thinking it was nothing but a trick of the evening light. "Just a bush... go away... I'm just a bush..." he mouthed silently as the wind whipped strands of silver hair into his eyes.
For a few moments, very terrifying moments, that didn't happen. The figure didn't move, and Aster's panic rose with each heartbeat that passed. Then, it did. And much to his relief, it wasn't in the barn's direction. The tall, dark shape slowly turned and trudged away, down the road and into the swirling snowstorm, disappearing within seconds, just like that.
Like a little mouse, Aster scrambled back towards the barn, on his hands and knees through the deep snow. From one bush that managed to survive his wrath to the next, he darted across the yard, with only his butt and the pretty bow on his head sticking out. Occasionally, he stopped to peek out from behind a bush and look around for any signs of movement, only to continue his hasty crawl the moment he was sure there was none.
The next thing he knew, he was already at the heavy barn doors, shoving them open with all of his might and tumbling inside without a single thought for the wood pile he'd worked so hard on. A little wince touched his face at the creaky sound the door made and at the warm light that spilled out into the dark, but he quickly pushed the heavy thing closed again, muffling the wind's howl outside with it. "There's..." he tried to say, but his lungs demanded air first.
Nivalis and Silvia both looked up from their porridge, at first with smiles at his return, then with concern at the sight of him—flushed, sweaty, and out of breath, with snow plastered all over him and not making a step away from the door. "What's wrong, honey?" Nivalis asked, already pushing herself up from the hay, with Silvia doing the same right after her.
Taking a few more ragged breaths, Aster managed to get the words out, "While I was... getting the wood, I saw... a man in black furs, standing on the road." That immediately drained the color from their faces, making them tense and look at the door as if it were about to burst open and they would need to fight for their lives. It wouldn't—at least not yet—so he waved them to calm down. "He didn't see me. I don't... I don't think so. I hid right away. He just... stood there for a bit, then walked away."
Two sighs of relief left them, but the tension in their shoulders didn't disappear. Not one bit. Nivalis looked from Aster to the fire, then to their half-eaten porridge, then to the door, and back to Aster. "Alright, let's get our clothes on. In case we have to go," she breathed, putting one hand over her chest to calm her heart. "Asty, stay here and keep an ear out. If you hear anything, anything at all..." she started, but didn't need to finish.
With a quiet, "Yeah, I'll keep watch. Don't worry, Mom," he gave her a reassuring nod, then pressed his ear against the old wood and listened intently to the storm and anything that might be hiding in it, while the two rushed to get their clothes on. He kept an eye on them too, just in case, watching as they pulled on their tunics, pants, and dresses, covering up the pale and pink parts that no one but him had the right to see.
Once done and the last lace on their boots was tied, they hurried back to his side by the door, both worried and tense. "Anything, honey?" Nivalis asked in a whisper, putting her hand on his small shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. He shook his head, and that made her let out a quiet sigh, "Okay, then. Let me try my Blessing. Stay quiet."
Aster and Silvia both nodded, then did exactly that as Nivalis sat by the door, opened it just a tiny bit—a crack so small that it let in barely any wind—and did her thing, her blue eyes fluttering shut.
Then came silence from the three of them, in which the girl's hand found his, her fingers cold from all the mana she was readying, and intertwined with his warm ones. All the tickling and wrestling of the past days, all the teasing were forgotten, and just two siblings remained. The boy squeezed back gently, and the two looked at their mother, waiting for the news.
A minute later, Nivalis opened her eyes and shook her head, blinking away the dizziness that followed. "The wind's too loud, so it's hard to tell, but... I don't think anyone's out there, at least not nearby," and closed the door again, and even placed a rock under it to keep it that way. "Let's just... wait for a bit. If someone's hiding out there and waits for us, we'll hear them eventually," she added, and that's what they did.
For the next half-hour, the three of them sat there on the dirt ground by the door, in near darkness, not a word spoken. Their porridge was left forgotten by the fire, getting cold as they listened for any strange sounds amid the storm, with Nivalis occasionally opening the door a little and trying her Blessing again, always with the same results—nothing.
It was only when the darkness outside grew to the point that they couldn't even see a single step ahead that they decided it was as safe as it was going to get. "Are you sure he didn't see you?" Nivalis eventually asked, breaking the long silence, her worried face barely illuminated in the faint glow of the distant flame.
Aster's nod was slow, hesitant. "Yeah... I hid right away, and with all the snow and wind, I don't... I don't think so," he whispered, chewing on his lower lip as the words left him. Even though he was almost certain he hadn't been seen, that tiny bit of doubt was enough to make him uneasy. She didn't like that answer; he saw it in her face.
Biting at the inside of her cheek, Nivalis stared at the heavy doors for a long moment, her expression thoughtful and uneasy. "I don't like this," she finally breathed out, making her decision, not an easy one given how awful it was outside. "Let's eat quickly and then go, make ourselves our burrow somewhere nearby in the forest," she helped them get up and did so as well, then added quietly, "Better that than have someone barge in here in the middle of the night."
The children didn't argue, only hummed their agreement as they made their way to the fire. There, they sat down on their old, faded-brown cloak and glanced at the cold porridge in the broken pot with the matching sour expressions at the prospect of eating that stuff.
"Asty, could you..." Nivalis hushed, lifting the pot and turning to ask him to warm it up a bit, do the same thing he did to the rocks in the tunnels, but she didn't get to finish her words.
A quiet, dull knock echoed through the barn, coming from the very door the three of them sat by just moments ago. It made their silver heads turn towards it in unison, blood running cold in each one of them.
...
[Margaret]
— "I'm not... I'm not made for these kinds of walks," a woman of more than thirty winters behind her muttered to the tall, dark figure walking beside her, breathing heavily as she struggled through the deep snow, an old lantern swinging from her hand.
Pale face, a healthy bit of fat on her rosy cheeks, not very short, but not too tall either, with light brown hair peeking from the edges of her woolen hat, and with matching eyes that kept darting worriedly around the dark woods. "A kid? Here, in this weather? All alone?" she asked him a few tired pants later, giving the man a look, "You haven't been drinking that cherry brew of yours again, have you? I won't be mad if you did, just... tell me. Saves me the effort."
The man, tall and broad-shouldered and often smelling like a stray dog, was her husband, Hagen. His equally pale, weathered face peeked from inside the black furs he wore as he looked at her, a short, annoyed grunt escaping him. "A scrawny girl, around the same age as our rascal. I can swear on my mother's grave if you want," he said, voice almost swallowed by the wind around them.
Raising his voice slightly, he continued, "Thin as a twig, but fierce. Watched her chopping at the bushes from the road for a good five minutes before she spotted me." He paused, scratching at the greying stubble on his chin, "And you hid the cherry brew too well. I haven't found it yet."
His words made Margaret frown in worry, her mind ignoring the last bit entirely. He never speaks of his mother unless it's something truly important. "Gods above, I'm married to an idiot. Why didn't you take her with you?" she breathed, putting more effort into her trudge, which barely made a difference. "Hagen, a child... in the middle of the storm. You don't just leave one to freeze to death." An angry huff left her chapped, red lips.
Staying close to her side to shield her from the worst of the wind, he grumbled back, "You didn't see how quickly she hid the moment she spotted me. And besides..." he paused, squinting through the snowflakes whipping at his face, "...there are things that a man simply does not do, woman. Approaching young girls after dark with words like 'Come with me, I'll warm you up' is one of them. That's why I went to get you. You're good with these kinds of things."
Margaret didn't say anything to that, and with it, the conversation died. For a while, they just kept pushing through the snow in silence, a worried frown on her face that didn't soften until the dark shape of the barn appeared from the swirling mess ahead. "I'll do the talking. Try not to look like a bear," she hushed him as they climbed over the fence, then trudged through the yard, past the burnt-out house, and up to the big, heavy doors.
He nodded and took the furs off his head, revealing a mess of short, dark hair and a face that was as grumpy as it gets. She sighed at him, but didn't say anything. Instead, Margaret took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then raised her gloved hand and gave the heavy wood a soft, delicate knock.
Nothing happened. The wind howled, the snow fell, but no one answered. A horrible image of a frozen-to-death child in there, in a corner, all alone, flashed through her mind, making her heart ache. So she tried to open the door herself, give it a little push, but something blocked it from the inside. "Hello? Is there anyone in there? We mean you no harm," she called in the friendliest of tones, pressing an ear against the cold wood to listen.
Her lips moved in prayer as the silence stretched on, then they curled up in a smile when a faint, rustling noise came from inside, so brief that she almost missed it. Someone was in there, and alive. "My husband and I live just a little way from here. He saw you," she added gently, her breath fogging up against the wood. "Don't be scared, dear. We're not going to hurt you. Just... let us in? So we can talk?"
Stepping away from the door, she looked at her husband, then at the dark forest beyond the yard, worry written all over her face. It was terribly cold tonight. Hagen simply stood there, eyeing the big pile of branches by the doors, way too big for one small girl to gather all by herself, a quiet, "Those were raspberry bushes, good for the brew..." slipping out of him. More than anything, it made her want to smack him straight to the ancestors for being such an insensitive oaf.
But she didn't and just kept waiting, standing there in the cold, holding the lantern and staring at the door, hoping it would open. A minute went by. Two. For a moment, she thought she heard something like a cloth being ripped from inside, but with the wind roaring in her ears, it was hard to tell. "Maybe she can't open it...?" she asked Hagen, getting more and more worried with each moment that passed.
Hagen stared at her for a moment, then nodded once. But just as he was about to take a step forward and get the heavy thing open, it moved on its own. Slowly, ever so slowly, the barn door creaked open, just enough for a pale face to peek through the gap.
Not the face of a little girl, but of a woman with the bluest of eyes, much to Margaret's surprise. Then, a little more, and two almost identical faces appeared behind her. Two sisters, with eyes of gold unlike their mother's, one a little taller than the other.
A family, and an incredibly poor one, by the looks of it. Thin, pale like snow with matching northern hair, all three of them were dressed in nothing but patched-up, faded things that only maybe orphans and beggars would wear.
The youngest girl and her mother both had what looked like old rags wrapped around their heads, some faded-brown cloth that might've been anything in another life. However, the older girl's clothes were much nicer and were tied with care, clearly at that awkward age when girls begin to notice there are boys in the world and start to make themselves pretty for them. A cute little bow above her pretty face just screamed of it.
After a bit of an awkward silence, Margaret took a step closer, just enough so that the wind would not carry her words away, but even that little movement made the three flinch. "We don't want any trouble. We'll leave your property," the mother spoke, her blue eyes shifting from her to Hagen, then back again, looking as tense as one could possibly get. Her children were no better, golden eyes forgetting how to blink.
No furs, no coats, nothing that could keep them warm in this weather, and yet choosing to step into a certain death showed just how scared they were. "That's not why we're here, dear," Margaret said, raising her empty hands in what she hoped was a calming gesture. "We live nearby. My husband," she pointed at the grumpy-looking man, "saw your daughter gathering wood earlier, and we got worried. You and your girls shouldn't be out here alone in this storm."
The woman just stood there for a long moment, her blue eyes studying the strangers before her, as if trying to decide whether they were telling the truth.
Seeing the hesitation and doubt in those eyes, Margaret added, "We're not... we're not bad people. I don't know what happened to you, but you look like you've been through enough. I'm a mother, too. I have a son about your daughter's age, and..." she trailed off, not knowing what else to say. "My name's Margaret. This is Hagen," she added after a moment, then simply waited.
"Nivalis," the woman replied in a quiet voice after a handful of heartbeats, relaxing just enough that she no longer looked like she was about to bolt. "And these are my daughters, Asteria," she gave a little squeeze on the shoulder to the one with the bow, "and Silvia," then to the small girl. Both girls hummed a quiet 'Hello' at their names, their voices barely audible over the wind that managed to slip past Margaret and Hagen.
A warm smile appeared on Margaret's face at that, "That's very pretty names. It's a pleasure to meet you, girls." Her eyes lingered on the mother for a bit longer before she continued, "Well, Nivalis, there's no way I'm leaving you and your daughters in here tonight. You think you can make it on foot? Lonecandle is just over the hill, not far at all."
Blinks, slow and confused, came from all three pairs of eyes in the doorway. "Lonecandle?" came a shy question from the youngest of the girls. Margaret and Hagen smiled at her, then at each other, as they were about to tell of their little village, a quiet, cozy place that would be perfect for a lost family that had been through a lot. A place to call home.