Eira
The apothecary shop was quiet, except for the bubbling from a small glass retort. Eira stood over her father, her eyes stinging from the fumes of Silver-Moss and Crushed Ember-Seed.
She had spent her entire week's allowance on these ingredients, convinced that a stimulant for the blood would wake the heart.
Gently, she pressed a spoonful of the blue liquid to her father's lips. "Please, Dad," she whispered.
She watched his throat. He swallowed, but his eyes remained fixed on the frosted window. His lantern, sitting on the side table, didn't even brighten.
Eira pulled the spoon away, her hand trembling. It was the fourteenth so-called cure she had tried this month.
Each failure felt like a brick being added to a wall between them. The hope that usually fueled her was turning into a sharp frustration.
Eira sat down on the floor next to his feet, resting her head on his knees. She thought of her family. Before all of this had happened.
She thought of her mother's warm smile. The way it twinkled always filled her up with a feeling of joy and peace. She had learned to mirror her, offering that same grin to everyone she met.
Eira thought of her father. He scooped her up, his infectious belly laugh filling the air.
"Listen to me, Eira," he had whispered, his voice soft. "Bright lights are a responsibility. True strength is found in forgiveness and in holding a lamp for those others have left in the cold. Never turn your back on a dying heart."
Then, the frost crept in. It started at the edges of the window and raced across the floor, turning the amber light to a dull, bruised gray. Her mother's laugh turned into a rattling cough. The kitchen dissolved into mist.
Eira jolted and woke up.
The reality was a cold, dim room. The hearth was a heap of white ash. Her father sat in his chair by the window, a statue of flesh and bone, staring at a world he could no longer feel.
Eira moved with a practiced, desperate efficiency. She reached into a hidden compartment in her medical chest and pulled out a small vial of Sun-Stem Distillate.
It was a remedy she had spent weeks crafting from rare moss found on the highest, sun-bleached peaks.
"I'm here, Dad," she murmured, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. She knelt by his side, gently tilting his head back. "Wilhelmilla asked about you today. Everyone misses your stories."
She carefully guided the drops into his mouth one by one. She held her breath, her eyes fixed on his lantern. For a heartbeat, the dim flame seemed to shiver. A spark of gold flared at the base of the wick, and Eira's heart soared. Please. Just this once. Please.
Then, the gold vanished. The remedy had failed. Again.
Eira stood up, the glass vial shattering in her tightened grip. She didn't cry; she didn't have any tears left for the silence of this house.
She looked at her mother's empty weaving chair in the corner. Her mother hadn't died from the cold or the mist. She had slowly faded away a year after his accident, leaving Eira alone in a house that felt more like a tomb every day.
Anger, hot and jagged, began to simmer in Eira's chest.
She was angry at the failed medicine. She was angry at the river for being a thief. She was angry at the High-Tier doctors who had patted her on the head and told her to "accept what had happened."
She was angry at the world for continuing to turn while her father was frozen in time.
She grabbed her leather gardening gloves and her sharpened trowel. She needed to dig. She needed to feel the resistance of the earth.
As she stepped out of the house and headed toward the communal gardens, her jaw was set in a hard line. She wasn't looking for a fight, but she was carrying a lifetime of silence, and now she was ready to scream.