[Nivalis Silverfrost]
Taking a deep breath that did little to calm the frantic beating of her heart, Nivalis pushed aside the heavy, ice-covered branches that hid their little burrow from the world. The frozen needles scraped against her arms as she did so, after which she crawled out into the night. The cold air instantly bit at her warm skin, raising goosebumps all over her pale body. Her dirty clothes clung to her curves once again, hopefully, for the last time.
Her exhale puffed out in a white cloud as she straightened up, her gaze shifting to the half-moon hanging high in the dark, cloudy sky above, casting a faint, silvery light over the snow-covered forest. 'Please, please... let this go well,' she did a little prayer before turning around and extending her hands back inside to help her children out.
Her son came first. Aster's scarred hand grasped hers almost immediately, his golden eyes briefly meeting hers before he emerged with a nervous glance around and then reached back in for his sister. Silvia came right after him, her small hand slipping into his, after which she was pulled out of the burrow. The little girl shivered the very moment she was out, the snow crunching under her boots, and hugged herself for warmth.
Their sled followed next, all three of them working together to pull it out from under the branches without making much noise. Once everything was ready, Nivalis spoke, "Alright, remember the plan?" Despite them both nodding in response, she still decided to go over it one more time, just to be sure.
Crouching down to their level until her knees sank into the cold snow, she continued, "We walk as quietly as possible. If you want to say something, whisper. Always stick to the trees and bushes, and always stay behind me. Stay alert at all times, and if you spot anything unusual, tell me. If something doesn't feel right, we run back, just like we did today, okay? Hiding tracks and all that." She looked from one nervous face to the other, making eye contact with each. "If everything is quiet in the village, we go in and take something real quick, and then get out. Fast and quiet. Understood?"
The kids nodded at her, and Nivalis nodded back at them. "Then let's go," she said with a determined squeeze of their shoulders. After getting up and, with her spear in hand and her ragged bag on one shoulder, she led the way back to the village they had left behind not long ago. Her thighs screamed in protest, having not rested enough after a full day of walking, but she ignored the pain and made her boots crunch through the snow once more.
Her children followed closely behind with their small spears at their sides. Aster was pulling the sled at the end of the line, as he always did during their walks, while Silvia stayed in the middle, her gaze darting between the dark shapes of the trees surrounding them. Both had plenty of mana ignited inside them for anyone who'd dare to harm their little family.
The going was slow and silent, as silent as they could make it. The creaking of their wobbly sled was the only thing that broke the quiet of the night, along with the distant hooting of an owl somewhere in the darkness. Every little sound made them freeze, their breaths caught in their throats, listening intently for any signs of danger. Everything around looked wrong and twisted under the moonlight, so unlike the bright and peaceful forest they had grown used to during those endless walks. And the cold? It was the kind of cold that made the one during the day feel like a warm summer afternoon. And it was anything but.
About a hundred steps away from the tree they were hiding under—one that would likely never be visited again—Nivalis raised her hand and stopped them. The siblings didn't ask why, and she didn't have to tell them; they just obediently did as told and looked at her expectantly, two pairs of gold in the dark. After one final nervous glance around, she closed her eyes and let the sounds of the night consume her, letting that soft hum inside her head appear.
It started faint and muffled, barely noticeable at first, but the longer she listened, the clearer and louder it became. When it got to the point she couldn't hear her own thoughts, that hum snapped into the world of grey in her mind, a world seen through sound. No matter how often she did this, it never stopped being weird. Being able to see things happening dozens of steps away, just as clearly as if they were right in front of her nose, was beyond strange.
The large pines looming all around them were the first things to come into focus, their branches swaying in the wind, some creaking, some not. Bushes like the one they were hiding in. The dark, empty spaces between them, where the snow reigned untouched.
Although everything was much blurrier than when Aster made those birdcalls, she could still tell there was no one nearby except them. There were no footprints anywhere, no branches out of place, and nothing to suggest that anyone had passed through recently. If there were, she'd likely call this whole idea off and return to their burrow to think of another plan.
When her eyes fluttered open again, the world of grey vanished, replaced by the darkness of the forest. Dizziness immediately washed over her and made everything around her spin wildly, yet she still managed to find her children's worried faces. "It's... it's quiet. No one's around," she whispered, a bit breathlessly as she blinked the dizziness away. Her legs wobbled when she pushed herself up, and it didn't even take a heartbeat for Aster to be there for her, his small arm circling her waist. After a few deep breaths, she gave him a quiet "Thank you," and they were moving again.
With the help of the pale moonlight peeking through the clouds, Nivalis led them through the forest for another five minutes, moving from tree to tree, bush to bush, like three frightened squirrels, then repeated the whole thing all over again—close her eyes, listen, and then confirm there was no one nearby. Once again, when her eyes opened, dizziness followed, adding to the one that had barely faded from before. And Aster was there to steady her, just as before. This cycle repeated itself three more times before the trees began to thin out.
Soon, they found themselves at the edge of the forest, hiding behind the last line of bushes and trees, with the same village they had spied on earlier spread out before them. The moon was hidden behind the clouds for a moment, so the sight was nothing more than faint outlines of buildings and a couple of lonely lights coming from behind windows, yet it still managed to steal their breath away.
Then, the moon peeked out again, and their target appeared in all its glory. A house at the outskirts of the village, a bit bigger than the rest, with a yard filled with three lines of clothes hanging to dry, a barn next to it, and a fence made of wooden logs surrounding the entire thing.
The house itself looked fairly old but well-kept, the wood dark from years spent fighting the weather, the roof covered in a thick layer of white, with a single plume of smoke lazily rising from the stone chimney. "See anything unusual?" Nivalis asked, trying to spot any weird movements happening in there: people grabbing pitchforks and torches, shouting about sacrifices that need to be made for their gods, or anything else that would make them turn around and go back to their burrow.
Both Aster and Silvia shook their heads and hummed in unison, their eyes fixed on the house, on the clothes that hung there. "Alright," Nivalis whispered, taking a deep breath, so deep that it made her ribs ache. "I think we should wait a bit for those lights to go out, and then we'll go. Let's just sit here for now and keep watch, okay?" The kids nodded, and the three of them settled down among the bushes, in that weird, cozy way of theirs, with Nivalis sitting on the sled, the boy on her lap, and the girl on top of him.
And so they waited, with nothing but the rustling of branches and the occasional distant bark of a dog for company. Not too long after, Aster got himself all hot and sweaty from the mana burning inside him, much to the delight of the two trembling girls huddled against him. Like a pair of cats, they both started rubbing themselves against him without even realizing it, pressing their cold bodies against his furnace-like skin, stealing as much of that precious warmth as they could.
But the lights in the windows stubbornly refused to go out. In fact, another one joined them after a while, making them groan in frustration as one. The moon kept hiding and peeking out, playing games with the clouds, rising higher and higher in the sky. The entire time, not a word was spoken between the three of them, just the occasional sigh or the soft wiggle of their bodies against each other. Nivalis did her thing once every ten minutes or so, closing her eyes and listening intently for any signs of trouble. Nothing.
Just when Nivalis was about to worry about morning approaching, things started to change. One of the lights in the windows suddenly went dark, followed by the second one a few minutes later. Then, the entire village plunged into complete darkness and silence. No more lights, not even a single dog barking anymore. They remained in their hiding spot on one of the hills, among the bushes, for another ten minutes, just to be sure. Once the village showed no sign of life, Nivalis finally gave a quiet, "Let's go, quick and quiet. Leave the sled here," her voice a shaky whisper.
The three of them scrambled out of the bushes with only spears in their hands, with Nivalis in the front, leading the way through the thigh-deep snow down the gentle slope, toward the village. Aster and Silvia followed in her footsteps as closely as they could without bumping into her, both so nervous they barely dared to breathe.
Nivalis was no better; her heart thudded against her ribs like a trapped bird, each step making her wince at how loud it was in the dead of night. 'This is such a bad idea...' she thought for the hundredth time already, each time shaking her head to get rid of it. No matter how bad it was, getting torched by a bunch of angry villagers who thought they were baby-eating monsters was a fair bit worse.
She knew just how... superstitious humans in these parts could be, to the point of being dangerous, especially when it came to the unknown. And they were about as unknown as it gets. Something normal to wear should help with that, hopefully.
Once at the bottom of the hill, they paused for a heartbeat, their eyes darting between the dark shapes of the houses that were closer than ever, listening intently to the silence. When nothing but the wind answered, Nivalis motioned for them to follow, and they began moving again, through the bushes that stretched all the way to the edge of the settlement.
When wooden fences began to peek out from between the snow-covered branches, their steps slowed to a crawl, and their bodies crouched even lower to the ground. A few nervous heartbeats later, and they found themselves standing in front of the very fence they had been spying on from the hill, the one surrounding the house they were after, with an unremarkable, wooden sidegate in it.
Tiptoeing herself up until her chin brushed the snow off the freezing wood of the fence, Nivalis risked a quick peek inside. Her blue gaze went straight to the clotheslines, then around the yard for any dogs that might be tied up in there, and finally up to the dark windows of the house. Not a soul in sight.
Quietly and incredibly slowly, she reached for the wooden handle on the gate and tried to push it open, but it didn't budge. She then kicked some snow aside with her boot and gave it a pull instead, causing only a soft rattle of the wood that made her grimace and nothing else. 'Must be locked...' she thought, sighing quietly.
Huffing some warm air into her hands to chase the cold away, Nivalis then turned around and looked into the gold of her son. "It probably has a latch or something like that on the other side," she hushed in the quietest of whispers, pointing at the gate with her numb finger. "I'm going to lift you over. Try to unlock it from the other side, okay?"
After a nervous glance at the dark wood, Aster gave a slight nod. "Be careful," she whispered as she slipped her hands under his armpits and, with a quiet grunt, lifted him onto the fence, making it creak softly. The boy straddled it and took his time to look around the same way she did just a moment ago, then jumped over, landing in a deep pile of snow with a soft thud, disappearing entirely.
Together, Nivalis and Silvia waited by the gate like two abandoned kittens in a storm, holding onto their spears with trembling hands, their gazes fixed on the space where their boy had vanished. A long, tense minute passed... then two. 'What's taking him so long...' Nivalis thought, her heart thudding in her chest like a war drum.
She was about to climb that cursed fence herself, no matter how much noise that would make, but the moment she gripped the cold wood, a soft click cut through the silence, followed by a gentle push that opened the gate inward. "It wasn't locked, just a bunch of snow blocking the way," came Aster's whisper from the other side, his pale face with a bit of snow on his nose peeking out from behind the gate.
A long, quiet sigh of relief escaped both girls at the same time, and they quickly slipped inside the yard, leaving the side gate open just enough for them to run through if needed. Sticking to the long shadows of the fence, the three of them made their way to the clotheslines, to their new life hanging there for the taking.
But before they could get to the clothes, they passed by a perfect imprint of Aster's face in the snow where he'd landed, which the boy quickly destroyed with a few nervous kicks as they moved past it. Nivalis would've laughed if not for the sheer terror gripping her heart, her eyes darting between the dark windows and the door of the house that was now so close she could almost touch it.
And there they were. Three long lines, stretching from the house to the barn, filled with clothes of all sizes and colors, all frozen stiff from the cold. Every piece of clothing was as simple as the village itself, made of rough wool or thick linen, dull colors of brown or grey, heavily patched in some places.
Yet, to them, it was a treasure beyond words. "Quickly," Nivalis whispered, her fingers already fumbling with a faded-brown dress that was frozen solid, hanging from the rope. "Take whatever looks like it would fit, but stay in my sight. Don't take any underwear."
Nivalis's gaze went back to the house every few seconds, to that weathered door that looked ready to swing open at any second, with a bunch of angry men behind it, pitchforks in hand and torches held high. But all she got was silence, nothing but the wind howling through the village, making the frozen clothes sway without a single flutter. She pulled the dress off the line, the fabric so stiff it stood on its own when she held it, then looked at her children, who were both already busy rummaging around for their own outfits.
Silvia managed to find herself a warm-looking grey dress, small enough to fit her skinny frame. "Perfect, sweetie," Nivalis muttered almost directly into her ear and, without wasting a moment, helped her find some underclothes as well. A brown tunic that looked soft and warm despite having a few patches, and a pair of woolen pants of a darker shade that would hopefully keep the cold away from those soft thighs of hers, followed by thick, knitted socks—all of it was practically shoved into the girl's arms before she could even blink.
Shifting her attention to Aster, Nivalis found him already clutching a dark tunic and a pair of matching pants, both looking warm and like they'd fit him just right. Yet she couldn't help but grimace at that, at what he had picked. Not because there was anything wrong with the clothes, but because of the sheer boyishness of them. 'I should've brought this up earlier...' she thought, a quiet sigh escaping her.
With a glance around to make sure they were still alone, Nivalis leaned closer and whispered in the quietest of voices, "Aster, honey... put that back." Without waiting for him to ask why, she took everything he had in his hands and hung it back on the line, leaving the boy blinking in confusion. Kneeling into the snow until their eyes were level, she continued, "I-I... don't think it's a good idea for you to wear something like that."
Scratching the back of his silver head, Aster frowned and gave her a quiet, "W-why not?" His golden eyes darted to the clothes he had picked, trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong with them.
It took Nivalis a moment to find the right words to explain something every loving mother in this part of the world dreaded with every fiber of their being. "In these parts, boys your age, especially half-elves... they often get taken from their families," she muttered, fluttering her long eyelashes at him. "Conscripted... into the army. Sent somewhere far away," she forced the words out of herself, the very thought of someone taking her baby boy away from her to die in some pointless war making her voice tremble.
Silvia stood nearby and watched as her mother picked a dress much like the one she held, only a bit darker in shade, along with some underclothes that were, again, very much not for a boy, even more than hers were. "But m-mom... I'm a boy," Aster eventually said in a small, whiny voice as Nivalis shoved the clothes into his arms, his face scrunching up into the most miserable expression imaginable.
For a few quiet moments, Nivalis could only give him a helpless look, the blue of her eyes full of regret and apology. "Two and a half days," she eventually whispered, her lips barely moving. "That's how long orphaned and half-blooded boys usually live on the front lines. I can't lose you, my love. I just can't," she added in a shaky breath, placing her cold hand on his warm cheek, her thumb gently stroking it as she stared into his beautiful golden eyes. "Please, honey... for me?"
Aster's shoulders slumped, his gaze dropping to the girly clothes in his arms, then back to his mother's pleading face, to her eyes that were almost on the verge of tears. Before any could spill down her soft cheeks, he gave a tiny nod and even tinier, "Alright..." and hugged the clothes to his chest.
That earned him a soft, relieved sigh from her and a quick kiss on his forehead. "Thank you. I'm sorry, sweetie, I really am," she muttered against his skin, then pulled away. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hands, Nivalis stood up and turned her attention back to the clothes, grabbing a few more things for herself to wear beneath the faded-brown dress she had picked earlier: a simple woolen tunic, a pair of plain, brown trousers with patches at the knees, and a pair of thick, grey socks.
There were a few better things available, warmer too, but she couldn't bring herself to take them from whoever lived here. They had already taken too much. 'It will be more than enough...' she thought to herself, looking at the clothes in her arms, at the ones her children held.
A little more than two minutes into this whole thing, the three of them had everything they needed, so it was time to leave. "Alright, let's get out of here. Now," Nivalis breathed out, giving the kids a gentle shove back towards the way they came, and they listened. Quiet as the night itself, the three of them slipped out of the clotheslines back into the open yard... only to freeze mid-step when their eyes met with someone else's. Not blue or gold, but brown.
A young girl, almost a head shorter than Silvia, stood there, staring right at them with wide, brown eyes in nothing but a grey nightgown and fluffy boots, a straw doll tucked under the armpit. Her blonde hair, messy from sleep, fluttered around her pale face in the gentle night breeze, so terrified she couldn't even scream, couldn't breathe, couldn't blink. The only thing the girl managed to do was to pee herself, a wet stain spreading across the front of her nightgown and a yellow trickle dribbling down her skinny thigh.
For three long, tense heartbeats, no one moved, the four of them simply staring at each other with equally horrified faces, until the girl's mouth slowly opened, her lips trembling as she took a deep breath to scream bloody murder. But before any sound could come out, Nivalis reacted faster. She tossed everything in her hands to the ground, rushed forward, and covered that little mouth with her hand. "Shhh, shhhh... It's alright, it's alright... please don't scream," she tried to calm the child down, kneeling in front of her.
The young girl's chest heaved with panicked breaths against her hand, tears welling up in those innocent eyes of hers. And when Nivalis tried to pull away, thinking the child had calmed down, the girl let out a single, panicked shriek that pierced the silent night.
Thankfully, it lasted less than a blink of an eye, Nivalis's hand covering her mouth once more before it could continue. "Breathe with me, honey. Slowly," she said softly, trying to show her how to do it with her own, shaky breathing.
Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Nivalis repeated that several times before the girl finally managed to copy her, her terrified whimpers muffled by her hand. "That's it, that's a good girl..." she whispered, "Just keep breathing. Can you do that for me?" After getting a hesitant nod from the girl, she tried to pull away again, and this time she didn't scream.
Instead, the girl did what she was told, her small chest heaving with ragged, wet breaths, tears streaming down her face, the straw doll falling from her armpit and into the snow. "Mother Katherine, she... even though she calls me honeybun sometimes, I-I..." she whispered between hiccups, the words so faint Nivalis had to lean closer to catch them. "...I-I'm not t-tasty, I swear."
That made Nivalis both smile and grimace at the same time, her lips twisting into a strange expression that was neither. "Oh, no, no, no, sweetie, that's not... we're not..." she muttered, her eyes flicking to Aster and Silvia standing behind her, who were as confused as she was, then back to the crying child in front of her. Not knowing what to say, she began simply shushing her quietly instead, stroking the girl's blonde hair. The smell of urine was quite noticeable, but she didn't mind it.
Just when the words did find her, when she was about to explain that they were not monsters, that no one was going to eat anyone, Silvia stepped forward and knelt next to the girl with a quiet, "You don't know, do you? Only bad, naughty kids get eaten. The kind that doesn't listen to their mothers and doesn't help around the house." She picked up the straw doll and offered it to her with a friendly smile, "And you don't look like a naughty kid at all."
Nivalis wanted to groan at those words, to tell Silvia to stop and not make things worse. But before she could do so, the girl sniffled and gave the most adorable, "...really?" in the most timid voice ever, her brown eyes going from Silvia's face to her straw doll, then back. Silvia nodded and smiled, gently placing the doll in the girl's arms.
Somehow, someway, that seemed to work, the girl's breathing slowing down, rivers of tears stopping on her soft, freckled cheeks. "I-I'm not naughty..." she added after a few sniffles. "I was helping mommy a lot when she was alive. And I help around the orphanage, too, mostly with dishes," she answered, hugging her doll close.
It took Nivalis a few blinks to process what she had just heard, her mouth opening and closing without a single sound. When her blue eyes darted to the house, it hit her. Harder than a kick from a horse, right into the deepest part of her heart. This was no house of the wealthy; it was an orphanage. That's why there were so many clothes. 'Oh gods... no,' she thought, trying to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat, but it refused to go away.
A quiet, choked whimper escaped Nivvalis, tears silently trickling down her cheeks as she looked at that poor child, at the wet stain on the front of the girl's nightgown, at the damp, yellow snow around her feet. "Are... are you alright, missus monster?" the girl asked in a voice as timid as a mouse, with innocent brown eyes staring up at her.
Nivalis couldn't answer, just stared back at her with watery eyes, her lips quivering from holding in the sobs. Never in her life had she felt so disgusted with herself, so ashamed of what she did. "I'm... alright," she managed to choke out, reaching into the bag on her shoulder and rummaging through it, her throat tight. "What's your name, sweetie?"
The girl looked at the others for a moment, at their pile of clothes on the ground nearby, before turning back to her and answering with a shy, "Rosy. M-my name's Rosy."
A sad smile spread over Nivalis's face, and her hand found something hard and round inside her bag. "Rosy. That's such a beautiful name," she murmured, placing that very thing into the girl's small hand, making her fingers curl around it. "You see, we don't have much..." she continued, her voice quivering. "We were just... we just wanted to borrow some clothes, to warm up, that's all. And it just happened you had so many here, so we thought..." Nivalis shook her head, wiping the tears from her face.
Rosy looked down at her fist, her brows slowly furrowing. When she opened her fingers, there was a single, rusty coin inside. "W-what's this?" she asked, looking from the thing to the blue of her eyes.
All it was was a single, rusty copper, more crust than metal, and all they had to spare to give back. As much as Nivalis's heart screamed at her to give that ring or the cracked-gem necklace from her bag to the poor thing, a different part of her mind kept reminding her that she had to think about her family first.
That's the only reason why the three of them were doing this in the first place. No matter what, her family had to come first, even if the gods themselves were to damn her for it. "A coin, for the clothes. It's not much... not nearly enough," she said with a trembling voice. "But it should help a little." After taking a few deep breaths, she went on, her voice steadier this time, "Give it to your caretaker... Mother Katherine, was it? Tell her that we're sorry... truly, deeply sorry for this. Please."
Eyeing the coin with a puzzled look on her face, the blonde girl nodded slowly. "O-okay... I can do that," she whispered, hiding the old coin in her straw doll. With her small chest still rising and falling with nervous breaths, Rosy looked back at the three of them.
Giving her a grateful, teary smile, Nivalis took the girl's hands in hers and gently blew warm air over them. "Go inside and warm up, sweetie. Make sure to change into something dry. We'll be going now," she murmured, then hugged the child, wrapping her cold arms around that small body, just like a mother would.
The very next moment, the three of them grabbed their things from the ground, got up, and were gone, disappearing behind the fence before the girl could even blink. Rosy just stood there in the yard, hugging her doll to her chest and staring at the spot where they had disappeared. A minute passed, with the girl not moving at all, until she shuddered from a gust of cold wind and turned back to the house with a tiny, "Bye..." in that quiet, timid voice.