Winter Touched

11/30/4722

Your hands taste of earth. That’s wrong. Hands don’t taste. But yours do—cold soil and winter and memory. Maybe it is from your connection to Shining Fist. You shared sense with him… but there is so much you still don’t know about your connection. Before going you take a drink of water but pause as ice starts to spindle out across top layer of the water in the cup.

“Never dig where four roads meet, child. Never dig where the old stones stand. That’s where they wait.” Nanna’s warning.

You didn’t listen. Besides it was Shining Fist that did the digging not you. But your bones feel hollow now. As if filled with cold air. You can talk to Shining Fist in the morning or try to. He doesn’t deign to communicate with words very often. It can wait until morning, when you are not so bone tired. You collapse into the bed Shakoom has paid for and fall asleep quickly, deeply, and then you dream.

You find yourself back in the alley. But this time the thieves are frozen. Blood hanging like rubies on invisible strings. Nothing moves. Everything is still.

“Winter is the season of stillness child that’s how you know they’re near.” Nanna’s voice says from the ice forming on walls.

“Nanna?”

“Here I’m just memory. Just frost. Warning-that-you-did-remember-till-to-late.”

Inside their frozen bodies, you see their hearts. Still beating. Preserved between alive and dead.
That’s what winter does to those it claims. Keeps them. Forever. The Winter Court knows this.
Your hand is wrong. Bones visible through translucent skin. Nails sharpening into icicles.

“Never meddle in the fair folks affairs. They are like spider webs and you could find yourself entangled in what you didn’t agree to” your Nanna’s voice warns.

Frost spreads from your palm. Into images of a woman in white at a crossroads, patient as snow. A throne carved from frozen screams. Children dancing in endless circles, feet bleeding, smiles frozen.

You dug at their crossroads. You thought you were burying a token but child oh child you were doing so much more” your Nanna scolds in your dream.

The alley stretches before you now, never ending. The frozen dead multiply. Hundreds. The ice of their frozen flesh calling to something new inside you. Something where warmth once was but is no longer. Your heartbeat slows, slowing to match the pace of glaciers.

“Winter sings child” your Nanna tells you. “The fey courts each have their music. But winter’s song goes on forever because winter never ends. It waits under everything.”

Your legs below the knee are ice now. Crystalline. You see bones. Blood moving slower. Something else in your veins. Liquid cold. Winter’s blood.

“Never make bargains at crossroads. Never dig beside the standing stones because that’s where they can reach through” she says from your memories.

“But I was helping—”

What did you use to bury it, child? Did you use your bare hands in cold earth?

You reach inside for familiar heat of Shining Fist. To call him forth, to question him, even if this is just a dream. Something reaches back. Cold. The cold of spaces between stars. He manifests as frost. Too many joints. Too many fingers. Crystallized air instead of flame.

“I’m here,” Flaming Fist whispers, crystalline. Brittle.

“What did they do to you?”

“They showed us what we really are. The fey reveal. They peel back what you pretend to be and show what you are underneath.

Frost spells words on walls—

FIRE WAS THE LIE
COLD IS THE TRUTH
WINTER NEVER FORGETS

You stand at the crossroads again. Four roads. Five stones. You’re at the center. Hands sunken into earth too cold. Claiming you. That’s when they come. The Winter Court. Too beautiful. Too terrible. Too sharp. Edges and angles that hurt the eye. Schnee. Eis. They smile with too many teeth—

“You touched our earth. We touched you back. Fair trade. Fair claim. Winter-touched. Winter-claimed.”

They reach for you with too many fingers. Touch your chest where your heart beats too slow.

“The fire was borrowed warmth. The cold is your inheritance now.”

Their hands then pass into you, then through your ribs. Reaching to where Flaming Fist huddles—

You wake choking on cold. Ice crystals spray across the pillow. Your breath mists in air that isn’t cold.
Blankets covered in frost. Your hands—for just a moment—translucent. Too long. Made of ice.

Then normal again. But cold inside remains. You touch the bed frame and frost forms. Outside, two figures stand wreathed in ice and snow. Schnee and Eis. Watching. Waiting. Patient as glaciers. You blink. Gone. Frost remains.

“Winter is patient,” Nanna’s voice whispers. “Winter remembers. Winter always collects what it’s owed.”