"No matter how chaotic it is, wildflowers will still spring up in the middle of nowhere."
-Sheryl Crow
-x-
It had only been a few hours of walking but he could tell the woman of ice was worn. They were still well inside of forestation by the time he had sprung vines from the earth to create a sort of half dome around them so that the stars above could still peer through the treetops but the heat of the fire would keep them warm in the breeze. Everything had come forth with ease that he hadn't thought twice about it, but he knew some of the abilities had to be new and interesting to the would-be Queen. The absence of his sister had him silent for most of their walk but now as he sat and poked at the embers of the fire he found himself glancing over her quaint from beside him.
"Here."
With a gentle smile, he held forth his palm and grew a palm-full of apples. He knew she ate differently, they fed on the Earth while the Dŭrvos created it. The frigid to the warmth. Waiting for her to do what was needed he knelt down by the fire, sticking his hand just inside of the flames to turn the logs on their unscathed sides and then retreating before the flames were built too high. The trickle of a river off in the distance was almost as calming as the fire and yet he still felt she was on edge, grey eyes turning to find her own matching ones.
"Are you alright?"
Never before had she been so drab in a world of noncolors, but in his world, she was like a flat stone amongst other flat stones. Her fingers knotting in her dress worrying the material even as the strength of the fire smoothed through her body like a shot of mead. Eyes looking up at Derek for the first time in so long Calla saw him as something else, not the stern brother who had lost much. He was the gentle frost that first came at the ends of Autumn, or what used to be. The apples in his hand glinting a ruby red much like her lips.
"I'm fine...just lost in the snow." Ending it at that she went to watch his hand once more.
Reaching forward for it her fingers went to scoop some of the apples but she froze seconds after taking them from his hands, blue eyes snapping up to meet his eyes, such similar depths to hers but they were at the same polar opposites. Much like their species and coloring. Pale snow against the tan of the sun when nature tried fighting itself. Calla parted her lips and pushed herself back. Jaxon had thankfully taught her one thing. One thing to fuel her for the coming time with the trees.
"What do you want in return for this? For feeding me? For taking care of me this may be peace but it doesn't mean anything comes for free Derek… I know that much you don't have to be shy about it." Fingers going to her collarbones and going towards her shoulders the frost and diamonds that were the top half of her dress started to melt away, she made her clothes and it was how they came off like the condensation off a glass that wasn't chilled anymore. Though her movements were sure and bold her eyes never left the dancing fire.
Too afraid to meet his eyes, too afraid to say another word.
Just plain afraid.
Derek brushed his hands off so the soot wouldn't bother him or her and kept his gaze locked on hers as his heels twisted in the Earth and he found himself face to face with what she considered payment for his kindness. Unable to stop her right away but instead stare in half horror and half awe he just blinked himself back into reality and found his hands moving to her shoulders that were now practically bare, shaking his hands.
He could feel the freezing nature of her between his fingers but despite it, he remained there on her skin, his massive palms keeping the pale skin covered. His own tones were much darker than her own, the lack of sun in their grey clouds no doubt the culprit and yet still she had the beauty of the Queen she would become. So different than they and yet still the same. Elegance is implied in all matters of being, even the brutal ones.
"No, Lily." He said gently and gave a small smile before it flickered like the flames behind him.
"Where I am from, kindness is simply given. We have no payment. No money. No blood. No…" He paused to find the right word. "No virtues to be given in such a manner. We believe it should be saved for you forever. Your love. Your soulmate, the other half." He shrugged a broad shoulder and then let her go so she could cover herself or otherwise undress for comfortability and not sex.
"As you have been able to tell I'm sure our manner of dress is next to nothing, if it makes you more apt to trust me then all means, but I swear by the trees I do not intend to take that or any payment from you." His haunches moved so that he could go to sit on the log beside her, brushing his hands together at their lingering chill from her skin, swearing he could see where his hands had been sitting still against her collarbone.
In the stilled silence of the night, he simply arched his head towards the stars and found a few shining through the leaves, turning his gaze back down slightly as he heard what he thought to be ice forming.
Derek. The man who touched fire and didn't get burnt, the man who touched the ice and didn't recoil by how cold her skin was. The man who called her lily because he saw the softness in her that no one else saw. He looked like carved granite or something as sturdy in his face. Chiseled cheeks and high cheekbones a jaw made out of something delectable all covered in whiskers that while Jaxon had them she hadn't wanted to know what it would feel like to rub her cheek against the surface. Hadn't wanted to know what her fingers would feel like going up from his cheeks up into his hair gripping into it and tugging on it as she nibbled on his full set of lips.
Her eyes drifted down at her bare skin and she saw the manner of dress of him, his people. Overdressed a statement she wasn't used to.
The thought formed in two ways; the manner of her question and her fingers moving into action the ice rose that she leaned down to settle next to the fire. By the time she moved to look at him again, his focus was on her shoulders and what she was preparing. The ice made from her fingertips didn't melt like it should have not at first, but slowly it carved itself out of being until the water started to seep into the plant life made by him.
"Your manner of dress is freeing I understand it. But us Prims would melt, I am melting already in my thin layers of nothing and silk… how am I supposed to survive your eternal warmth, Derek." Her eyes focused on his lips, watching for an answer much easier than watching the truthfulness of his eyes.
"Also is swearing by the trees very official?" She teased to lighten their somber mood.
Watching as the rose was formed at the tips of her fingers and placed by the fire it was with fascination that the crystal began to melt away in the same place, his eyes never leaving it until there was nothing but water in the soil beside it. It wasn't until she spoke that his features turned to meet hers yet again and he was boring his eyes into the Prim's.
"Do you all not run cold?" The surprise in his voice was genuine and despite her terrible joke about the trees, his focus remained on the subject. "My kind, we run warm. My sister will be a bit cooler than normal and perhaps her true form stands to get even colder but we have heat without our bones."
Touching his bare ribs as if to make a point he narrowed his eyes slightly in wonder.
"Your ice does not remain?"
Calla was still grinning at him, the wonder in her mind about how little she knew of her people. That she knew nothing of what would happen to them in the court of the people they were supposed to hate. Prim and proper Prims didn't care about anything besides themselves and he was wondering about her about what would keep her safe. Brows knitting together Calla ran her hands up her arms the glittering material disappearing without a thought.
It wasn't until she was bare-shouldered and armed that she realized the damage that she had done. As a heat that felt like a slap spread up both her cheeks Calla was holding the back of her cold hand to her skin trying to cool herself down. Heart beating like a war drum she just turned toward him, putting her knees on the log to face him her movement was stunted and she looked around for something. Anything.
Pulling a rock out of the dirt she tore her silk skirt until it stopped at the top of her bare thigh.
"I don't know I am cold now, but in the morning? A week from now? I have no idea what will happen to me. What does happen should that occur when I am no longer...me?" She asked softly, the frost edging on her voice and breaking off the end of her sentence.
Always too harsh.
The ice queen seemed panicked in her movements. Her cheeks heated fast, her clothing was melting away into small portions. The blush that rose up must have been foreign because the look of startle in her eyes and the hands to her cheeks were so innocent Derek nearly smiled but he withheld in case of further embarrassment, instead moving to watch her from the corner of his eyes.
When the rock was in her hand he half worried it would be coming for his head but instead, it tore up the side of her clothes and she could be freer - as well as more open with her words as she turned in uncertainty. Always a question lingering at the end of the sentences. None of the known beings had co-existed long enough or ever from memory for them to know if the ice could survive in the heat.
He only knew of his own kind - not hers.
"There's this tale my sister likes to tell the saplings…" He trailed off and then shook his head slightly with a brief sigh to break it up, missing Nora.
"There's this story about a woman. I'm not sure where or how it originated but while she loves it most of my people don't. Her name is the Aching Woman. She has no face or birth given name in the history of my species but still, she is one of the most well-known of my kind. She was a wanderer. Basically, she went wherever she wanted without the tribe. I think the reason Nora loves her story so much is that there are so many similarities." He scoffed a laugh and then shook his head, sending rough fingers through his locks to slick them back.
"Anyhow - she used to wander onto your lands and show your people love. She would give them warmth, Earth, and compassion. You all nearly starved and she used to give you land and greenery to feed." His eyes wandered towards the fire as he spoke as if it were telling the story.
"When she was done offering to your kind she would return home and bring gifts of your people. Dew, frost, chilled winds - but it would only last so long before she began to crave the cold again." Running his tongue over his lips to moisten his mouth he simply returned his gaze to her.
"Her name is the aching woman because for reasons unknown to those who knew her she would return to the cold more than she would exist in the summer. She would leave behind her own duties here to visit the people of Ice and that wouldn't turn over well for our Elders. One season's turn when we went below she surfaced and rooted somewhere unbeknownst to our kind and never returned. She's lost somewhere in the world and its history, aching for her decision between cold and warm. Watching over both kinds with open arms." Pausing to listen to the crackles of the logs he just frowned, etching wrinkles into his forehead.
"She was the first of us to ever enjoy both sides of the coin, but ultimately… she fell to the cold. I just…" Frustration skirting his words. "I don't want the same to happen to you or Nora. I hope that Jaxon can find the peace he needs so this war won't have to happen. We've lost so many of our own. Children and family alike. We don't need more bloodshed on our greenlands. We can co-exist again."
The words were sure but he wasn't. A deeper and resonating fear deep down in his chest like an acid.
Calla was watching him with the soft smile of someone enraptured by words she knew that she had found a friend. As his people, Derek was the embodiment of warmth spoken down through the ages by an unknown woman, an eternal mother who only wanted to give and give. Never take like the Prims. Secluded away in the hovels of what he had explained Calla knew that her people were greedy. Never enough until they just took everything.
The story came to what she thought of as a sad close; Jaxon would never agree unless the threat of his death loomed overhead. He was too much like his father, too much malice in his heart to admit that anyone was right that he could be wrong. Her eyes drifted down to him and she ached softly in a way that she had never felt before. Never to know the warmth of her soul, never to know what anything like that could bring. To be told stories like the tiny saplings.
The Prim part of her came back full and strong even as she tried to school her thoughts into ones that were kinder. Different. She knew the answer and yet the question still burned from her lips.
"Why do you care so much Derek Brŭshlya?" She hissed softly, it was pained like a wild animal trapped somewhere trying to fight him off. There had to be some kind of trick hadn't there?
Her words yet again took him off guard after the homey silence that had drifted between them. Every time he thought he nicked away at some of that thick outer layer she threw it back up but bigger and with more spikes.
Creasing his lips into yet another look of distaste his eyes moved towards her in astonishment and he just put a large calloused palm over his features, running them down to his beard before he scratched in slight annoyance. He wasn't a man of emotion but something about the way she spoke brought it out in him. With a gentle inhale he just pulled his brows together until they were nearly touching above his nose, shrugging.
"What the hell do they think is caring over there? Do you all have zero acts of kindness? Of love?" He scoffed and then leaned back slightly so he could see her better against the flickering light of the pit.
"My sister sacrificed herself into the unknown. She watched the King of the Prim's smack the life out of you and she took your place knowing the same could become of her and you think I am the only one interested in your life, Lily?" With a fraction of a pause, he just shook his head. "Life matters here. The world, the Earth, its children. All of that has a place here on my land. Our land."
Silence.
After the words resonated he just brought his knuckles over to his palm and cracked one side then the other, shaking his head ever so gently that the hairs once slicked back fell out of place slightly.
"You breed ice, but souls don't have to be freezing. Abuse isn't always the way. I know you all think violence and blood is the only way to prove a point but it isn't. I've gotten the same respect from feeding a hungry child that I would from a man held at the tip of a sword." He extended his arm as if to show the motion and then folded his hands back together to lean his elbows on his knees.
"I don't wish to understand your ways of love over there, but I fear for my sister."
"In the first place, Jaxon is going to get run over by your sister. He won't know what to do with himself...women don't tell him no. I didn't tell him no ever. Do you see where it got me? Jaxon loves a good challenge and that's what she is as long as she continues to fight him the more she gets out of him." Her eyes darted away from his and she smirked softly,
He spoke of a world she didn't understand or know, a world of mercy being foreign just like warmth. What did she know of love? Her hands ached to do something like he did but she just tucked her arms under her chest and let her fingers bunch into the material of her dress eyes stinging with the crystal tears that started to form on her eyelashes. Frost and ice just like her heart that he was trying to probe.
"You want to know why my world is so cold? Why we are beings of entire malice and hate and why I got beaten in front of great leaders?" The memory made her soul shatter, her hands became covered in ice gloves spreading in patches of white and cream skin, the sight of her anger stopping at her elbows. The ground beneath her didn't change she wasn't that powerful but the idea remained that she was imperfect. She wasn't any of those things that he knew. A wife that he would take home with the love and affection dripping in their home.
Her eyes gazed at him and she just shook her head.
"When we marry? You get drained of blood almost at death and then they force THEIR blood down your throat to make you theirs until you die. It's like a poison you constantly need the antidote for. We don't just eat of the earth we are so damned foul we eat diamonds and gems and other foul...sacraments that you have no idea exist. Do you understand that? Women are nothing but broodmares and Jaxon's own mother died in front of him when he was a child. There are no stories when we sleep just a hope that we aren't weak enough to perish in the frost."
Body raging against the emotions in her chest she licked her lips and moved her hand so that she could wrap her fingers around her own threat to make sure she wasn't freezing to stone. Wasn't that the rumor they became so harsh they turned to statues. As the breath pushed out of her chest all the anger fled her body, a sheet of water came down over her arms and shoulders.
"The only thing I know close to love is the fact that my father took the blademan's ax to his neck when I was the one who should have died. The rebel Liliya's who wanted to have something of...peace? I just wanted to have children not have to beg for scraps of the earth and women not threatening to kill and slice for a man who just wants to fuck them or anyone else that opens her legs. I want a love like the one you and Nora will have with whatever invisible fiance I imagine you to have I bet she looks like the sun doesn't she?"
A nervous laugh bubbled from her lips and she looked at him.
"They thought I killed the King because we were trying to smuggle people out of the castle to a little land where they could set up a new colony or just die in peace but they found out and when Jasper died Jaxon made me his bride as an example. In her wealth, she will become a punishment. Death always on the horizon that never comes. That Derek is why I don't know anything in my heart but ice even though I wish to it's as far off of thought as your weeping woman."
Closing her eyes she just hoisted her upper body up with the heels of her palms in the rough bark beneath, stretching her legs to the ground before she sank her weight into the grass. With a tired movement she pushed her legs off to the side in a royal sitting position, leaning herself onto her hip so that she could wrap long arms around his warm calf she found her cheek against his thigh and the wooden embrace of the log now at her spine.
A small yawn split from her lips and in one last blink of her eyes, Calla was lost to the world, her dreams beginning to mold from the harsh environment of ice into one like that his kind had created. A display of colors dancing behind her lids.
As she told her story the beautiful sweet tones that had left his own voice were entirely absent of her own. There were no happy endings on her side of the tracks, no stories for the children - only survival and lack of interest. If you were no one maybe you got by unscathed.
And then she spoke of the King; Dead.
"Wait what?" He looked down at her, having barely noticed her scooting to the ground before she was suddenly latched around his leg and yawning like a koala bear. Blinking at her his mind began to mold missing pieces together. An eternal winter by the king halted because of a murder. Killed out of his own accord. The only reason they were alive and awake was that his plans had been ruined and bested.
Perhaps it was one of his own, but how?
"Lily?" He whispered and saw her eyelids flutter slightly in a dream, sighing and then moving his weight gently as he switched his leg for his arm, taking the spot beside her closest to the fire. Putting his palm down on the ground and inching his fingers up in a spider formation with his knuckles vines of moss came up from the surface and wrapped over them like blankets, spots of lilies on the outside of them to ward of any predators with the colors.
A murdered king was more than a worry, and the Elders would be more than interested to know.