She follows him once more, and is pleased to see what’s unveiled – the lake, wide and sprawling, fed into by the rivers. She moves down the hilltop, close to the water’s edge. She can feel the cold radiating, the ice calling to her like kin. It’s even colder here, down by the lake, and she draws it forth, the cold, and when Rouhi finishes his drink she focuses on the area, concentrating, and a thin sheet of ice manifests. It will crack at the slightest movement of the water, she has no doubt, but it’s there.
“When I’m stronger,” she says, and it’s with a strange confidence that she says if and not when, “I think I could freeze it solid.”
She says this partially to herself, partially to him. He’s made no mention of her powers, but then, she has not been showy about them, the most she has is a crust of ice and her own strange appearance.
He asks her a question then, one she does not have to consider.
“The mountaintop,” she says, “it was quiet, but it was beautiful. I felt like I could see the whole world, there. And it was mine.”
Not truly – she will never own nature – but no one else ascended it in her time there, save for her father, and that was infrequent.
“I might have stayed there forever,” she continues, “but I woke up one day, and though I loved it…it wasn’t enough. It was my favorite place in the world, but still wasn’t enough.”
tell me that girl is not a song of burning