04-14-2023, 02:42 PM
Because her love is reserved only for the things that love her back. (The sisters, most of all. Her sisters and the ice, the cold, the vicious, bitter sting of it. She was designed to love the things that hurt the most, you see, but not like that.)
Does he not love the ice as she loves the ice? He is a cold thing, but his cold seems born from something deeper. Something she does not understand. He is dark in a way that she is not dark. (She is dark in her own right, certainly, the darkest of the four seasons. But her darkness has nothing to do with pain or anger.)
The flicker of something in his gaze is not lost on her, though she makes no real effort to translate it. He is a stranger to her, they all are, and she only watches. Watches as he smooths his expression, sets his jaw.
(She is a patient thing, because the nights are so long in the Winter. Because the snow never lets up. She has ages to wait while he tries to put off answering in any meaningful way. So many things, he’d said, and she waits, knowing. Knowing that he will fill the silence, knowing that they almost always do.)
She draws in a long breath when he speaks again, a wry smile twisting that cold, cold mouth. “Oh, but I’m not asking them, am I?” she asks. She is not a thing built for small talk. She is a thing built both for burying and for digging. “What do you think you are, Brigade?”
— camellia
