Chapter 1 #3
Round and round they went, ever in the same circles.
Even after all this time, even after multitudes of wrongs, Eirwen’s faith in the Celestials never waned.
Convinced that they hid behind the purple skies, scheming and hoarding power until they were strong enough to restore the world.
Perhaps that’s what she needed to believe, to keep the swollen part of her heart protected.
That the divine father who abandoned her had some greater plan. Hadn’t truly left her.
Cerise thought it was a load of horseshit. The Celestials hid in their heavenly plane, waiting for the world to disintegrate, when they could start anew.
But Cerise’s muscles ached, her stomach grumbled, and the pressure in the center of her knee built like water against a dam, ready to burst stability out from under her.
The bear remained still, gazing at her with eerily intelligent, patient eyes. She’d seen that strange shade before. But where?
Cerise clicked her teeth and leaned into Beloved for support. The creature appeared to be no threat. Yet if it was as intelligent as it appeared, it’d wait until they let their guard down to tear out their throats.
Her leg shook, ready to give out from beneath her. She couldn’t fight it in this condition. Better to rest and keep an eye on it, then be ready to kill it if need be.
She looked to the window, frost clutching the corners of glass in spindly webs, dots of fluffy snow cascading in a gentle breeze as the lavender sky faded to violet. A pang of pity swept through Cerise, imagining sending the seemingly docile bear out into the cold night.
She grumbled, a rumbling sound between a sigh and groan. “It’s in my spot.”
Eirwen tracked her gaze to the bear, splayed over the bundle of furs and rugs Cerise sat on every morning and night.
“We can let it rest here one night, can’t we? The poor creature must never get the joy of a fire.”
“It’s. In. My. Spot,” Cerise ground out.
The bear rose to its paws and lumbered past them, shooting her a pointed glance.
It settled against the wall that separated the living room from the closet-sized bedrooms, curling into a fuzzy, round mass, and closing its eyes.
Perhaps it truly was that exhausted. Or maybe it was trying to trick them.
“You would cast a Celestial into a corner?” Eirwen whispered, tone chiding.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s your holy father himself. My house. My rules. My spot.”
Eirwen tsked but said no more.
Leveraging herself to the ground using Beloved and Eirwen’s perpetually chilly hand for support, Cerise settled on the mound of warm furs and blankets.
Typically heated from just the fire, the fabrics were even hotter now thanks to the bear’s body heat.
The flame at her side and the heated pelts beneath her seeped warmth into every cold pore, raising her body temperature faster, and her muscles relaxed with the relief.
At least there was one benefit from Eirwen’s foolishness.
Cerise stretched out her bad leg, folding her pants higher over her toned thighs as Eirwen ladled soup from the pot simmering over the fire.
Cerise blew on the steam, wooden bowl warming the blood in her stiff fingers.
Eirwen perched beside her leg in her usual position, and with the icy, delicate pads of her fingers, massaged Cerise’s knee.
While she pressed on the sore muscles and aching tendons, Eirwen summoned the cold out of Cerise’s body, focusing on the swelling around her joint.
As Eirwen pulled the frostiness from her being, her knee relaxed more and more, the discomfort receding as warmth replaced it.
Cerise watched her sister work while sipping on the thin, bone broth soup peppered with sparse and puny root vegetables.
Eirwen was a creature of one color, her skin and hair white as the freshest snow.
Thin and graceful as a willow, she’d blend in with the wintry world as easy as a winter nymph.
Such was the blessing of her father. The only color on her was the faint blue in her eyes, like ice-crusted water.
Yet Cerise didn’t watch Eirwen work out of wonder.
If she closed her eyes, her sister’s fingers turned into the stiff, cloying hands of the undead as they ripped apart her comrades.
Her clothes. Her skin. They became the cold flesh that pinned her to the earth, leg shattered and breathing in naught but the stench of rotted flesh.
She’d never told Eirwen this. Never would, though she figured Eirwen knew.
As children, they slept in the same bunk in Vhypael’s Temple.
When sharing food or passing plates, Cerise hadn’t flinched at her cool touch.
Even later, in Zyrdriel’s Order, she’d begrudgingly allow medics to tend her minor wounds.
But after the bombardment, the entrapment… chilly flesh never felt the same.
Despite the reminders of her years in the Undead Wars, she needed this nightly pain relief to maintain their survival. If she kept her eyes open, watched the living fingers of her sister dance across her skin, she could keep the necromancers and their undead slaves from her mind.
Though many nights she wished for firm, warm hands that could massage the aches. Ones where she could close her eyes and relish the alleviation of hurt without also having to smother the monsters in her head.