VELVETEEN vs. The Thaw
Cradled in a bed of moss and new spring leaves, draped in a blanket of flower petals and thistledown, Velveteen slept.
Her skin was back to a healthy brown, and her hair had grown six inches since the last of the cold had bled out of her and her body had remembered what it was to be a living thing.
That was the only sign of how much time had passed while she was in Winter, and while there had been some discussion of cutting it before she woke, Persephone had pointed out that Velveteen was likely to have better things to worry about, and wouldn’t realize the significance of the change anyway.
So the sleeping heroine’s hair had gone untouched as she slept on.
She had been asleep for six days as the ice passed out of her heart and her dreams came creeping back to her, their hats clutched in their hands and their eyes cast toward the distant idea of the ground.
Snow did not dream, after all, and she had been frozen for so very long. So much longer than she knew.
On the seventh day Velveteen gasped and opened her eyes, staring at the tangled ceiling of vines and intertwined branches. A few squirrels and brightly-colored songbirds were perching there, staring down at her with cartoonish curiosity. Velveteen blinked.
“Oh, good,” said a voice. It wasn’t familiar—she was quite sure she’d never heard it before—but she knew it all the same.
It was the voice she sometimes heard in her dreams, when she had been beaten badly on a patrol and was trying to sleep despite the pain in her ribs and knuckles.
It was the voice of slow growth and swift decay, and she knew it loved her, even as she knew that it wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her if it saw the need.
“You’re awake. I was starting to think you were going to sleep straight through to Summer, and since they’re the only season that doesn’t have a claim on you, that would have been awkward for all of us. ”
Velveteen attempted to speak. Her mouth barely moved, and the sound that escaped it was no louder than a butterfly’s sneeze. Her eyes didn’t widen, exactly, but the muscles around them tensed, her pupils constricting in temporary panic.
“It’s all right,” said the voice. “Please, try to stay calm; don’t get yourself worked up.
Winter had twined itself into your bones.
That’s what Winter does. It chills you until you think you’ll never be warm again.
We’ve been pulling the cold out of you, a little bit at a time, like churning the earth in the garden before planting.
It was necessary, you see, but it would have been extremely painful if we hadn’t numbed you first.”
Velveteen managed, with an extreme effort, to blink. The motion seemed to knock a little bit of feeling loose from the numbness: she felt threads anchoring her to the ground, rooted deep in her flesh and feeding on whatever substance she possessed.
Velma “Velveteen” Martinez was not prone to overreaction.
A lifetime spent defending her community and working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet had left her tough, determined, and capable of rolling with almost anything.
This was a step too far. Closing her eyes, she allowed unconsciousness to take her back.
Persephone, seated next to Velveteen’s bier, smiled and continued knitting. Patience was a virtue, and she had always been a virtuous woman.
Besides. She wasn’t going to need to wait much longer.
* * *
The Seasonal Lands are interesting from a scholarly perspective, mainly due to the contradiction which they represent.
They are living mirrors of the human subconscious, painting humanity’s ideas about faith and death and the wheel of the year across metaphysical space.
They are primal manifestations of the forces of the universe, immutable and malleable at the same time, constant only in that they will always, always change.
Changes to the real world will echo in the Seasonal Lands.
Changes in the Seasonal Lands will do the same in the real world.
This phenomenon has been well documented but remains notoriously difficult to prove, as it requires both access to the Seasonal Lands and a means of implementing and measuring change.
The anecdotal data is strong. The proof is not.
Regardless, it seems certain that what impacts one will impact the other, keeping the two realities inexorably connected, regardless of the desires of their respective occupants.
Spring has historically been the most mercurial of the seasons.
It is the time of rebirth and new growth, of the world coming back to life after the long, slow days of winter.
It is also the time of heavy rains and fierce winds, of destructive recovery.
Everything has a price, in the spring as well as in Spring itself, and nowhere is this more perfectly embodied than in the patron goddess of the country, Persephone, who watches over both life and death.
No one has ever called her cruel. No one has ever called her particularly nice, either; she is not the place to turn for succor without judgment.
But she is kind. On that, most everyone agrees.
Persephone holds life in one hand and death in the other, and while she is too rarely merciful—mercy is not a strong suit of her season—she is almost always kind.
It seems like a small thing. To those who have come before her, helpless and hurting, it is everything in the world.
She is not the only member of the Greek pantheon to have endured into the modern day.
Her husband, Hades, remains an active part of Winter, although he has long since turned all management of the season over to his jolly successor.
Aphrodite can often be seen in Summer, and Demeter has been known to meet with her daughter in the golden fields of Autumn, bringing the Harvest in.
So Persephone is not unique. She is simply the only goddess of her line to still take an active interest in humanity.
Where Persephone walks, new growth follows.
This does not always endear her to people, as growth can be a very difficult, very painful thing.
But she tries her best, and she keeps her season growing green, despite the changing ideas of humanity about what the spring should represent.
She has learned to share her space with fertility icons and talking rabbits, and still she has managed to remain essentially, at her core, a good person.
May such high praise one day be heaped upon us all.
* * *
When Velveteen woke for the second time, she was no longer numb. She gasped and sat up, flailing at the small roots that dangled from her arms like cobwebs. They withered and broke off at her touch, falling to the ground, where they dissolved into so much dust.
That was the last straw. “Ew ew ew!” Velveteen wailed, leaping to her feet and running her hands down her legs, wiping still more roots away.
Part of her noted the color of her skin and how warm it was, how wonderfully, realistically warm.
That part of her was content. The rest of her was a little busy freaking out over the fact that she was still covered in tiny dangling roots, implying that whatever strange fruit they had sprouted was now embedded in her body.
Eventually, all the roots she could reach had been wiped away, and she was panting from the effort. Slowly, Velveteen calmed and took a deep breath, feeling the sweet, warm air fill her lungs. There was that word again: warm. She was warm, because she was no longer frozen.
She was also naked, surrounded by trampled greenery, and alone.
“Oh, this is good,” she muttered, turning to take a slower, more careful look around herself.
She was standing in a grotto that seemed to have been crafted entirely out of living vegetation.
It was sort of like being back in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, except for the part where if she’d been there, the Princess or one of her kangaroo butlers would have appeared by now to scold her for stomping on the flowers.
No. This was not familiar ground, and any similarities they shared would only serve to lower her guard.
This was the Spring, and in a very real sense, this was a foreign country. There were three seasons with a claim on her. This was the only one where she had never really spent any time.
“Look at it this way,” she said, speaking in part to hear her voice.
It sounded different when it was supported by actual breath, and not just by air.
In the Winter, she had breathed only to speak.
Here, she was doing it to survive. That mattered.
That mattered so much more than she ever could have guessed before it had been taken away.
“You thought Santa was your friend, and he let the Aurora Bitch-e-alis turn you into a snow bunny. Spring thawed you out first thing. Maybe this won’t be so bad. ”
She had a lifetime’s practice in the fine art of lying to herself.
Even so, she couldn’t quite make her words sound believable, not even to her own ears.
Yes, Santa had allowed Aurora to transform her into a snow creature, but he hadn’t been happy about it: she could see that now, with her emotions waking up and quietly recoloring her memories of her time in Winter, like Turnerization of the heart.
He had always looked so sad when he’d seen her walking, frozen, through his winter wonderland.
Given his druthers, he would have kept her as she was, patchwork and damaged and alive, and allowed her to serve the season as a friend, and not as a captive.