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The company moved slowly
between the snow-covered trees, forging a path through the frozen white blanket
on the ground laboriously. All but one of the group resented the speed
the snow made them travel at through the freezing forest; Lady Aronaila
treasured it. While others cursed the cold, wet, winters that kept them
cooped up in their keeps and traveling truly terrible, Aronaila loved those
frozen months when winter reigned. She cherished the time spent outdoors
in the pristine whiteness, the cold purity of the season that was, in her mind,
a cleansing of the world to ready it for spring, rather than a time of callous,
deadly cold. Wrapped up in cloaks and the benefits of nobility, the chill
of winter that reminded others of its potential to kill only made Aronaila
realize how alive she truly was as it bit into her face.
Xavier, her father Lord Fabian�s Captain, rode back along the straggling line
of servants and wagons the Lord Fabian, his wife, both sons, and his daughter
apparently needed for a day�s journey to their daughter�s wedding, his face
stormy. Aron quit her contemplation of the wintry forest to listen as Xavier
quietly but intensely related something to his lord. After all, the
forest would be there for a long time, but Xavier would undoubtedly be leaving
for the front of the group in a minute or two. Plus, after about six
hours of slowly wending her way through the forest, the trees all began to look
the same, the beauty of the glittering icicles adorning their brown branches
less brilliant.
�My lord,� Xavier began, his voice quickly fading to an indistinct murmur, much
to Aron�s annoyance, �I�it might be�traveled�that we have��
Aron�s father looked disturbed.
�But we�re so close,� he said, making no attempt at hiding the conversation,
�Where is it?�
Xavier murmured something else, and gestured ahead and slightly to the
left. Peering up through the arms of the trees, adorned only with their
frozen foliage of ice and snow, she somehow managed to glimpse the sky.
It was grey with clouds, and even as she pondered how she missed the change
from bright sunlight to the twilight the clouds caused now, a few snowflakes
filtered through the forest to alight on her hair and eyelashes. Aronaila
was thrilled. She loved snowfalls, with the tiny snowflakes floating down
like bits of the clouds they came from, muffling all sound and movement until
she was encased in a serene silence. She was so enthralled with the
rapidly increasing storm, that she didn�t notice the dismay on everyone else�s
faces.
**********
The company moved slowly through the howling winds, the moving walls of air
made visible and almost solid by the amount of snowflakes they whipped
along. Aronaila was beginning to lose her enchantment with winter, as it
became increasingly colder as night fell. The clouds and the wind had
managed to strip visibility down to almost nothing, and had anybody wanted to
stick their hands out of their cloaks to try to see them, well�they wouldn�t
have been able to see their fingers even if they were touching their
nose. Aron was cold, colder than she had ever been in her life, and she
would have felt wet except that she couldn�t feel anything anymore, and
expected that she was more frozen than sodden anyways. She was also
increasingly more and more frightened. At first she had continued riding
on her horse, then got down at Xavier�s insistence, and tried to use the poor
animal as a shield against the wind, trying to keep vaguely warm by the energy
that wading through the yard-deep snow demanded. Then the horse had
suddenly stopped, refusing to go any farther, and nothing would budge it.
It had just lain down in the snow, and her father had told her to leave
it. Now the whole group was devoid of their horses, all having one by one
succumbed to the cold. They huddled together, staggering drunkenly
through the snow, buffeted by winds that had grown noticeably stronger once
they left the shelter of the trees. At one point, Aronaila had roused
from her freezing stupor enough to notice that the person who had been walking
on her left had somehow disappeared, and had she been able to, she would have
cried. As it was, she simply clung harder to her mother and plodded on.
Suddenly, the ground dropped away from her feet, and she heard her mother cry
faintly as they both tumbled down what was apparently a hill. Whimpering,
barely able to feel the snow that coated her face and trickled under her cloak,
Aronaila laboriously pushed herself up, and stopped. In the fall, she had
totally lost her sense of direction, and had let go of her mother. There
was no use in shouting into the storm, because it stole your words practically
out of your mouth, and flung icy snow into your eyes.
Aron felt very, very alone.
Thinking fast, Aron started wading in circles near where her mother should have
fallen, arms outstretched, hoping to bump into her mother. After all, she
couldn�t have gone far, and she must have been searching for Aron as
well. Aron started getting frantic when she bumped into nothing, then a
thought occurred to her. What if her mother had only tumbled halfway down?
Aron hurried as fast as she could up the hill, making frenzied circles, but her
mother wasn�t there.
Aron was truly alone, lost in a storm that seemed bent on killing every living
thing.
Even though she knew it was useless, even though she knew if anyone managed to
hear her they would not be able to determine the direction her voice came from,
Aron screamed for her mother, screamed for her father, screamed for anyone
until the icy air that seared her lungs with every inhalation seemed to stick
in her throat, freezing her insides until they became the same temperature as
everything else in her hellish nightmare, and no matter how fast or far she
struggled through the snow, she knew she would never be warm again.
Time passed. It was impossible to know how much, and Aron wasn�t sure she
really cared. She no longer felt anything, not the wet of her clothes, or
the wind as it whipped what little warmth she retained away, or the cold of
this underworld she had stepped into. Vaguely, her mind realized that everyone
that had traveled with her must be dead, or dying, and that she was dying, but
Aron�s heart, like the rest of her, was only a block of ice in a wilderness of
unfeeling cold. Her mind was blank, a black void, and she traveled
forwards only because it was habit. She knew, with whatever she was
thinking with right now, that if she fell she wouldn�t get up again.
Some time later, a minute, or an hour, or a century, Aron didn�t know and
didn�t care, the ground again gave way beneath her, and she knew that this fall
was, in a way, fatal. Aron stumbled and collapsed forward, too tired to
do more than flop slowly down the incline and lay there, face down.
Slowly, she pushed upwards to her hands and knees, but her arms shook with the
effort. She managed to drag herself forwards a few yards, then gave way
again to gravity. Lying there, on her stomach, the wind slowly burying
her beneath the snow as it keened her funeral dirge, Aronaila slowly slipped
down into the peaceful void of unconsciousness.
**********
And that is how her betrothed, Lord Dominic, found her the morning after,
covered in a blanket of snow as if sleeping, not twenty feet from his
gate. The only survivor had been the late Lord Fabian�s Captain of the
Guard; the rest of Aronaila�s people lay buried by the storm and snow that had
killed them. As the first wails of mourning emerged from Lord Dominic�s
keep, the wind bore them away as it had Aron�s cries, and the soft grey clouds
wept snowflakes that drifted down like the ashes of a funeral pyre.
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