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Things froze in the snow—even apples.
All things had been blanketed in white since their exodus; the shadowmere had shepherded her sons to a place just as deadened as it was healing. The darkness seemed to have spared the snow, whatever it had tried to do to their beloved homeland—although Circe did not feel herself filled with the same sort of homely pride she expected to feel upon returning to the meadow. As her sons bolted away from her, kicking snow into the air and snarling and laughing in the thin, bitter Frostfall air, she felt the stirrings of a familiar worry to fester in the back of her mind; how are we going to eat? Will we have enough shelter? Will the shadows hide the monsters of the darkness? What will stop my sons from wandering from me?
The day started grey, and ended the same; the invisible sun left, and all light drained from the skies and the covered meadow. The stream was shatteringly cold when she struck the ice, crushing it open for her sons to be able to drink, training them how to reach life-giving water even in the dead of winter, teaching them the bitterness of cold. Then they slept on ice; Circe cleared a space for her sons to retire under the low-hanging branches of a bush, but the ground was frozen under the drifts, and she watched her sons huddle tightly as they drifted off.
She watched her sons for a while, standing there in the black and white, her breath heavy bursts of smoke in the night; she turned away from them a little ways, allowing them to catch their rest, to get them away from the taint of her worry. When she was far enough from her sons, close enough to see their shadows resting under the snow-covered boughs—it was then she began to pace.
The darkness was gone from this place—such tidings were good ones indeed. Archibald was gone from this place—but he always left to fight, and her worry was intermingled with a touch of pride for the ex-General. No, it was not these things that whirled within her mind, but oh, how her mind did whirl about in the snow and the crisp night. They were a vortex within the confines of her skull, and the faster her thoughts raced, so did her pacing; the faster she paced, the more upset the snow was; the more snow churned under her feet, the more she saw underneath its blanket, and discover that apples, even the rancid ones, froze in the snow.
The night had well and truly fallen, her sons were sleeping, and her thoughts wrestled with her painfully, unrelentingly. And so, despite her oaths, despite her past experiences, despite the overwhelming caution that pounded behind her eyes, she partook of the first frozen apple.
And the second.
And the third..
..and so on.
@[Ampere]
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