They’d spent the winter quietly strung amongst the hedges and the remains of bright, vivid hues, blocking out the taut, binding lines of barbarity and severity – forgetting and forgoing, nurturing the diligence of mastered dedication. Instead of clinging to the wares of the despondent, the nymph lifted her head and tossed aside melancholy, took to smiling with friends, to laughing and regaling, to watching midnight hues turn to golden mornings, to witnessing forlorn surfaces spring eternal bonds. She preferred movement to listlessness, she preferred reflection to laments and dirges, she preferred anything and everything else than the mounting rise of desolation bordering and bottling her throat; together, amidst her compatriots, along her kingdom, she was alive and free and rarely done in. It was just, it was right, it was what called her back to glacial spectrums and enigmatic wonders – the Basin was comfort and security, sanctity and refuge, from even the most burdening of woes.

Incapable of being battered, of being trounced, of being pummeled to the chilling winds and the binding frost, the pair had settled amongst what little greenery was still left amidst the pines and firs. Beneath their laden boughs, beneath their stark, cold embraces, the Songbird and fox dug amidst layers of snow and dappling of snowflakes, finding small, tiny christenings of herbs. The smallest were not plucked, but comforted by no longer being surrounded by ice, carefully acknowledged with a small and a dabbling of warmth, maws pushing snow aside or marking branches with telltale signs to return in the spring for the moss and berries, for the leaves and fronds. The Songbird smiled and wished them well, that they remained, surviving, thriving, even in the depths of Frostfall; promising them the sun would melt away the frost, the rime, and soon, they would all flourish again – because they always found a way, time and time and time thereafter, to rise from ashes, from dilemmas, from trials and tribulations.

They would’ve embarked further, down into lanes, roads, parlors, and copses furnished by naught but spells and crystals, had she not heard her name echoing across the threshold. She stopped, ceasing movement except to arch her brow, except to maneuver her head, her ears, in the direction of the noise. The tunes had not been cast in woe or pain – she wasn’t being directed to a source of sorrow, devastation, or danger. There was no treachery laced in the whims of her calling, naught but a listless, onyx familiarity with a boy who’d grown and reached for things he wanted, things he cherished. Her grin, if possible, grew ever bolder, ever prouder, ever embellished with a sense of reason and purpose, and her limbs followed suit, forever enticed by the journey of the curious, by the notion of another.

They followed, two beings eclipsed, brandished, and branded by snow and still reigning in warmth, guided by the curls of his voice and the fractures of sentiments burrowed underneath. She hadn’t had the chance or opportunity to speak to him in ages, perhaps either had been too busy with their ideals, with their battles, with the wars waging in heads or frames; but the quiet nuances and tranquil entities must have guided them to these singular moments of repose and renewal. The sylph cherished it, tilted her head to see him standing before the beginnings of the greenhouse, calling out across the void with a touch of song, a warbling of a melody. “Öde,” she rang like a beatific carillon or a dutiful bird, graceful and dignified. The duo neared, in rapture, in opulence, grinning and adoring. “How are you?”