While every day since the change was one showing people that the world wasn’t as it had been before, winter might be the time that drove that idea home the strongest. People were confined indoors, especially when the world showed everyone that it wasn’t just humans who could drive climate change and the world was covered in snow, and that confinement drove introspection, conversation and conflict. And boredom, which might be the worst of all.

It got to the point that I made the effort to escort two groups of my students back to their original homes, simply to lessen the amount of people in and around my tower. Sure, they ate their own food, supplemented with some of the things Luna was growing with her ever-increasing ability in Life Magic and almost all of my students had picked up the trick to conjure water readily enough, completely negating that particular need, but it wasn’t just the supplies that made their stay problematic.

The bigger problem was, as mentioned, boredom. We, as people, had grown up immersed in information, with countless ways to kill time and entertain ourselves, making boredom something we barely experienced. At worst, we might have experienced something akin to boredom in school, while sitting in a class we weren’t interested in but even that wasn’t truly boredom, as there was always the option to pay attention or do some other work. Now, in the middle of winter, with snow piling up high, thus the need for me to escort people to and from my tower, there was very little to do.

Going out, unless the person was adept at Ice Magic, could easily become a death sentence, as evidenced by the fact I had been needed to save a couple of people who decided they were hard and hardy enough to wade through over a metre of snow piling up on the ground. Granted, a lot of that was due to the shape of the quarry I had built my tower in, but not all of it. The winter was incredibly cold and snowy, in ways I hadn’t experienced before. Sure, the locals had mentioned that their winters were fairly harsh, thanks to the increased elevation of the area but even they were surprised at the ferocity of the winter we experienced.

The few books we had for entertainment were passed around readily and I did my very best to add interesting exercises my students could use to entertain themselves after the lessons were done but even that only helped so much. All in all, the winter was a dreadfully boring time for everyone too frail to move around outside, which was essentially everyone but me. Other people could venture out, at least for a time depending on their level and Endurance, but the only one to thrive was me, something I privately relished.

Wandering around the frozen forests was incredible, the air clear, crisp and refreshingly cold, the wind occasionally howling like an angry wolf and the night sky resplendent in all its starry glory, it was an experience I would treasure. For once, I didn’t even think about taking to the sky, instead, I let my feet carry me across the snow, using only the slightest bit of magic to keep myself from sinking in as I walked, letting my feet carry me where they would.

For once, I could be confident in myself, in this world covered in Ice, I was as safe as I could be. The world was suffused with freezingly cold Ice Astral Power, energy I could sense readily and that sense gave me incredible environmental awareness, making it near impossible to sneak up on me, at least within a close radius around myself.

Attacking from a distance would be possible but given that I was quietly moving through a dark forest, wrapped in my dark cloak and using its passive effects to conceal myself? It would take an incredibly powerful and skilled archer to get me, and that was assuming there was somebody nearby to desire my demise. Sure, there were beings who would prefer if I stopped doing that breathing thing I was so attached to but those beings were not necessarily nearby, nor did they have the means to readily dispatch assassins to hunt me down. This wasn’t Mundus, where the Gods could casually cause a crusade to chase after me or to send a small army of Valkyr to hunt me down. This was Terra, just a few months after the change, meaning the vast majority of people had more important things to do, things like making sure they and their brethren weren’t dying of starvation or the cold.

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So, I could easily wander the nightly forest, letting my mind relax as the cold and the wind surrounded me in the night’s embrace. It was a fascinating sensation and the more I let my feet carry me forward, the more I could truly relax and let go of the various concerns bothering me. Fear, caution, obligation, there were so many things I had to keep aware of, to make sure I wasn’t hurt in the chaotic times since the change, to make sure my slowly growing family could thrive, and that my daughters were healthy. What a strange thought that was, daughters, or children in general, even if they were not truly born from my body, I had never thought I would partake in that particular experience. And yet, here I was, with two people who readily called me mother and, somehow, bound into what might eventually become a true triad deity, with me as the Mother.

It was a strange fate and I couldn’t help but wonder if one of the deities had influenced me into it. Not with any real sort of true manipulation but I couldn’t help but wonder if I had received a little nudge here and there. Maybe a bit of assistance in the ritual to help Lia, maybe a bit of gentle guidance so I would stumble across Luna and empathise with the young, lost child. Was Hecate’s interest in Luna part of that plan or was I starting to embrace conspiracy theories? It also might be a combination of both, though, as I walked, I realised just how little that really mattered. Would I be willing to abandon Luna if Lady Hecate materialised right this moment, telling me that she had pushed me into taking in my daughter? No, I would not, at least I didn’t think I would. Emotions remained a tricky thing for me, or maybe they had always been tricky and now, since the change, they had become a different kind of tricky.

Shaking my head, I pushed those stray thoughts away, taking a deep breath of cold, fresh air and letting my mind roam in a different direction. I wasn’t here to let my mind be plagued by doubts, I was here to relax and embrace the cold, the night and the wind.

Cold, Darkness and the Wind, the three elements I was fairly certain would become the core of my draconic aspect. Cold, because Ice and Snow were, and would always be, a primary elemental characteristic of me. Darkness, standing for Change and Magic, another part that I would forever embrace, partially to balance the static and stoic nature of Ice, partially because I felt at home in the dark. Darkness was beyond the physical, maybe that was why I enjoyed it so much, the mystery of the unknown and unknowable, of hidden and forbidden knowledge. Yes, I would always prefer the Darkness, even if the Curse of Sunna hadn’t forced me to abandon the day, I would still roam the night.

And, finally, the Wind, the element I embraced of my own volition, not because it was deeply ingrained in my being. To fly, to roam the sky and be free, if there was anything I wished to embrace about being a dragon, it would be that freedom. For a moment, an old song flickered through my head, reminding me that they couldn’t take the skies from me, since I found serenity, the idea bringing a smile to my face.

Ahead of me, the forest grew lighter and I realised that my aimless wandering had carried me to one of the cliffs in the area, allowing me to look far into the snow-covered land. Reaching out with my Ice Magic, I drew in snow and ice in vast quantities, wrapping it around me to form the body, not really thinking about my actions, simply letting intuition and my magic guide me. I didn’t need to control my elven body piece by piece, cell by cell, it simply was. And just like that, I didn’t need to control the dragon’s body I was creating, the Ice infused by Darkness and Wind, so I could fly out into the night.

For a moment, I could feel my serpentine shape, the long and sinuous body, the wide wings, the short, yet utterly lethal, claws and the devastating stinger at the tip of my tail, a curious appendage I hadn’t consciously created. Alas, the sensation only lasted for a moment and then, just as quickly as the body had formed, it exploded outwards again, stripping a few trees of their bark, shredding countless needles and creating a scene of devastation atop this cliff.

Failure, but a failure I could learn from. With that thought, I took yet another step, out, into the endless black of the night, letting my cloak carry me with the wind and back towards my tower. Failure, I had suffered but eventually, failure would lead to success, I only needed to try again.