image [https://i.postimg.cc/C5hkB97L/ch-90-vol-3.jpg]

In all the unpleasant excitement of keeping a child from freezing to death, I wanted to see what was going on outside. The snow had died down a lot since we got here, but it didn’t look safe enough to travel yet. Not that travel was on the table at the moment, considering the little girl was still recovering.

She probably needed a nice warm meal ready for when she woke up. This little home was basically one big floor, so the kitchen was just across from her bed. Plenty of food was stuffed away in the pantry, some of it magically preserved. So I pulled it all out and started cooking.

“Let’s stew it!”

Stews were pretty easy to make, I figured. I tossed a bunch of stuff into a boiling pot of water and let the magic happen!

When the meat looked thoroughly cooked in the broth, I took up a ladle and dipped it in, taking a sip to see if it would taste as good as it smelled.

“Yuck.”

It was awful, but just barely edible. The most important thing though was that it was nice and warm. A hot meal in this mess was worth its weight in gold.

When I turned my gaze back to the bed, the little girl was tossing about. Finally, she woke up and her silver eyes darted around the room. Once she locked onto me, she just gave me a blank stare, which was actually super adorable. She was like some sort of doll, silently watching me from the corner.

I tried communicating with her, but she just kept staring at me like she couldn't figure out what I was saying. Maybe she didn’t know Euron. Did I know the Kanai language?

-...-

Yeah, it was in my system. I switched my language over to see if maybe she was able to speak that instead.

“O namae wa?” I asked for her name.

I had to put out my question a few more times until she finally replied.

“Hanako desu,” she was as quiet as a mouse, but had a very cute baby voice.

“Yalda desu.” I pointed to myself. “Hajimemashite.”

She threw the blanket over her head.

“Kowai.”

“Scary?” I tilted my head in confusion. Was she referring to me or the situation? I was trying my hardest not to appear intimidating.

I poured out a bowl of stew and approached her, placing the bowl on the nightstand as an offering. Then I carefully peeled away the blanket from her and checked her forehead.

She might have been overheating a little, so I quickly turned down the heat and gave her a little water to sip on.

“Atashi ga kimi o mamorimasu, idesu ka?” I asked if she was okay with me protecting her.

“Umm.” She approvingly nodded.

Hanako jumped down to the floor, trotting her way to me, then looking up with that blank and expressionless stare of hers. There was an endearing curiosity to her gaze, but her thoughts were hard to discern.

It was so weird being the big girl here. It’s not often I got to see how it felt to stand taller than someone else.

“Mama wa doko desu ka?” She wanted to know where her mother was.

“Gomennasai.” I shook my head because I didn't know. “Wakarimasen.”

“Mama...” Her eyes turned sad, and she looked away. “Hanako wa mama o...”

That made me wonder if maybe they got separated. Getting lost in a blizzard was probably really easy. I bet the weather came out of nowhere too. If that was the case, there might have been a village or something nearby where Hanako came from, since she couldn't have gone very far.

While I was thinking, Hanako started wobbling around like she was about to faint. I caught her before she fell and brought her back to bed.

“You need more rest.” I said, retrieving a bowl of stew. She didn't have much strength, so I spoon fed it to her. “Once the snow dies down, we'll go find your mama.”

“Mama…”

~☆☆☆~

It took a few hours, but finally the outdoors was looking less frostbitten. If we were going to leave, now was probably the best time.

Since Hanako made it out here on foot, it was safe to assume the place she came from wasn’t far. I had a few ideas on how to find it.

“Hanako, Ikou!” I called out to her.

She had a lot more strength now, so she walked up to me and held my hand. But as I opened the door, she ran behind me and wouldn't follow outside. She couldn’t even look in that direction.

“You're scared of the snow, aren’t you?”

There was no reply.

Well, I might have had a solution. She let me pick her up and I covered her up with my wings. The fluffy feathers were warm enough to insulate heat and keep her from seeing the outside.

“That should keep you safe and toasty.”

If she had any qualms, she didn’t bring them up. I took her snuggling as a sign of acceptance.

A deep breath left my lungs, keeping me grounded in the moment. Although I didn’t have a fear of the cold, marching out into the unknown again brought with it a lot of stress. I needed to be ready for anything, especially now that I had a kid to protect.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“This must be how the others view me.” I snickered to myself, wondering if maybe being around me in times of trouble stressed them out.

And so began our trek to find Hanako’s village. I had an idea of which way we’d need to go, but first I needed to get back to where I found her. That was easy, considering we just ran in a straight line the whole time.

Now that I was back where I found her, the next challenge was figuring out which way she came from. I remembered which way she was facing in the snow, and she likely just ran in a straight line from her village.

Going toward that direction, a very cold and dense vapor raced past my legs, covering up the whole ground in fog.

-Advisory! Large quantities of carbon dioxide detected-

I’d played around with dry ice dad stored away long enough to recognize this was gaseous CO2. But there was so much of it. Could this have been why the land got frozen? It seemed impossible. It did make me feel like I was going the right way, hopefully not at the wrong time.

The forest trees started to clear as I reached its edge. That village must have been just over this hill.

As I climbed over the hill, I certainly saw our destination at the base of a mountain, but in a far poorer state than I was hoping. The Kanai village looked as if a cryogenic bomb had gone off in it. At least a few centimeters of dry ice coated everything, and sublimation created a creepy white fog everywhere. Some houses collapsed, others had spikes sticking out of their walls. All of them were lifeless and cold.

Blocks of ice were scattered all over too. Their cores were dark, almost impossible to discern what was inside, but I continued to inspect them…all the way up until I noticed the vague shape of a person within.

“Oh my God…” I breathed out in shock.

Hanako was getting restless under my wings, but I refused to let her see what had happened to her home. She was persistent and started kicking my wings until I was forced to release her.

She fell to the ground and immediately got back up.

“Hanako, no!”

Despite my protests, she bolted straight toward one of the smaller houses, assumedly her own, shouting “Tadaima, Tadaima!”

Keeping pace with her was easy, but she was already inside when I finally caught up. Instinctually, she went around a paper-like wall and stopped.

“Hanako, Matte!” I shouted, also turning the corner.

She was on her knees in front of a giant block of ice. Her tears told me familiar people to her were inside of it. One woman, a man, and a slightly older boy than her. They were all huddled together around a glowing orb of light, but were unanimated themselves.

I couldn’t read their vitals, but my heart was telling me they were still alive. This ice wouldn't be hard to melt, so I pressed my hand up to its surface and started heating it with stardust energy.

“We'll get your family out of here, I promise.”

Hanako joined me by also pressing her hand against the ice. A warm stardust energy radiated from her palms, just like mine. I had no idea she could use it too, but it was sure to help.

We spent a lot of time trying to melt away the ice, but it wasn’t doing anything at all. That didn’t stop us from fruitlessly continuing.

“We’ll get them out!” I cheered, hoping to incite some resolve in both Hanako and I.

But as it would seem, her light began to fade the longer we went. The once eager eyes that wished to free her family were now aiming at the floor in disappointment.

“Hanako, we can’t give up.”

She didn’t respond, as if realizing the situation wouldn’t get better no matter how much we tried.

With her heart reaching that point of despair, I decided to call off my own light temporarily.

“Hanako…”

“Now I remember…” she suddenly spoke in Euron, keeping her eyes hidden under her bangs as her head faced downward. “This was my family. My mother, father, and brother.” Tears dripped down onto the tatami floors. “My mother used to be a stardust maiden, but passed that down to me when I was born. They didn't normally take in kids as young as I was, but for some reason they made an exception…”

“Hanako…” I uttered softly, realizing who this really was.

“I trained a lot, learned a few dances, and even learned to use stardust.” She snapped her fingers, sending out a spark of light. “It was fun. There was so much to live for.”

She sat crisscross on the floor. I also sat next to her.

“One day, our village was attacked by something… I never saw what did it, but it's an ice dragon in my nightmares.”

“So, this is how you became afraid of the cold then, Indena.”

“Yeah, it is,” she said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, then looking at me with a broken hearted face. “My mom told me to run as far and fast as I could. Then suddenly a blizzard broke out, and I got stuck in it.”

“Who found you that day?” I asked.

“Karahi, I guess,” she shrugged. “I don’t know. I just remembered waking up months later, covered in fire tattoos to keep me alive.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“I can’t remember the name,” she claimed, looking very frustrated. “We probably aren't far from Okitoshi, which is where the Family of Sai is from. But I really couldn’t tell you for sure. I was too little and stupid to know.”

Seeing her go through this reminded me of my own bad memories, like when dad left me. I've dreamed about it so many times that I remember every detail, but I couldn't say where it was.

“Fate was too cruel to them.” She looked at her family. “This is why I don’t want to leave my own fate up to chance. I want to make my own future, and protect everyone's ability to as well.”

“You know, I think we do get to choose our fate.”

“Huh?” her head slightly turned my way.

“I think of fate as a set of paths we can take. Bad people are those who have the choice between good and evil, and choose bad. But fate shows us what they’ve done, and gives us a chance to choose good, then sets us on the road to change things.”

She breathed out a sigh, smiling and shaking her head.

“Maybe you’re onto something with that. I don’t know. Still doesn't change the fact that I’m not strong enough to free them.”

“Right now, no,” I shook my head. “But fate is giving you the chance to learn how to do it.”

A tear ran down her face, this time tracing over a soft smile.

“Hey, thank you for helping me.” She smiled. “If it weren't for you, I would have been a human popsicle again.”

“It wasn’t any trouble.”

“On that, where are we? What’s going on here?”

Based on what Indena said, I had a theory that the demon lord was making her relive her dreams, or maybe just an unpleasant memory. He probably tried to get me to fall for it too, but I blew up his attempt before he got the chance.

“So, this is my nightmare then?” She sighed, looking back at her family. “I don't even remember their faces.”

It was really difficult to pick out any distinguished facial features on them. So maybe this dream reality was based on how she remembered things being.

I only had her experience to craft this theory on, but who knows what the others were going through?

“What's the plan then?” Indena asked, spritely standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “Is there a way out of this dream reality or what?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged. “I might be able to escape using the Stardust Nova.”

“I hope you don't mind, but I'd rather you didn't nuke me and my folks.”

Yeah, even in a dream reality that seemed a bit cruel.

“Do you think we can save your family too?” I asked.

“We just tried,” Indena said. “I sure would like to.”

I couldn’t think of any powers I had that could melt this ice. It seemed a lot stronger than normal, so it had to have been magical. Needless to say, conventional means wouldn't work.

“Let’s tab this, alright?” she requested. “I want to save them. I want to make a fire so strong that it'll melt my family free. But right now, that demon lord is messing with us.” She clenched her fist in the air and gave me a determined smile. “Why don't we go kick his butt first? I owe him that for reminding me how awful my life is.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, feeling determined myself. “We'll need to find the others too.”

“If we see that stupid witch, just leave her be.”

We both got a good laugh from that. It was funny how small Indena was now, but still the friend I knew well.

Suddenly there was a monstrous cry outside, followed by a terrible quake shaking the air. Indena and I almost toppled over from its power.

“Hey, what did you say did this to your village?” I asked, prompting a look of horror to spill over her face.

----------------------------------------