Orenda said nothing about what she had seen the night before as she watched Bella scarf down flapjacks as quickly as Sokomaur could cook them. The smallest children, the ones who could not be more than five or six, were eating just as ravenously, and though Orenda normally had a healthy appetite, she stared at her plate and wondered why it didn’t look appetizing.

Sonny was right- something had to have gone wrong on the road. Mary Sue, Barbra Allen, and Sarya had had more than enough time to return. Orenda wished Draco would go scout for them. When she had been traveling from Basilglen to the burrow they had not known exactly where it was they were going, and they had arrived faster.

Orenda thought of Commander Agalon, and how he knew more than he should, despite not being a Knight of Order. She thought of Xaxac, alone and underground in the orchard he apparently loved so much, and wondered where her parents were buried, or if they were buried. She had read that Urillians piled those they had slain into mass graves, so it was possible that someone, somewhere, knew where they were buried. Orenda was almost positive that fire elves cremated their dead, and wondered if her father would have even wanted to be buried.

Gareth wasn’t wearing his mask at breakfast, despite the crowded kitchen, and Orenda stared at him until he eventually met her eyes.

“Yes?” He asked.

“How did my father want to be buried?” Orenda asked.

“Oh,” Gareth said and became very interested in cutting his breakfast into smaller and smaller pieces. “Yes, with Xac and everything I suppose… I suppose you would think about that. We always said that if one outlived the other we would bury him at sea. But we planned on immortality, and if we could ever arrange it we were supposed to die together.” He chucked, a laugh with no mirth and said, “Of course we also said that we were going to live together, traveling the world. Plans often have a way of undoing themselves.”

“What about my mother?” Orenda asked.

“Urillians are traditionally buried,” Gareth said.

“She wasn’t a traditional Urillian.”

“People in our position, Rendy,” Gareth said stabbing a fork into one of the pieces he had cut, “Do not usually speak of death. It’s an all too familiar concept. I imagine Sokomaur would have wanted to be buried near her homeland. The Sambrees were a poor family, from somewhere called ‘The Sacred Woods’. That place doesn’t exist anymore. It was in the Sage Lake province. We could probably find it if we tried, but I don’t think you would have any family left there.”

Orenda nodded.

“Uncle Gary?” She asked after a few moments of silence, “What are the Urillians looking for in the Frozen North?”

“The Crystal City,” Bella said as she pulled more hotcakes from the stack Soko sat on the table, “They’re surely looking for the Crystal City.”

“Xaxac went to the Crystal City,” Orenda said, “We have proof it exists.”

“We have proof Xac found a new way to get high in the snow,” Gareth rolled his eyes.

“We have eyewitnesses,” Bella argued, “Soko and Ronnie saw it too. They’ve been there.”

“Rendy,” Sonny laid a hand on her shoulder, “Come on. You’re with me today. I’m going to teach you how to make soap. Fun times.”

Orenda stood and followed him outside.

Orenda had just finished her training for the day under a star speckled sky when she finally saw something that she had long read about. As they were walking back towards the house it blew in on the wind, cold and harsh and biting, and tiny specks of white ice began to dance down from the clouds. They weren’t as fast or fat as raindrops, and it took her a moment to identify them.

She held out her hand and watched them collect, quietly, on her mitten before they melted with the warmth of her body.

“Snow,” she said.

“Ah shit,” Sonny said, “Well, at least we got everything in. Once that shit starts it just keeps going.” He caught her face and realized what she was thinking, “Oh! Right! It doesn’t snow on the fire continent. Well, here’s a run-down. It’s cold as hell. The roads get icy. It builds up sometimes to where you can’t get the door open and you have to tie a line between the barn and the house to take care of the sheep.”

He smiled, tilted his head, and said, “But if there’s enough in the morning after we finish out chores we’ll fuck off and have a snowball fight because the kids will do that whether we tell them to or not.” He laughed and said, “Thank god we live underground. It stays pretty much the same temperature all year round down there.”

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He stared out past the house toward the road and added, “Sure wish Mary Sue would get back, though.”

When Orenda awoke, the world was white. The snow still fell in soft, quiet flakes, but the Burrow was covered in a thin sheet of the stuff. If one bent down and dug through it, they could reach frozen ground, but Orenda was overcome with a terrible realization.

Snow was made of water.

It had been a long time since she had been fully immersed in it, but the sea seemed to have toughened her up somewhat. Still, though, her eyes watered and her stomach did flips, and as she stepped outside she was forced to grab the doorway for support- not because she was weak, but because she had forgotten she would be weak.

“Rendy?” Sonny asked.

“I’m fine,” Orenda lied, “There’s just… there’s so much water.”

“Is that bad?” He asked.

“Fire elves don’t do well in water,” Orenda told him, “Just… just let me sit for a moment and collect myself. I’ll be fine. I’m much stronger than I once was. There’s just so much of it.”

“This isn’t that much snow,” Sonny told her as he guided her back inside and sat her at the table in the kitchen, “I told you, sometimes it gets taller than we are.”

“Shit,” Orenda said.

“Yeah,” Sonny said, and hovered awkwardly. He turned to Sokomaur and said, “Did you know that snow makes fire elves sick?”

“Snow making somebody sick?” Sokomaur said as if the concept was ridiculous, “I never heard such a thing. It’s just snow. I mean a body can get sick from the cold. You want me to make you some tea, Rendy?”

“That would be nice,” Orenda said, “But I’m not ill indoors, and I swear to you that if you would let me out there and give me a moment to adjust, I would be fine. I need to build my strength up.”

She watched the soft powder falling through the kitchen windows and asked, “You say once it begins it doesn’t stop?”

“Not for at least two months,” Sonny said, “Winters get pretty rough around here. You get ice on the sea and shit.”

“Then I can’t let it get to me,” Orenda pushed herself up, “I have to be able to fight in it. I can’t wait another two months. I need to be ready to go. I’ve spent too much time here already.”

“Look, just… you look real pale,” Sonny said, “Don’t do your chores this morning and I’ll still train with you this afternoon. Just stay here and drink tea and knit.”

“I don’t know how to knit,” Orenda protested.

“You don’t know how to knit?” Soko and Sonny asked in unison, then looked at each other as if they had shocked themselves.

“I’ll show you,” Sokomaur promised as she set the tea on the stove, “You have to learn how to knit. A Brigaddon that can’t knit is… unheard of.”

“Start her off on big needles and smooth yarn,” Sonny said, “Wool’ll tear her hands all to hell.”

Then he was out the door, apparently gone to make soap, and Sokomaur disappeared downstairs. She came up a few minutes later as Orenda was taking the whistling kettle off the stove, and brought with her a basket full of glistening silver yarn.

Orenda poured tea for both of them and returned to the table.

“Right or left handed?” Sokomaur asked.

“Right,” Orenda said as she sat down and took the two sticks Sokomaur handed her. Soko sat one on the table and picked up two more that had been stabbed into a ball of yarn.

“We’ll start with a scarf,” She said, “They’re the easiest. You have to do math for everything else.”

“I was always rather good at math,” Orenda said.

“So was I,” Soko said, “You know what they say about rabbits. If there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s multiply.”

Orenda laughed, and watched the movements of Soko’s expert hands, slowed down for her benefit. She copied her and managed to get the stitches onto the needles, and after a few rounds with help, Orenda, ever the fast learner, found that her muscles remembered these motions just as they had remembered the motions of the fighting poses Mary Sue had shown her. Her body had a way of remembering things, even if her mind did not. She found, as she finished the first few rows of what Soko called “Garter Stitch” that she was able to more or less turn off her brain and let her hands do the work.

The wooden needles made a soothing ‘click click click’ sound that was almost meditative, and combined with the repetitive motions Orenda felt herself going into a sort of trance as a scarf slowly appeared as if by magic- the string transformed into a real, tangible object. Her only complaint was that the process was so slow. She had only managed to create a few inches when Sokomaur stood, in the middle of a story about how Sonny had once hidden a pet frog from from their parents for an entire winter, to begin the lunchtime preparations.

“Oh,” Orenda said, “Let me help you with that.”

Sokomaur shrugged and said, “Many hands make light work.”

“We can train indoors,” Sonny said as he watched Orenda shiver and lose her form. He was under the impression that she was trembling from the cold, but he was wrong.

“I’m fine,” Orenda told him as another wave of nausea flowed over her and her abdominal muscles, meant to hold her tall and strong, heaved with the force of it, “Just feeling a little ill. A little under the weather.”

Sonny frowned and looked up at the snow that was still falling.

“I’m meant to be sparring,” Orenda told him.

“You can barely stay on your feet,” Sonny said with a frown. “Come inside.”

“I need to train, Sonny.”

“I know, but… come inside. I… I’ve been working on something. We all have. Picking it up to do a few rows whenever we can. Come inside and we’ll… we’ll see if it helps.”

He turned and began walking towards the house, and Orenda saw that he was going to go, with or without her.