Lillian saw the snow around her undulate. In the back of her mind, she knew that snow was just water that got very cold, but snow was different than water. So, why was this snow flowing like water?

She touched her hand to the mass of snow and recoiled slightly, it wasn’t even cold. She wondered if it really was technically snow then. Was snow still snow if it wasn’t cold?

It was like those questions that the wishy-washy philosophers of the inner ring would ask. Like whether hot stuff was magma or lava. She just said who cares, it is just liquid rock, the classifications did not matter.

Questions aside, she was having fun watching the snow move around her, at first the movement had seemed alien. But the more time she spent watching the snow the more she realized that it was dancing.

There was silent music in the air and the very snow on the ground was moving in rhythm with it.

It felt quite rude to leave a dance partner stranded on the floor. So, Lillian got her boogie on.

The flow of motion was beautiful and unspeakably personal. Lillian drifted through the snowbanks, and they flowed out of her way, like a lover giving space to their beloved.

Her steps always struck true with the rhythm of the snow because she and the snow were the same. They both had become the same being, or maybe they had always been the same.

Lillian felt the snow around her start to accelerate The motion and the dance were changing, she knew the changes but was unable to keep up with them. For the first time, she stumbled, unable to keep up with the dance.

The snow consumed her left ankle, she had a foot made of ice now. It no longer was made with flesh and blood, but of ice and water. The foot stood rigid in the dance, unable to change in any way shape or form, it stayed a foot, eternally in the position it had been frozen in.

The first mistake led to a second mistake, which led to a third. More and more of Lillian’s body became a statue of ice. Pieces of flesh stopped ebbing and flowing in her eternal dance but became icy monuments of who she had been in one miserable moment.

Until her entire being became ice.

She stood in the flurry of snow, unable to dance with her partner anymore. Forlornly staring at where she should be, but unable to move, her very thoughts slowing down as she truly became frozen.

A statue in a blizzard.

Lillian shattered, her very soul and essence defied the ice. And she became snow.

She became a part of the blizzard, the endless motion of the snow around her. Instead of joining in the dance, she became the danceq. Her every motion defined what the dance was, and she knew that no partner could ever join her on this dance floor. It was hers and hers alone.

Lillian cradled the self that she knew was made of ice and snow in her mind, then let herself wake up.

Theo, as always, was standing beside her bed, waiting for her to wake. Once he saw that she had awoken without any complications, he left her, to go get himself some breakfast.

She sat in the bed and longed to be in her room back at the prince’s real castle. As much fun as the phony castle was, Lillian was getting sick of it.

The pillow from her home sat beside her on the bed though, and the simple reminder of home let her find the courage to greet the day. She took one quick sniff of it, finding the scent of her farm and her family still safe within it. Then she started picking through the mess she had made of the room.

The team had arrived a few days back and after the flurry of activity getting Anna settled into the new compound, Lillian had decided to take a mini vacation. She had trashed her room and then not cleaned it up. She went to the sauna and chatted with other people around the castle. She went on little walks throughout the prince’s accommodations. But mostly she ate massive portions in the communal eating space.

Eating real food was a privilege and Lillian was not going to squander this opportunity. Entire hams went down her gullet as she savored the variety of flavors and spices that she had missed while on her expedition.

As much fun as the whole debacle had been for her, she despised the trail rations they had eaten while on their journey,

Lillian had dressed herself up for the day when she realized something. She hadn’t taken anything tangible out of the dream, but something had come with her.

She looked at the small hand mirror she kept by her bedside, then she turned into a gale of snow. It was an unseen dance, that an outside observer would have no way of understanding. Lillian danced her dance of snow for a brief moment.

The air that had grown cold in the presence of her dance started to heat back up. As a woman emerged from the snow.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

That was pretty cool.

But the day didn’t just stop because she had a cool ability. So, she went down to the dining area and got the chef to make her a stack of pancakes almost as tall as she was.

No exaggeration, the massive stack was only a few pancakes short of being her height, but when she had complained to the chef about it, all the stern woman had said was, “shut up, you aren’t even going to eat all of those anyways.”

Which was fair, but hurtful. Her large and wasteful food had become a staple of mornings in the castle. And it wasn’t even like any of it could truly go to waste, since all the remains ended up back up in the slop bin, which the chef would magic into real food again later.

Performative eating was an art and Lillian was an aficionado of it.

With her massive stack of pancakes, she sat down next to Theo who was nursing a cup of coffee. She always enjoyed seeing him drink coffee, the soft brown tones of his drink along with the strikingly blue coloration of his eyes made for quite a pleasing image.

"Have any good sculpture projects coming along?” Lillian asked as she started into her meal with gusto.

“Yes, right now I am playing with the transparency of the ice I can make. I had never truly thought about it before my artistry started, but when I am creating ice, they come out at different levels of opaqueness. I am still not sure what divides them, however if I can get control of it, I have several ideas for art pieces I would like…”

By this point Lillian had sort of tuned him out. She loved hearing his excitement for his new craft, the enthusiasm in his voice was invigorating to her soul. But she could not find the strength to truly care about the intricacies of the art.

So, she let his excited voice wash over her as she started shoving hunks of pancake into her gullet.

A few minutes after she had started eating, and a few minutes into the long-winded rant that Theo seemingly had no intention of slowing down, Lillian saw Joy enter the dining area.

Joy had a lot of fun during the group’s trip but had been a little lost ever since he got back to the castle. It had been so bad that he went to go visit Ian at one point. He trekked out the Ian’s little tower in the middle of the snow. He had then been forced into some ‘exercise.’ Apparently, Ian’s punches had only gotten stronger since the last time they had seen him.

That visit had brought a small fire back into Joy’s eyes, but it was obvious that he was flagging a bit.

But none of that was important right now to Lillian. All Joy needed in her opinion was a good breakfast.

Eventually the merry duo became a slightly less cheerful trio. Joy sat down and listened to Theo gushing about his passion project. Joy lifelessly spooned oatmeal from the bowl into his mouth. Lillian disapproved; meal choices should be exciting not bland.

Beating down her inner miser she even offered Joy one of her pancakes, which he refused. Lillian may have started a small scuffle after that, but that was beside the point.

Hopefully the prince would be able to alleviate this awful mood, since he had some sort of announcement planned for the day. But to be honest, Lillian was getting kind of sick of his announcements. It felt like every week everyone gathered in the courtyard and listened to the team leaders all talk about how uneventful the expedition had been so far. While the prince would speak a few encouraging words near the end. But that would be it, it was so endlessly boring.

Unfortunately, this was the path she had chosen, so there was no escape.

There was a bit of free time before the meeting, so Lillian decided to go out and play in the snow. She invited both Joy and Theo, but apparently Theo wanted to keep working on his projects, while Joy said he had some people to gamble with. The thing was, Joy wasn’t even happy when he was swindling someone anymore, he just stared aimlessly as he took someone’s wages for the week. It was quite depressing to watch.

Therefore, Lillian decided that Joy didn’t need to gamble and that he should come with her. She gripped his arm and marched him into the snow.

In the snow she promptly threw him into a large snowbank. Which seemed to stop his damper mood, replacing it with one of annoyance.

“Ow.”

“Stop being a downer.”

"Fine.”

And that was that. Obviously, Joy wasn’t immediately filled with ecstasy, but he relented in his crusade of boringness. He threw some snowballs at Lillian, none of which hit. It is apparently quite hard to hit someone who can turn into snow with more snow.

Once the two of them got bored with their unfair snowball match, they started constructing giant snowmen. Lillian was tempted to drag Theo out into the snow so he could help make her own snowman more delicate. Her snowman had three large boulders of snow stacked on top of each other, then she ran to the kitchen to get sticks and a carrot. But it was a barebones construction, not one she was particularly proud of.

Joy, on the other hand, had made a beautiful construction, somehow sculpting with the fickle material. It looked more akin to something that Theo would make, and that irked Lillian. But she was not a spoilsport no matter what anyone else said. She only kicked his artistic rendering of the prince one time and that was being fair.

Maybe it fell to pieces from her kick, and Joy wept. But that wasn’t the important part. They had wasted enough time having fun and they were nearly late for the grand meeting that the prince had called.

So, Lillian dragged a still weeping Joy, who kept muttering things like, “destroyer of happiness,” “demon wench,” and “evil beyond words,” towards the courtyard.

As much as she abhorred violence, a good cuff to the head was enough to dissuade Joy from continuing his tirade of B-grade insults.

The two of them reached the courtyard and they linked up with Theo, who was still just as exuberant about his current projects. Apparently, they had been doing quite well and Theo was excited to get back to them.

In the courtyard there were no team leaders on the raised platform, not even Ian or Sam was on the platform. Above them all, the prince stood with his cool blue eyes scanning the crowd, while his blond hair waved in the light breeze.

After enough people had gathered a wolfish grin spread across his face and he started.

“I know these past weeks have been difficult, but your time of leisure will now end. We will enter the frozen catacombs and fight our enemies in search of treasure and glory. I have spoken to those who will defend this castle, your duties are unchanged. Everyone else, we set off tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

That was it, no explanations about where they were going or what had changed. But Lillian couldn’t say she was surprised or disappointed. Joy’s eyes had lit up when he heard the news and an evil smile had plastered itself upon his face.

Theo looked downcast, he had his duties, and he would attend to them during this battle. But Lillian could tell he was bummed about having to drop his projects. She would talk to him about it, maybe he could make some art along the journey.

Lillian was excited, this was where it was going to be fun, no more waiting. This was the real beginning of something fun.