“Meyara, wait! You should think this through carefully before deciding anything!” Adriel's voice was so loud, he might have caused the igloo they were in to collapse with his voice. But he didn't care about that at all, he had more important tasks at the moment. He grabbed Meyara's hand before the girl signed an agreement that she might regret.
"Shut up! You will break the contract spell," the girl warned. She reached out her hand once more and rubbed her palm with Eva's. While taking a deep breath, she muttered one special spell she had never used before. "Each word binds its own meaning. I am here to give meaning to my own words, which will continue to haunt me until I finish them perfectly."
But nothing happened. Meyara blinked in confusion before she realized it. “Oh, right. I'm sorry, but you have to do the spell." She looked at Eva languidly.
Without saying anything, Eva repeated the spell that Meyara had said earlier. She had to focus so that Meyara could help her optimally, so even though she still wanted to cry, Eva closed her own eyes tightly. Listening to every word she chanted silently while imagining the loved ones they had to find.
As the protective mother of Frostfell, she tried to remember well all the people she had lost, but was unable to fight back her mind which was constantly focused on one specific person.
Dark brown hair and brown skin that contrasted with the color of her body, a warm smile that was so charming, that always seemed to say that everything would be fine, and hands that always held her tightly. Eva missed every little detail about the man, tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes.
"Okay, that's enough. You shouldn't have to show me everything about your lover.” Meyara's voice broke Eva's concentration, she then lowered her head in shame. “We’ll leave in a few hours. Now, if you’ll excuse me .…”
The girl immediately got up and came out of the igloo. A symbol of promise that looked like a small star tied tightly with a thread, shone brightly on the back of her right hand which she slightly covered with the hem of her robe. For a moment, Adriel was amazed to see the symbol that matched the promisee's symbol, the threadless star on the back of Eva's hand, so he forgot that he shouldn't have left Meyara alone.
But before he could stand up, Eva's voice stopped him.
“I’m sorry, I know you're not willing to let your friend do all this,” Eva said quietly. "But we really can't do it alone."
"I don't understand. You should have more than enough strength to mess up the world," Adriel answered matter-of-factly. The charm of Eva's beauty and tenderness no longer worked for him. All that's on his mind right now was how the woman in front of him would get Meyara caught in danger.
Meyara had a lot on her plate. The extra burden was the last thing she needed.
“I, or the other seers, cannot risk our lives. Not if it's not just our lives that are at stake." Eva rubbed the symbol on the back of her hand, fighting the feeling of regret that was starting to fill her chest. After all, Meyara looked much younger than her, how could she let such a young girl take over what should be her responsibility?
Unfortunately, Eva was more worried about the people she loved than the girl she just met.
“The plague that struck several years ago attacked the men in this village. They were helpless and had nothing to defend themselves with. So more than half of the seers did everything to save them. But none of our efforts were successful.”
Adriel swallowed nervously hearing that. The story she told feels too close to home. The image of Meyara's body lying weak and helpless, with signs of struggle all over her face made all the sadness he had felt at that time come back again.
“If nothing works,” the young man gripped his hands tightly, afraid to hear the answer to the question he was about to ask, “how do you finally get them to live a normal life again? Even Meyara, which was affected by the same plague, has not fully recovered yet."
“You could say we live a normal life here if you don't look at what's inside our bodies.” Eva took a deep breath, white dew came out of her thin lips. “It's fine if you want to judge us badly, but there was actually nothing else we could do at that time, so we did forbidden magic.”
“Forbidden magic? Which one?"
“One that involves blood.”
***
As if there were polar opposite magnets in her body, Meyara felt how seers automatically avoided her every time she passed. Everyone glanced at the back of her right hand, looking at the shining seal. Covering it was pointless because the light was so glaring in the middle of the night. Meyara didn't bother hiding it anymore and just let it show.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Her footprints adorned the white snow which felt quite solid beneath her feet. At first she didn't have a specific destination, especially with the limited lighting that only came from the moon and the light emitted by every igloo around her. But in the end she chose the loneliest spot she found, which was above a large area. An ice sculpture in the form of a bridge that juts out towards the lake.
The ice bridge creaked slightly under her feet, clearly having been used for more than many years. Meyara kept her steps slow and steady so as not to slip. She didn't want to endanger herself by slipping and falling into the lake which was said to be made from the tears of Frostfell's ancestors.
“How ridiculous,” she muttered to herself. "If they really suffered the loss of their loved ones to tears and formed a lake this big, they shouldn't have the energy to tell the tale."
She had been there before. The day she woke up and realized that everything she valued about herself was gone, she ended up collapsing in her own room after crying out in agony for hours. The pain that would not subside, the invisible scars that could never be healed, the feelings of helplessness … she knew them all too well.
She never had the strength and courage to relive the story using her own mouth. It would only open up wounds she had long wanted to forget.
So she could only imagine how much suffering the Frostfell’s ancestors must have endured until their cries formed a lake.
Meyara sat on the edge of the bridge with her feet dangling a few inches above the water. Never wanting to touch the surface of the lake, afraid of what might happen. Even though she knew, the lake was truly magical only for local residents. For her, this large puddle of water was nothing more than an ordinary rainwater reservoir.
The cold air forced her to hug her knees tightly, head resting on it. Somehow she was getting sleepy when she felt the bridge she was sitting on vibrating slightly.
“Stop zoning out, or those who have departed for eternity will come back and take over your body.” Adriel adapted a sentence he had read about the lake. "I know your amazing brain never rests, but I still have to warn you."
Meyara snorted. Not to Adriel but to herself.
Because why did she feel relieved to see Adriel come to accompany her? She might have spent more than an entire day with the young man, but should she feel so attached to him like this?
Before she had time to think about the matter any further, Adriel sat down right next to her. Radiating a feeling of warmth to the sides of their bodies that slightly brushed against each other.
“Mind telling me why you decided to help them? The Meyara I know isn't that nice," he said with a chuckle, hoping the girl would be annoyed with him.
But Meyara just shrugged and answered calmly. “It would be worth it. Eva promised me that she would try to see into my future. This is a win-win solution.”
“There's more to it than that,” he said accusingly, but his voice was still so soft, the wind would probably drown out his words if they weren't sitting close enough.
Meyara pretended to gasp and shifted her sitting position a little further. "You know me too well, this is starting to get creepy."
"You are not afraid of scary things."
"Yes, but I'm too afraid of people who worry about every little thing. They can be really troublesome, you know."
Adriel scoffed and Meyara voiced her protest too loudly, her voice could probably be heard from the most distant igloo. Laughter immediately filled the silence between them after several times the girl tried to push Adriel into the lake. The young man screamed like a woman whose miniskirt had just been blown by the wind, and Meyara wheezed from laughing too hard.
“You've got that nice muscular body for nothing,” she blurted out. Her laughter died down to a chuckle.
Adriel's eyes widened when he heard that, heart pounding fast in his chest. But before he could ask what the girl meant, Meyara's expression turned serious.
"I've decided, I will help them as hard as I can," she announced with full determination.
Adriel nodded his head, pushing away all the trivial things he initially wanted to talk about. “I won't hold you back anymore after what I heard from Eva earlier. It turns out that they really can't hurt themselves because their souls have been tied to each other since their partner almost died from the plague several years ago."
The young man's words surprised Meyara, but she didn't show it too much. “I knew something was up. So they share each other's lives, huh? If one party dies then the other party will also die.”
“That's why they can't take risks. The number of Frostfell residents is already too small, it is likely that they will become extinct in a short time. Moreover, the ability to see the future can only be done by them, this lake will no longer have any meaning if they—"
"I get it. You don't need to convince me anymore. I even made a magical pact with her, remember?” Meyara interrupted while showing the back of her right hand which looked brighter in the dark of the night. “After all, despite all those reasons, I also want to help them because of one other thing.”
"What is it?"
"Life has taken everything from me, at first I just wanted to get it all back," she answered firmly. “But now I realize that I cannot accept something so basic. What I had before is already mine. This journey is too difficult to gain so little profit. I won't be satisfied going home just to go back to the way things were.”
The girl stood straight, her feet too close to the edge of the bridge. One wrong step and she would fall into the cold lake.
“I will achieve more than I ever have from this journey.”
***