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Will you stand with me forever? She wonders, in silence.
They walk through the snow together, hand in hand out of the simple necessity to be real as much as any romance. Their footsteps barely indent the soft white fluff, no marker of their existence left behind for any others to see. Not that it matters much in this blizzard anyway, each minute the torrent of snowflakes grows heavier and any footsteps she did manage to leave behind would have gotten swept away anyway.
She pulls her companion closer to her side, their shared heat a beacon in a landscape where nothing can be seen. Sleet sticks to her hair and eyelashes, the bright pink that she did not wear freely two days ago obscured just as if hidden underneath a hat.
It is so quiet.
Everything is hungry in the woods, these days. Her grandfather’s warnings about wolves remain, a terrifying loop of death and destruction in her head. Without her arrows, she knows that she is exposed. Wild boar or anything large enough and with sharp enough hooves could spell doom for her and her friend.
This was a death sentence. She knew it, the moment The Sheriff snapped her bow and tears ran down her face. Her team knew it, when she left them with a bag filled with now-eaten bread and jerky. Her grandfather knew it, when she hugged him tightly before armed guards threw them apart.
Why did you come with me? She wonders, as she and that trickster who could have slipped away into safety, hidden xemself in a warm attic, stumble and fall for the twelfth time that day.
They do not get up immediately. And she knows this is bad. She knows that it has been taking longer and longer for them to regain their footing, to keep walking, to try and find some kind of shelter. But she does not know these woods, knows that they are likely still within the twenty mile range of their exile. If they are found, they will be killed. If they do not stand up, try and find a cave or a particularly leafy evergreen, they will freeze.
The snow is beginning to feel warm. She can see all the way it is pixelated and filled with air, as if well-baked bread, soft and fluffy. Above her, the dripping, twisting, graceful dance of the snowflakes fills her view, her breath turning some of the ice nearest to her mouth into the smallest trickle of water.
By her side, her companion has closed xyr eyes, xyr breath slower and softer, peaceful and asleep. You have to stand up, she tells herself, as her bones seem tied to the ground with iron cuffs. Do you really want to die like this? Still, she does not move, her coat which seemed so warm and such a ward against the dangers of these woods is ripped, in places. She feels water press against her skin, taking longer and longer to melt each time.
What a disgrace she is. The chosen partner of Kirin, of determination, giving up when there was still hope?
Of course she will never see Kirin again, now. The spirit’s elegance, its connection to this world, snapped by The Sheriff with that unearthly bow, carved in the very image of the one-horned and scaled deer. She remembers how it screamed within her soul, as two men held her back with callous hands.
It had told her to keep going, with that last breath. What faith it had in her.
She laughs silently at the thought, giddy and all of the sudden very, very warm. When did that happen? She has lost track of the time. They must have been lying here far longer than the few minutes it feels like. She knows the warnings, learned them like all the children in snow-cursed Nottingham. She knows that warmth in a snow like this means her hours are very, very limited.
The storm has covered her almost completely.
And it is only then that the wind, by chance or by fate, blows a sturdy and well-curved stick by her hand. And it is so familiar, almost identical to the bow she saw break before her eyes, the partner she saw ripped away from her.
It does not have the carefully carved effigies of warriors and sacred flames. It does not have the thick string linen made to have her arrows fly true. But it is there, and it is so similar, and she knows she has to stand up.
She grips the branch with frigid fingers that do not wish to move and falls to her knees as she first tries to stand. She presses the stick that is so like everything she has lost and wishes she still had by her side and stands on half-frozen feet.
It is a hollow victory. She is still too warm, still on the brink of death. Each breath of ice-cold air stabs the inside of her chest. But a victory is a victory, and she will not end without one last try.
Perhaps there is a cave, maybe even another village, maybe a warm fire and those who will bring them back to safety and back to life, just over the next hill.
“Stand up,” She says to Merlin, knows that xe did not hear here, the wind and the storm whipping away what little voice she has left. But still, she sees that trickster, the one who stood by her and left everything behind, even the charmed necklace which held xyr own partner, open xyr eyes.
She pulls xem to xyr feet and they stand in the snow, leaning on each other with slumped posture and exhausted bones. “Scream,” she whispers into xyr ear with her arms around xyr chest and xyr arms around her chest. “Scream for someone, anyone, just so we can exist.”
And there is, truly, only one being either of them would think to call for. And their voices do not pierce through the silence and the wind and the ever-present storm, but Fafnir and Kirin must hear their call.
She feels them there, even if she cannot see them, even if they cannot quite be real right now.
Join me, Kirin whispers, a plea and a prayer, I cannot watch you fade away.
Thank you, she thinks, and lets go of herself and her human soul for something much more like melted stained glass, the image of something that is not quite one, not quite two, but determined to live for even just one more day.