Blue Ice

It’s snowing.

Holy Hell it’s snowing.

****************************************************************************

“But soft! What is this? My eyes must deceive me!”

Eira snorts, and tosses a bunch of the small yellow flowers lying on the ground at her. Yu makes no move to swat them away, too committed to her act, back arched and hands clutching her chest. They bounce off her left thigh.

She carries on.

“But alas, they do not. Oh say it is not so, that the madness has not come for thee, for my dearest friend.” She throws herself to her knees. “And yet, I see it has. Oh how I shall mourn. If there be a god above us, please, I beseech yo- Ow!”

She looks down at her side. Eira’s booted foot rests there, a silent threat. The next one will hurt more. Yu yields, hands held up in surrender.

Eira smirks. She reaches out her hand, and Yu takes it and lets herself be pulled to sit next to her on the tree stump.

“So. What’s with all the tree violence?” she asks once she’s settled, nodding at the shredded shrubbery littering the ground. They’re sat close - too close, really, for the summer heat - and Eira’s elbows keep knocking her ribs as she tears apart long green leaves.

“They’re being punished for their many crimes.” Now that Yu is closer, she can see leaf fragments slowly filling up their largest water pot. “That, or I wanted to try changing this hair again. You pick.”

She leans forward, examining the pot with new interest. “We’ve been here a few weeks, but I’m not sure I remember decorating your head with wet leaves being fashionable.”

Eira dumps a handful of foliage in her lap, an unspoken demand. “Ha, ha. Funny. Minty’d be proud.”

“You know she’ll kill you for calling her that.” She starts pulling leaves apart at the veins as well.

 “Who will?”

She snorts. “‘Minty’.”

“She can try.” Her hands keep moving, fingers furious. “Anyway, who’s gonna tell her? You?” she asks, turning to face her, eyebrow raised.

“I could.” She wouldn’t.

“You won’t.” She drops the last of her leaf into the pot; Yu looks down to find her own lap empty. Nothing but those yellow flowers left strewn across the ground. Eira picks up the stem of one and tucks it into the band holding Yu’s top knot. “Partners, remember? You’ve got my back.”

She smiles. “Yeah.” And then, when Eira turns slightly to stand up, she pounces and tackles her to the ground. Payback.

****************************************************************************

The sun isn’t quite up yet when Eira drags her out of bed, and Yu follows her out into the woods in a mild stupor. Later, once she’s had her holly tea, she might realise how dangerous it could be to just walk out of a home blindly, but for now she’s content to just keep stumbling over tree roots and her own feet in turn.

The rest of yesterday had been spent trying to turn Eira’s dead leaves into some sort of dye. That meant drowning them, then boiling out their living daylights and leaving the pot buried in the wood to cool. They’d tried fishing out the bigger pieces too, but gave up when a quarter hour of their combined efforts hadn’t yielded more than a few handfuls of mulch. Yu’s palms are still stained blue.

Unearthing their pot requires more coordination than Yu thinks herself currently capable of, but once Eira finally manages to dig it out, the two of them drag it back to the cabin with only minor spillage.

“Looks kinda thin, doesn’t it?”

Eira shrugs. Then, without warning, she plunges her left arm deep into the murky water. Yu notes that her palms aren’t still stained from yesterday, not without a hint of envy, but then it’s of no consequence because Eira’s pulling her hand out and, though most of her arm is just wet and covered with leaves, her fingers are dripping blue. 

“I think the colour’s all sunk to the bottom.”

“Guess we’ll need to strain it after all.”

She sighs. “I’ll find another pot.”

“I’ll grab some sheets.”

****************************************************************************

There’s a bird tapping at the window.

They try to ignore it. With varying degrees of success: Yu, making eye contact with the hawk through the glass, struggles far more than Eira, who may well see nothing, with her eyes and ears partially covered by the bed sheet wrapped tight around a head to try and keep the woad in her hair. Blue still seeps through the fabric, but Eira had vetoed her idea of wearing the pigment pot as a hat.

The bird pecks at the glass with the precision of a clock and she breaks within a minute. “Hey, Jax,” she says, soft, as she pushes the window open. He hops in and onto her forearm, which she’s hastily tried to pad with all the hanging fabric of her loose sleeves, and offers a note tightly rolled and clutched in one claw. A light gust of wind follows him in, and she can see Eira tense, shivering in a manner distinct from how someone would in the cold.

She unfurls the paper, scans the handful of words. They yield nothing surprising. She nods to herself, and walks over to Eira, pausing to deposit Jax on a shelf. After a moment’s hesitation, she tugs out the now wilting flowers she’d retwisted into her hair this morning and sets them in front of him. He immediately starts shredding the stem with his claws.

“Hey,” she says, nudging her elbow into her shoulder. Eira groans, but pulls the sheet up just enough to fully free her eyes and ears. 

“What.” It’s toneless. She’s seen the bird, she knows what Yu’s about to say.

She answers anyway. “A says she’s dropping by.”

Eira glares at her, but it’s weak. It’s no doubt just a trick of the light, but she looks a little too pale. The air feels colder, somehow. “Oh, she’s A now?”

“She has a spy now,” she says, gesturing with her head. Jax is still fixated on the flower - petals fly everywhere, and she looks back down at Eira to keep her from thinking about what a pain that’ll be to clean up. “As far as nicknames go, A sounds more dignified, right? Less objectionable.”

“Sure.”

“Cool.”

“Although, I’d argue that the very point of nicknames is that you don’t get to choose them. I mean, look at Jax. And honestly, the fact that you’re right about how annoyed she’d get at being called ‘Minty’ is all the more reason to use it. She is unbelievab-”

Jax screeches.

They stop.

Yu and Eira meet each other's eyes, nod, and move as one into the bedroom, locking the door behind them.

****************************************************************************

The cabin is a small, secluded thing. Two rooms, and a patch of dead earth outside for a fire pit, all surrounded by grassy woodland. There’s a stream running round the back, for all your freshwater needs, and a different stream running beneath the outhouse ten minutes away.

A metal tub holds the bathing water. They fill it every morning and let it warm in the sun, and make sure their drinking water comes from much further upstream.

Yu walks in from their bathing area now to the bedroom, ignoring Jax, who has apparently found some time to go hunting, as she does. 

“You know, it’s getting late. I’d hurry if you want to wash all that gunk out of your hair tonight. The water’s getting cold.” She leans against the wall, just inside.

“Eh, it’s fine. I can handle the cold. Jax still out there?”

“Yeah. I think he’s murdered a mouse, didn’t go close enough to check.”

“She say why she’s coming?”

“You know she didn’t.”

“Yeah.” 

Yu can see Eira drawing back into herself. She’s been tense all day, ever since Jax appeared, and Yu hates it.

She gives her a moment to collect herself, before she speaks. “Alright, take it out.”

“Huh?”

“The sheet.” She walks forward to tug at it. “You’ve had that stuff in all day, I wanna see.”

“Alright, chill. I’ll go wash it out.”

She pauses at the door, hesitant. Her hand rests on the doorknob, shivering with the slightest of trembles.

“Hey, wait up.” Yu catches her wrist as she comes to stand next to her. Eira slides her hand down to catch her fingers. She squeezes once, gentle, grateful pressure. “I wanna see this disaster as it unfolds.”

****************************************************************************

“So?”

She’d given up on the tub, choosing instead to plunge her head into the numbing stream.

“You look like a thistle,” she says, because she’s chronically incapable of just being nice, and because it’s true, and she can see a cluster of them growing by the bank a few meters away - the blue ones with the round flowers. “Looks good, though. And the colour’s staying”

“Nice!” 

Epics could be written about Eira’s struggles with her hair. Naturally somewhere between white and grey, it stood in short spikes all atop her head, and so far none of her efforts to change it had borne fruit. Yu has seen her try to flatten it with brushes and slick it back with oils, bathe it in all manner of fruit dyes to give it some colour - one one occasion she’d even tried fire. Nothing sticks. Colours leech out, damage repairs itself within hours and no matter how much she chops off, she always wakes to find it’s grown back to the same base length.

But here she stands, her hair in dusk blue peaks, glittering with the beads of water that cling to it, refusing to fall.

“Guess you just needed a stronger dye.”

“Guess so.” The tension she’s been holding in her shoulders has dissipated, she looks happy for the first time in hours, since Jax arrived at the window. “Wanna do yours next?”

She scoffs. Gestures at her jet black top knot.

Eira raises her hands in surrender.

“Ok, fine.” They wait, staring at each other. 

“Well, I’m gonna wash now, so unles-”

Yu kicks a twig at her. “I’m going, I’m going.”

She walks back into the cabin with Eira’s laughter chasing her, and the sun’s been out all day but it’s the first time she’s truly felt warm.

****************************************************************************

“Why woad?” 

It’s late, and Yu thinks she could fall into dream in seconds if not for the constant sounds Eira fidgeting in her bed. Her panic is palpable, and even her start at the question sounds delayed.

“Oh. I don’t know, it was in one of those books out front. ‘1001 Plants and their Uses’. Talked about woad dyes and I figured if people actually used it for, like, clothes, and stuff, then it was probably stronger than, carrot sticks or whatever else we’ve tried.”

“Hmm.”

“‘Sides,” - and she can hear the smile in her voice - “I needed something to keep me busy whilst you were dozing all day.”

“Hey!” 

They both laugh, and the far bedframe has stopped creaking from the ceaseless shuffling. Mission accomplished.

And Yu is eighty percent of the way to proving herself right about falling asleep at once when Eira speaks up again.

Her voice is soft, hesitant. “It’s. It’s, been good here, these last few weeks. Right?”

She sounds so unsure that Yu can’t help but worry. “Yeah, ‘course.”

“Good.”

She doesn’t know what to make of that, but Eira is quiet, and eventually Yu does drift off, though it takes longer than it should, and her dreams that night are strange and uneasy.

****************************************************************************

The sun is flooding the bedroom with bright light when she wakes, and yet Yu wakes up freezing.

She wakes and dresses quickly, puts up her hair, and walks into the front room to see Eira, face pale and blue hair fainter than it was yesterday, staring dead-eyed at Jax and the new arrival whose shoulder he sits on.

The woman turns at the sound of opening door, and smiles, lips thin, her lined cloak still swishing around even as she starts to speak. “Ah, good morning Yu. It’s wonderful to see you.”

Classic Aminta, she thinks. The sun is high in the sky - she knows it is likely almost noon. Disparaging with the very first sentence. Her cloak looks warm too, she notes, not without some jealousy. It looks comfortable, she thinks, even as she wonders why you would think to bring one at all, when visiting a southern forest in summer.

Out loud she only says “Morning,” and moves to stand behind Eira, an implicit show of support. She puts a hand on her cold shoulder, and likes to think that she feels her relax slightly, warm just a little bit.

But the atmosphere is still fraught with tension and bitten back words, and nothing improves as the day progresses. Aminta snaps, and Jax screeches, and Eira grows quieter and harder, all jagged edges as the blue in her hair slowly recedes to the tips, and all the while Yu swears she can feel the air growing colder, though the sun shines unimpeded and there is no wind to speak of.

As young as she’d been when she first met Eira - when neither were quite yet twelve - Eira and Aminta had known each other even longer, though neither were fond of sharing their history. All she knows is that the trust between them had been starting to show fracture lines sometime before she’d entered the picture, and had shattered entirely sometime afterwards, and neither had made any efforts to rebuild it. Eira pretends it was never there, and Aminta pretends it had never disappeared, and now they seem like a pair of fragments from the same rock - pieces that could once fit perfectly, but now only coexist in a state of attrition, each slowly trying to wear the other away.

All she knows is that the air is growing tenser and tenser, and colder and colder, and she’s shivering, and even Jax is curling into himself. But Aminta merely wraps her layers of cloaking around her tighter and Eira’s fingers are white and blue to match her hair but she looks otherwise unaffected, and everything’s tense and cold and Aminta says it’s about time Eira leaves the cabin and the temperature plummets so sharply that for a moment Yu thinks time itself must have frozen, not merely the world, and when she looks up...

****************************************************************************

It’s snowing.

Holy Hell it’s snowing.

****************************************************************************

She doesn’t think Eira notices, at first. The flakes drift down lightly, innocuous but for the fact that the midsummer days have not even been as cool as mild in all the time they’ve been here.

But something in Eira has clearly snapped at Aminta giving her yet another order, and as she takes a deep breath to presumably yell exactly that, the snowflakes gain speed, whirling together from every corner of the sky Yu can see, growing to a spiralling blizzard with Eira at the centre.

Eira starts, and looks at her, and through her white-spotted vision she can see her own emotions reflected on her face - fear and confusion and panic. And together they turn to look at Aminta.

Who is smiling, unconcerned, a steel glint in her eyes.

“What did you do?” Her voice is shaky, it cracks. The wind picks up, and Yu can hardly hear Eira’s words through her numb ears. The storm grows, wild and reckless, feeding off the dread and anger that must be warring inside Eira as she repeats the question. “What did you do?”

But Aminta only stands there, dressed in winter wear from head to toe, laughing.