The meadow is not necessarily quiet, but it is familiar, and in this it offers its own kind of peace.

She has never much cared for winter, but there was something to be said of the serenity that snow always brought. As if the entire world had dropped down to a whisper, every sound hushed, every voice a murmur. It almost made up for the way the cold tried to seep into her bones, her breath curling like smoke with every exhale, but from beneath the snow-laden boughs of the trees she cannot help but to smile at the sight of the flakes drifting from the sky. Tilting her head up she watches them and the dizzying way that they seem to simply appear from the clouds of gray above, and for a moment she almost forgets why she had come seeking solitude to begin with.

The darkness in her chest lays dormant, placated by its most recent display of power (she tries to forget the way she had forced emotions directly into Ashhal’s heart—something she would have never done of her own accord, no matter how close he could come to driving her to madness), but the magic does not.

It feels like a current running in her veins, a river that has no end, and she wonders if she will ever not be painfully conscious of its presence.

Perhaps it is searching for a way out, for a way back to who it had truly belonged to, because it certainly could not be her.

Despite the quiet of the snow, she still hears him approaching—the hushed footsteps, the steadiness of his breathing. She turns her head, and she is met with golden eyes and a haunted face, and though he is entirely a stranger she cannot ignore the way that she is instantly drawn to him, as if the threads of their lives have intersected in some way.

It causes her to stare for perhaps a moment too long, fixed in her gaze as she observes him with those unnervingly dark eyes, trying to search out why he feels like someone she should know.

It is then that she notices that he is terribly thin, with skin pulled taut over a skeletal frame, and the winter cold nearly passing through him, and her wretched heart twinges.

“Hello,” is all she says at first, her voice soft, as if speaking too loudly might cause him to disappear into dust. She steps closer to him, the stardust of her wings trailing against the sparkling snow, her aura a warmer glow than usual against the bright white of the winter glare. He almost looked like one of the souls she had seen Atrox summon, only he is clearly alive. “I can help you, if you’re willing to let me,” she continues, the worry evident now in her nearly black eyes, illuminated beneath the amber glow of her halo. Before he can answer, though, she summons a golden light, encircling it around the two of them like a veil—warm like the summer sun, shielding him from the bitter cold.