She listens as he describes his newly-made home, waxing poetic on the trees. She herself has no real fondness for them – it makes the world feel more crowded, throwing odd shadows. And the explosion of leaves! She is so used to stark landscapes that the places here are overwhelming in their liveliness and fecundity. But she nods along, because the description pleases him, even if it would leave her uneasy.
(And likely, if she described her own home, he would be as uneasy as she.)
She almost laughs as the wing-created breeze rushes across her damp skin, sudden in lingering heat of the autumn. Ice crackles across her skin, taking advantage of the momentary breeze. She was almost always covered in ice, on the mountain, like a second skin. She’d liked the feeling – it had almost felt like armor, like she was a warrior – and she misses it, now.
She keeps trying to pull in the cold, to beckon winter to her, but it takes a focus she lacks, or her power is simply too weak. She gives up for a moment, focusing instead on his question, trying to form an answer that makes sense, but didn’t give away too much.
“I’m named for a mountain,” she says, “quite a dangerous one. Inhabitable, mostly. But beautiful.”
She hadn’t known exactly how beautiful until she’d looked back on her descent, at the starkness of the summit against the sky, blinding white and jagged. It had taken her breath away.
“Were you born here?” she asks, a change of subject, and the chill’s in the air again, though she barely feels it.
tell me that girl is not a song of burning