Summer follows him, and repels her.
She has never liked summer, has always found it hard to breathe in the humidity. She couldn’t sleep in it, either, even if she built up snowbanks around herself – they always melted too quickly, leaving her soaked in tepid water, breathing in that stupid, thick air.
She is made for snowstorms, and mountains, and for most of her life that was all she knew – a woman left at the pinnacle of some jagged peak, unaware of how inhospitable the conditions really were, for she was bred and built for such things.
She was not bred and built for summer, and even autumn has its difficult moments.
(Still, she prefers autumn to spring. Autumn is a harbinger of the colder months, a promise that she can finally breathe.)
She should not approach him. He is the anthesis of what she is – even in color, he is dark and rich red, and she is white and ice blue. She can sense storms about him, the heavy inhale of a thunderstorm in the wings, and yet she is compelled.
She walks to him and snow follows her, a trail that melts soon enough (though not so quickly as it had in the peak of summer). She pauses a healthy distance from him and watches, for a moment – she’s waiting, too.
“Hello,” she says, voice cautious. Ice melts and refreezes against her skin.
“What are you doing?” she asks, even though she should leave, because he is likely dangerous to her. But she lived years on a mountaintop, and knows both too much and too little of danger, so instead she stays, curious.
I can’t cut any language open wide enough to give you this story
@drakon i couldn't resist sorry