Anaya woke up, shivering in the cold that shouldn't have been there. The world wasn't in complete darkness anymore, the horizon outside the window to the East slightly lighter than the rest of the sky, but dawn was still some time away.
She closed her eyes again, tried to pull her blanket tighter around her, but it was no use. She sat up, the blanket wrapped around her. Tiu was looking at her from the next hammock over, though she could barely make out her features in the darkness. She raised her eyebrows at her, but Tiu shrugged and shook her head. Anaya threw her feet out of the hammock and looked at Tiu again, expectantly.
A cold night was a bad omen. Everyone knew that. It told of future misfortune, of disease or death or starving children. Any sensible person would stay put, buckle down with their too-thin blanket and only get up after the sun was safely back in the sky and the cold was just a bad memory. Bad things happened to those who went out into the cold. Not to mention there wasn't any point to getting up. What was she going to do?
Her feet touched the floor silently as she slipped out of her hammock, still huddling in her blanket. She kept looking at Tiu with a question in her eyes.
You're kidding me, Tiu's eyes answered, but Anaya wouldn't relent. Finally, after a long, silent battle of wills, Tiu rolled her eyes, shook her head and got up. Anaya grinned. They peeked out of the window first, but there was nothing to be seen. Just the quiet of the town before dawn, and the sounds of creatures in the twilight of the forest. The wind waved the curtain gently and made Anaya shiver again. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
They made their way down the stairs, stepping quietly, and continued into the town. The moon was full, hanging low above the mountains on the horizon, ready to set as the sun
came up. Together with the moon and the faint glow of the still-hidden sun
there was just enough light in the town to see by, even when most of the sky was covered with a low cloud. In the forest it would still be too dark to see, Anaya knew, the canopy blocking out too much of the sparse light. They walked with soft steps between the buildings, not sure what they were looking for. Even so, she felt better being up and moving than she would shivering in her hammock.
There was no one else about. Because no one else was as big a fool as the two of them. But the town wasn't asleep. Or at least it didn't feel asleep. It felt like it was awake, holding its breath, bracing for a disaster coming its way. Waiting for the moment it was safe to get up, start the day and not think about disasters.
They walked along, through the town with tightly closed eyes. They came to the very center of it, to where the enormous, ancient uroxoo tree watched over everything. It was the protector of the town. It not only provided shade during hot afternoons and shelter during the heavy rains, but also a connection to the spirits. Nothing had been built underneath it, leaving a huge clearing under its wide-spread branches. They stopped before they entered below the canopy and bowed.
Something soft and cold touched Anaya's cheek. She touched it in confusion, but there was nothing there. Then there was another. Tiu had her hand to her face as well, looking just as confused as Anaya.
Then they saw them, white dots around them in the air, gently floating down towards the ground. They both stared for a good moment. Anaya's mind was blank, stuck, grasping at explanations, but unable to find them.
"Snow," Tiu breathed, and that's when it snapped into place in Anaya's head as well. It made sense for a blink of an eye, until it didn't. It didn't snow here. Ever. She had never even seen snow. Not from close by anyway. Her grandmother had had a monocular when she was a child that let her see all the way to the mountains, where she could just make out the snow caps on them. But that was it. It didn't snow, not here, not in this altitude.
It was only wishful thinking.
"That's impossible," she whispered.
"Clearly it isn't," Tiu whispered back. Anaya wasn't sure if they were whispering because they didn't want to bother anyone in the houses around them, or because they didn't want anyone to know they were there, or because there simply wasn't more voice in them at that moment.
"It's not cold enough for snow," Anaya said, but she wasn't sure that was true. It was colder than it had ever been before, and she didn't know how cold exactly it would need to be for snow, but somehow this didn't feel cold enough. It didn't seem as cold as the stories about places that got snow made it sound like.
The snow was now sticking to the blanket wrapped around her, not melting instantly as it had when hitting her skin. And it was starting to cover the ground, too, with a faint layer of white on top of the brown. It was cold under her feet.
They stood still for just a moment, then continued their way through the town.
It was snowing.
It was impossible.
Impossible or not, it was snowing.
Or maybe she was still asleep? Maybe this was all a dream. She had dreamed of snow many times when she was a child, after hearing the stories from places far away with piles of it as high as houses. Yes, that was surely it. She was asleep, and warm and comfortable in her hammock, and this was a dream.
The sun was only barely behind the horizon now, the light of dawn not yet reaching them on the ground, but reflecting off the snow swirling through the air, making it glitter. Something else glittered in the sky as well, catching her attention. Something bigger.
She stopped, frozen in surprise and wonder. Tiu turned to look at her, then followed her gaze up to the heavens. She heard her gasp at the sight circling high above them, as the first rays of the sun reflected off of shiny, white scales.
An ice dragon.
_________________________________________
It begins again. Or whatever. A little different this year: I'm writing on odd days. On even days we have sometimes Pieta, sometimes a guest writer. There will be four or five people writing at least parts of this during December. Which means this is going to be a mess. Hope you get some amusement out of how big a pile of nonsense this will be.
The topic for tomorrow is Descent.
~matleena
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