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The sky was awash in a wintry haze the day she set out to meet her fate. A painter's brush swept fog across the horizon and hid the sun behind high, thin clouds still regaining their strength after the recent storm.
Her fingertips had gone numb hours ago. Her toes were soon to follow, even squeezed by two pairs of thick woolen socks and stuffed into her best boots. The scarf wrapped around her neck and ears did little to cut the chill. If she had not kept moving, the flash of freezing rain at the start of her trek would have had her boasting icicles from her nose and elbows.
None of it could be helped. Madama Khepri had given her the message a fortnight prior, with all the requisite foreboding and sly assurances. Rosa had already sold her soul. They could offer her more, but what more could they take? Very little could have kept her away.
Like a dog after a bone, her Sisters teased as Rosa set out in her wool and furs. Hungrier than a demon, and twice as pretty.
She did not begrudge them their playful mockery. Her appetite for power was voracious, and her skill with it had earned her respect and leeway that few other Umbra could boast of, save the Elder herself. Let them laugh. She planned to come out the other side with the world at her mercy. Perhaps, with enough groveling, she might be inclined to share with them a taste of her good fortune.
Fortune she was hard pressed to find in that bitter cold, tucking her mittened hands beneath her armpits and focusing on placing one foot in front of the other. A fresh coat of ice atop the snow made each footstep akin to a gunshot in the near silent forest. The brutish crunching under leather heel persisted no matter how delicately she placed her feet. Gnarled tree roots and half hidden fox dens resulted in choked shouts and aching ankles. Still, she went on.
Magic would have made the journey less treacherous, or at the very least more comfortable, but Khepri had advised her to conserve her magic. The Madama kept up a constant, incessant hum in the back of her mind, neither laughing at her predicament of sympathizing. Khepri was cruel and cold and hard to understand. But Rosa understood. Khepri showed herself in Inferno through a mirror after all, and Rosa had placed her hand on the glass, hand over claw.
The trees began to thin. In the distance, the sound of something like a quill against fresh parchment, but sharper. She picked up the pace, fighting through a thicket of mulberry bushes to emerge into a clearing.
Lined with snow dusted bushes and ancient oaks, there was something spurious to its construction, a picturesque scene taken from a storyteller's imagination. The center was consumed by a large pond, frozen over, and the far side boasted a large willow tree, branches drooping with the weight of icicles the size of her arms. Several similar clearings dotted the Umbran forests, spots of reprieve and mischief for witches young and old alike. Here, in no man's land, it was mostly unremarkable.
Save for the man ice skating across the pond.
He didn't notice her, too busy practicing what Rosa could only assume was his best impression of a newborn foal. His knees knocked together, toes pointed inward as he shakily attempted to cross the ice, arms pinwheeling every few moments to keep balance. An amusing image, coupled with his clear vanity — pin straight blonde hair nearly to his waist, and his white coat and gloves, trimmed with gold piping, clinging to him in a way that revealed the thinness of the fabric and the trim muscle of his chest. She could practically hear his teeth chattering from across the divide.
Even so, he slowly skated on, hugging the outer rim of the pond and doing his best to improve the self esteem of any nearby tortoises.
As Rosa watched, Khepri's incessant humming quieted, as if the Madama was joining her in spectating the clumsy fool. At the far end of the pond, what little luck he had ran out, and he fell with a resounding thump onto the ice. She beheld as he moved a hand to rub his arse, slipping and sliding in an earnest attempt to stand back up and try again.
She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled out of her throat, or the flinch of surprise when his head whipped toward her. At that distance, he should not have heard that.
"HELLO!" He hollered across the ice, curling his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound. Despite his slight frame, he had quite a loud voice. He waved with both arms, nearly falling again in the process.
Rosa waved back. It was hard to see his face from across the distance, but she was almost sure the man was smiling like a bloody idiot.
"ARE YOU LOST?" He called, right leg skewing out past his hip. He managed to regain his balance, but just barely.
"ARE YOU?" She responded, cold and tired and terribly amused.
"WHAT?"
"ARE YOU LOST, SIR?"
"NO, I AM — " He stopped, laughing. "I'LL COME TO YOU."
"GOOD LUCK!"
"THANK YOU!" He exclaimed with a bow that managed to be as ridiculous as it was charming. Rosa set forward, taking steps to approach the pond proper to meet this mystery skater, boots sunk deep into the snow. His journey was no faster; aiming straight across the pond to meet her, he wobbled more than he glided. He had the affect of a peacock about him now, though; he frequently looked up, as if gauging Rosa's opinion of his form, and was braver in the push of his feet.
Halfway across, the sound of cracking ice reached Rosa's ears before her eyes could catch up. One moment he was there. The next, swallowed up by fractured ice.
It was instinct that had her reaching for Khepri's impressive arm, intent on plucking him from the depths with her thick Infernal fingers. A stranger, perhaps, but not one who deserved to drown on her watch, especially after providing a rare spot of amusement during her overall miserable day.
But Khepri did not respond, only hummed louder in Rosa's mind, that same damned tune that called forth the vision that led her there in the first place.
Rosa cursed, shoving out of the snow bank and onto the ice, Odette's skates appearing on her feet with a snap of her fingers. That, at least, the demoness was still good for. Her form was clean, without any of the pretty posturing her Sisters favored or the ludicrous floundering of the man she was trying to save.
The dead ice was a shade darker where the hole that had taken him under. She could not see him beneath the water, nearly black without the sun overhead.
It was not thought or intent that led her to dive into the icy pool, the weight of her furs dragging her further into the sightless depths. Just reckless abandon, the same that led her to contracting the only demoness the Elder was wary of. The same that led her to this clearing in the first place.
The water was cold as a tomb — the kind of cold that seeps into the bone and makes a home there, that robs every hope of warmth and every memory of it, too. It was luck that she brushed past his sinking form on her own way down, skill that allowed her numb fingers to hook into collar of his robes, fate that Khepri finally responded, humming growing to an unbearable buzz in Rosa's head as she was launched from the water onto the frozen bank.
They rolled against each other, a mimicry of playful kittens juxtaposed against a cruel sky. Rosa sputtered, choking up water and bile, adrenaline and then chill keeping her shaking even as Khepri let her draw some warmth from distant eternal fires. With frantic hands she turned her companion over, his blue lips and still chest pulling a rare curse from her breast.
But before she could do anything, his skin blazed like the sun, burning her fingers and blinding her. She cursed again, scrambling away and blinking against the light.
Only then did she notice the Sundial at his waist. In her mind, trumpeters joined Khepri's maniacal song. Rosa scowled, disgusted as the man — the Sage — hacked until his lungs finally cleared of the dirty water.
When he finally stopped, breathing shallow and eyes wet with unshed tears, he had the audacity to smile at her.
"You saved me?" He crawled toward her, and she scooted back. Like children, they must have looked, playing a game in the snow. He stopped, brow furrowed, until he noticed her Watch.
"Oh! You're an Umbra Witch!"
"And you're a Lumen Sage."
His smile did not leave his face.
"Yes, and one who owes you a great debt. I had begun to hear the holy chorus… if not for you, I would be in Paradiso by now. Thank you, Sister."
"Rosa," she corrected sharply.
"Rosa," he repeated, wonder in his voice. "That's a beautiful name. Fitting for a woman as beautiful as you. Please, let me repay your kindness. Anything you name, within my power, is yours." He spoke fast, but not without confidence, his compliment as sincere as his offer.
Rosa did not know what to make of him.
She had met a handful of Sages over the years — brash, arrogant, demanding men, who were just as quick to condemn her Sisters as they were to attempt to use them, unsubtle leers quickly breaking down their holy facades.
There was an air of arrogance about this man as well — what could he possibly offer her of value? — but it was tempered by a spirit more genuine. If he was lying, she thought she would know. And his performance on the pond negated any illusions of him being a particularly talented actor.
"You know, it is customary to offer one's own name as well. Or do they not teach you Sages any manners?"
His cheeks, already ruddy from the cold, reddened further.
"My sincerest apologies. I am Brother Balder." There was real contrition in his tone, and the hand he held out was limp-wristed and unassuming. She hesitated, then took it in her own, squeezing a touch too hard for comfort. He did not react beyond a wince, and another smile.
"Now, I must insist," he said, giving her space, "on your repayment. It is bad luck to leave a good deed unreciprocated."
"You did that recently, I take it."
He stared at her, uncomprehending. She rolled her eyes and gestured to the lake and his soiled clothing. He stared longer, before lighting up.
"Oh! You're joking. Of course, of course. Ha, very funny!" He wagged his finger. and Rosa was unable to stop herself from picturing him as an old man, perpetually cheery. It wasn't a terrible image. She found herself smirking, at his response and her own.
"I require nothing, Sage — "
"I must insist — "
" — besides answers. Do you speak over your Brothers this way, or just the women who come to your rescue?"
Balder's mouth snapped closed with an audible click of his teeth. He waited silently for her to continue.
"You can start by explaining what you were doing out here."
He stared, waiting for permission. Like a dog. She sighed.
"Speak, Sage."
"Well, you see, I was practicing ice skating."
"Yes, I'd gathered that."
"One of the youths from the neighboring village, Marcel, wanted to learn. But when I offered to teach him, he informed me that using magic was 'cheating.' I couldn't stand to see the poor boy ostracized from his peers…but I have no experience with skating, as I am sure my performance made apparent."
"All this trouble for a child?" Rosa had never been particularly fond of the things.
"Every life is precious. From the bees who help the flowers grow, to the farmers who harvest the wheat. And children are our legacy and our future, after all. He may be a boy now, but one day he will be a man, and perhaps this lesson will be of some use. Or perhaps he will remember the small kindness I offered and choose to offer some of his own to another young one in need. Or even — "
Rosa cleared her throat. Balder tapped nervous fingers against the hollow of his throat, inclining his head in a further show of remorse.
"Apologies. I have a tendency to drone on, and I do truly want to answer your inquiry, and besides, you are quite intimidating if I may say so, Rosa, like the sharp thorns of your namesake, and so — "
"That was a terrible line. And one I've heard a thousand times."
His flirtation, coupled with his disquietude, struck an odd note with her. There was an earnestness to him that ought to have rung false, but she could not find a thread of prevarication in his words with which she could unravel him.
"My apologies — "
"I don't see the point in your flattery. I already fished you out of that duck pond."
"I am simply expressing my thoughts," Balder replied, a touch of haughtiness and offense entering his voice. "You are quite striking, with eyes like silver stars, and terribly intimidating. The other Witches I've met weren't half as interesting, and I am enjoying sitting with you, even if I am incapable of preventing myself from blundering about. You may not know me, Rosa, not yet, but please, do not question my sincerity. Anything but that."
Silence bloomed between them as Rosa waited for the Sage to once again back down and apologize.
He did not.
"…You are actually enjoying this?"
Balder shrugged, smiling once more. "The wet clothes and embarrassing rambling, no. Your company, most certainly. Most Umbra would have left me to drown, or saved me just to spit on my holy vestments."
"I am not like most Umbra."
"Nor am I like most Lumen, for I truly see what the clans do as a partnership. We ought to have more of this," he gestured between them, "and less of the petty land disputes and clashes over appropriate worship sites."
A novel idea. Rosa knew such sentiments were held among some of the more eccentric of her Sisters, but it was bewildering to hear it from a Sage's pink tinged lips, his blue-flecked eyes sparkling even without the light.
He's handsome, she admitted to herself. Almost pretty, in tears and suffering. And charming, and sincere, and, well, different — and Rosa, at the heart of her pursuit for knowledge and power, was simply bored, and looking for anything that could appease her restless heart.
"Try falling in a few more ponds, that ought to unite the clans. Surely they'll come together to prevent you from thrashing about in all their favorite swimming holes."
Balder laughed, surprisingly deep and hearty. Rosa grinned despite herself; Khepri's hum had finally gone silent. She felt, despite the wet clothes and disagreeable weather, quite content. Even if her vision from Khepri was little more than a practical joke.
She was certain the power of a fractured god was nowhere to be found in this forest. But perhaps her trek was not completely for naught.
Balder stood, brushing the snow from his ruined robes, and offered her a hand.
She took it, far more gently this time.
The clearing is largely unremarkable. Lined with browning bushes and ancient oaks, there is something spurious to its construction, like a withering scene taken from an old's crone diary. There are several similar places all throughout the Umbran forests, spots for bloody battle and desperate desire alike. No man's land, the autumn wind does little to disturb the weathered branches of the far off willow tree, or the black surface of the deep pond. Its water is cold as a tomb — the kind that seeps into the bone and makes a home there, the kind that robs every hope and memory, too.
Jeanne stands on the bank, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Waiting for it to match the one beneath the pond.