Solar Song, Frozen Fate ✓ | lion girl, frenemies, frost curse

Chapter 17: What is Hidden

Rokki was right about the hole in the fence. It looked like someone tore a section out in fury with wires jutting out in awkward angles, rusted orange and brown where the white coating had come off.

"You really didn't make this?" Sovanna inspected the hole, noting she could fit her entire head in with space to spare. She was small, but when she looked over to Rokki, it was clear he could get in and out with ease, too. Although he would have to twist his body like the twisty vines crawling up and down every tree in the jungle. The frost fog hung limp above her head. She sniffed and it was that same fresh scent she caught on Taro when she first met him.

"It was like this. We found it. We even went out once, but afraid of frost fog, came back quick."

"Didn't catch iceblood?"

He shook his head. "But we didn't touch it."

Sovanna stretched her arm to paw at the air below the frost fog. Tendrils of white curled around in the air but didn't come any closer.

"We touched it a lot in there, but?" she wondered out loud.

But we seem fine?

Ogalutha, Trita, Meda, Oolid, and anyone she ever talked to all said the frost fog was what gave them iceblood. That it was coming into lower Kaunlutha and taking lives one by one. Kaunlutha would die in a couple days if they were in the frost fog for too long.

She pursed her lips. It wasn't right. She and Rokki were fine. In fact, he changed into his lion form. What kind of unhealthy, sick, diseased Kaunlutha could do that if their blood veins, where their magick was thought to travel through, froze up and stopped working?

The Guardians caused the frost fog to punish us for using Ater. She began to pace from Rokki to a tree, back to Rokki and then the tree again. We die from iceblood. Iceblood caused by frost fog? Frost fog didn't hurt us. Or didn't hurt us yet?

Something was bothering her, but she couldn't put her paw on it. With a growl, she went over the same thoughts again.

So where does iceblood come from if frost fog doesn't hurt us?

She turned toward the frost fog covering the jungle on the other side of the fence. She counted four trees ahead until she couldn't see any more beyond that.

And we keep coming back.

Bristya took them part way, but then they had to return to Rukkatukin. Why, she wondered, didn't her parents appear when she was still in Rukkatukin. It would have made more sense then, wouldn't it? Her mother said she begged Aurvandil to let her come and see Sovanna.

"Aurvandil," Sovanna whispered, pausing in her tracks.

"What's it?" Rokki said behind her. She lifted a paw to her lips to shush him.

"I'm trying to think. You don't think it's strange we keep coming back?"

Rokki shrugged. "Didn't we have to that first time?"

"It would've made sense to do all those things when we were there."

"Sure, but, maybe things don't happen that way?"

She scowled at him. Why didn't he think it was odd? If she had seen her parents before leaving, they would have been able to get to Drazlesk faster. They might even have been there by now. But they had to return, and then they had no choice but to go on from there because Vislo and Bristya were called.

Bristya, a Guardian, and then Oolid, a traitor.

Sovanna fell for a trap in the frost fog, but then there was Bristya taking her all the way back again. And now this time she and Rokki were without Taro having to go on into the frost fog from the beginning again.