Snow ✓

A Girl With a Name

Not a slave to time, the Burnt Forest stayed charred and unchanging while autumn spun colors and tore leaves from the deciduous trees, looking like malnourished skeletons next to their austere counterparts that stood as tall as titans.

The harvest was over. The gardens bare, and there was little to distract Gran from thoughts of the snowstorm the girl had rode in on playing house in her head. The old woman talked of double stocking the cellar, boarding up the windows, bartering for more furs, and even once wondered aloud whether having the snow witch in the house this time around would protect them from the like again. She cranked the heat, throwing log after log onto the fire to chase the cold to the corners of the cottage.

Mat and the girl regularly sought refuge in the bedroom, where it'd infuriate the Gran to know they kept the shutters open.

The girl sat on the floor, piecing together a wooden puzzle Mat had warned her doesn't have all its pieces, while he laid on her bed, fingers laced behind his head, listening to the quiet outside; the cold had hushed the world.

Already, he was beginning to feel stir crazy. His idle mind obsessed over those warm summer days that, looking back, felt damnably short.

He propped himself up on an elbow to monitor her progress. She tried to wedge in a piece that clearly did not belong, and for the first time in months, he asked her her name.

She glanced up at him through lidded lashes, then tossed the mismatched piece aside.

He sat up, pulling his loose wool sweater tighter. "It's been nearly an orbit! It feels ridiculous saying girl, and hey, you. Dogs get better treatment."

The girl turned over a new puzzle piece, fingering its edges.

"I think I'd like a new name."

His throat hitched. There was no way he'd heard her right. "A new name?"

She fit the piece into its respective niche.

He waited for the punchline.

She picked up another piece.

"You'd rather have a new name instead of telling me the one you already have?"

She ignored him, he supposed in affirmation.

He laughed dryly. "So it's that embarrassing, is it?" He nibbled his lip, mind racing. "Like Nymphadora, or Grengachu, or Dracumin—weeping willows, tell me it isn't Dracumin."

Her lips crinkled at the edges, and she shook her head. "But I kind of like Nymphadora."

He snorted. "I'm not calling you that. C'mon, tell me. I promise not to laugh. Cross my heart," he said, doing just that.

Her ghost of a smile wilted. "I'm not that person anymore."

A white spec floated lazily past his head and down into her peripheral.

"Snow," she said excitedly and leapt onto the bed beside him to lean out of the window.

His brow crinkled. "Like Snow White from the fairytale?"

Her breath escaped in white plumes out over the frostbitten yard. "No, the ice crystals."

Mat leaned on the windowsill beside her. The first snowflakes of the season drifted in through the window to alight on their skin, melting on his quicker than hers where their delicate designs almost inconspicuous.