❝ Anitchka, Anitchka, will you not invite me in? ❞
In which a girl is indebted to a wintry demon for saving her life, and the gold from her fingertips is a magic whose price she must repay tenfold. Unless she guesses his name first.
| loosely based...
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THE FIRST THING ANITCHKA notices after the coach crosses her hamlet is the stark difference in the houses lining the streets. They're as tall as the trees she remembers, and those are now as little as the houses before. It is all strange, with a slew of lights sparkling around her furiously. But what she revels in the most is the Count's eyes constantly searching her features.
She peeks past the window, curious and afraid. "Nothing looks the same anymore."
As they wind from the cluster of hamlets to wider paths, the Counts halts the coach. "Will you step outside for a moment, Anna?"
Anitchka nods, feet wary as she leaves the carriage. They're behind a building that seems to reach out to the skies, grey smoke billowing rapidly from its chimneys. She stares at it in disgust. "It's like poison to the air."
"It's a new world order," the Count sighs, frowning, "I despise it as much as you do." With a flick of his wrist, the coach vanishes, leaving a thin trail of obsidian wisps. In its place stands a gleaming . . . "they use cars now. I'm not sure why the Tsar insisted to travel in a coach the other evening."
She nears it, titling her head. "It's odd, but not bad."
The goblins don't look surprised, and she supposes that if they have lived through eras, changes are expected. Or perhaps the bone masks conceal their expressions quite well. The Count slips into the seat at the front, gesturing her to occupy the side next to him. She leans her head against the car's window, finding this similarity reassuring. In a way, its sleek surface resembles the coach's. When it stirs to life, lurching forward, she relaxes slightly. "This is nice."
"I don't like it one bit," Dmitri lets out a disgruntled noise.
Olga tuts, "When have you liked anything, fly?"
The Count glances behind briefly before swerving down the cobbled roads. "You got something to say to that, Dmitri?"
Anitchka finds herself laughing easily, and he casts a smile at her. "So, Anna, what is this grand plan of yours once we meet the Tsar?"
She recognises the path to the palace faintly from when she had travelled there in a distant memory. "I'm hoping to make a deal."
"I will not have you risking your life," he asserts, eyes on the street ahead. "Tell me about this deal."
Rubbing her arms consciously, she looks outside at the land of living as it breathes with the burden of a hundred and fifty years since she left. Thin cars, as the Count had called it, rush past them, and the streets are dotted with bright lighting. When she lived, winter had grasped them, unrelenting. Yet people seem to have built a home from the cold. "Can I ask you trust me on this?" Anitchka murmurs.
The car halts, screeching before the gold gates of the palace. "Call for me," he says finally, rolling down the windows when a guard knocks for the invite. "Any moment you feel that things might go wrong."
