Sunimur was never a cold person. She had grown up in a large port city down by the southern sea where there was never winter. When she was younger she would join her father in the docks as he moved merchandise to and fro from ships, watching all the happenings and being fascinated by everything.
If there was any place in the continent where you could find anything you wanted, it was this city. Whether it be cloth, food, animals, jewellery, or anything else. Even two Temples were built here, although she never had any interest in the acolytes that trained there, or the Saints of Fire and of Words. At most she would watch the Saint of Words practice her skill with the bow, but she completely ignored the Saint of Fire. That woman was confident, but did not like to be violent, and she used her powers to help others in their matters her own way.
It wasn't as if she disliked her, honestly she admired what she did, and thought the woman's ideas of a peaceful world amazing and longed for such things. Yet, she wanted to be like her mother.
Sunimur's mother was an elite guard of the city, and had once been the general of Piena's army. After fighting for over twenty years, from when she was thirteen, and having trained her entire life, she had come to settle down in the city of her ancestors. She had married a man seven years her junior after two years of courting him, and had Sunimur when she was nearing forty.
Still, even as she turned fifty on Sunimur's eleventh year, she trained her under the tall evergreens by their home in the art of the spear. Not the sword or the bow, though her mother made sure she was decent with them, but the spear because that was what felt best in her hands.
Despite how she was keen on practice and never missed a day, except for that time when she got the measles and was absolutely measlerable ("get it," she asks, grinning, "because i had measles" only Byrne laughs, stroking Zenobia's feathers as she coos sweetly in his lap, while the others stare at her with the drink in her hand and the pretty red cross in her black hair, seeming scared), she always had many friends. There were the twin sisters and their younger brother down by the slums, the blind tailor who seemed more a whimsical bard from story books with how he could play the harp and attracted animals when he did, a large lady with pretty clothes and who she only ever seemed to see on that one beach by the jewellery shop which had the best pearls in the city, many more, and Phulka.
Phulka was one of the acolytes in the Temple of Fire. Unlike Sunimur, she was shy, and unlike the Saint of Fire at that time, she loved to fight. It was when Phulka was caught up in one of her daily brawls that she first saw her. Sunimur wouldn't have cared much for it, not when she'd rather call the guards to stop it, but then she'd seen how the tiny girl with blood splattered on her white hair seemed to be the one who was winning.
Even though she was using only her fists, even though she was obviously an acolyte meant to serve a Spirit and therefore must strive to be holy, she was out in the streets fighting, and winning. She was out there enjoying herself, and with such fierce looks, Sunimur was entranced.
So she became friends with her. She talked to Phulka, who liked to fish and dip her feet in the water of the clear canals of the city. Played with her, board games were fun even though they were even in smarts and sometimes ended up in stagnant matches, or sparred to practice. Sunimur's father smiled whenever he saw the two resting in the shadows, and he'd murmur a question about whether they could make it rain. If he had time he would sit and talk to them.
Sunimur looked forward to Thursdays the most though; it was the day in which both her mother and father were free. She would regale them with a week's worth of stories, and she had quite a bit with how she ran around with the stranger people of the city who led her to the hidden parts of it.
As if in a circle meant for dark nights with campfires, her mother would respond by speaking of any interesting events that had happened. Her father had more humorous things to tell. Like how the neighbouring man had ended up getting a shipment of solely an year's needs of flour because the traders had misunderstood his wish for flowers, or of the cat that was mistaken for some exotic creature because of its long body and stubby ears.
Yes, Sunimur was a warm person who loved her family, loved her friends, and loved her city.
Loved the spiralling towers of stone and buildings, both tall and short, with time turning upon them. There were many with sundials, but just as much had clocks, and both were good enough for telling the time. It was, however, a good way of dating what era a structure was from, and often Phulka would point at the designs and speak while smiling slyly of how the style was from this or that period of time.
In the year she turned fifteen the Saint of Fire was murdered. It was a horrendous event. The entire city had weeped for the woman that had given it so much of herself, and when the culprit, a boy no older than twelve with a gentle smile, was asked why he had done such a thing, he answered, "I saw her body eaten on a red land where you couldn't tell that she was bleeding. Her screaming gave me nightmares every day so on forth, and I thought I would live that way for my whole life till it came to an end. Then mother came to me, and She can only be called a Lady of the Heavens for She is the one who let me see such a thing, and told me that it would come to be as long as that Saint of Fire lived. It is She who said it is better if she died. So I killed her. The next Saint of Fire will have bad straits too in that red land, but it won't be torturous. Now I'll die as well, but it's fine. Mother, though I suppose I should be more respectful, said She'll save me. I can't let that happen though. Murder of an innocent is a crime."
Then he had stabbed himself with his knife and died with a happy look on his face. Nobody had known what to do after that, and when his body had been left alone in the mortuary with only some guards outside, it had disappeared. There were pretty pink roses left there in his place, laid out in the shape of a cross, and the fearful smell of ashes.
Even so, a new Saint of Fire was needed, and the ceremony was held. Phulka, twelve at the time just as the boy had been, was chosen. Like a ghost or spirit of some sort, Sunimur had seen a scarred man with hair the red of blood laugh at everyone's shock, and the sound was stuck in the minds of all that had been there. Nobody would forget his voice, and she'd always know his face. Only Phulka herself wasn't affected, and beneath the worn white walls of the Temple of Fire, she had said to her in hushed whispers and a small smile that she found it comforting for she too had wanted to laugh at the still people. For she too didn't care about what they thought. She said that she would be a great Saint of Fire, and Sunimur smiled. I know you will, she thought.
Then, when she was eighteen, her mother was asked to investigate the murders that had been occurring around the wildlands in the west. The area was near the continent of the Kyoma, and most speculated that it was them who caused this trouble. Still, because the Saints of Ice and Swords and Blood couldn't find the culprits, even though the acolytes of their Temples were the victims, outside help had been asked for.
Sunimur went along with her mother, a spear on her back and a pack on her horse, her father sending them off with tense shoulders and a furrowed brow. Yet he hadn't said anything, opting to remain quiet other than telling them to stay safe.
His worries were substantiated, but Sunimur would be doing things like this her whole life. So he simply kept his silence after kissing her cheeks and hugging her.
At the western gates Phulka met them; she wasn't pretty even when she was fifteen, or ever in her life. Plain and like glass, only that bright white hair of hers, shorn short so she looked more a man than a woman if it wasn't for her chest, made her seem special against her dark skin. It also meant that the simple white clothes she always wore suited her. When they weren't stained with blood or dirt or other unsavoury substances, that is.
There she grinned at Sunimur, teeth sharper than any human's ought to be, and took off the red cross pinned to her hair. She leaned forward, breath too close and hands hooking the pin behind her right ear. Her fingers brushed against the tip of her ear, and Phulka's breath had hitched, but then she had pulled away, calling out goodbye before weaving among the crowds of the city and disappearing from sight.
The pin was cold, and heavy on her head, for it was made from some precious gem or another. Not rubies, she knew, despite the deep red colour, and a soft blush had climbed up her throat to her cheeks. As she turned and continued on her way, she had thought of Phulka and how her palms were soft compared to her calloused fingers, ignoring the amusement that lined the wrinkles on her mother's face.
When they had reached the wildlands they first visited the Temple of Blood. The Saint of Ice had passed away several days ago of old age, and the Saint of Swords had left her Temple once she had heard news of their coming. She was a wandering spirit, and walked every step of her journey, refusing horses or carts. Some wondered whether the proud grey steel that was the Temple of Swords suited her, but Sunimur assumed that even if she didn't, she must be to the liking of the Spirit of Swords. Why else would she be chosen for such a role otherwise?
So, because the Temple of Swords lacked it's Saint, and the Spirit of Ice had refused to choose another for the past few days, they could only go to the Temple of Blood.
They were greeted by a young woman dressed in blood-stained mourning clothes and extremely tired eyes when they rode up to the beautiful but worn torana of the hospital-like Temple. She hadn't been particularly welcoming, but she wasn't being rude or hostile, merely herself. It was expected. Every hour, every day, she would be faced with injuries and dying people, hurt animals and the corpses of those that couldn't be saved, and it wore her down.
The recent murders did nothing to help.
She had given them a room for them to stay in, but they only left their bags in there before starting the investigation. Already two months had passed, and it wouldn't be good to let more happen. Wouldn't be good if they let people die like ants being stepped on while they were investigating.
So they hadn't let that happen. In two weeks they wrapped the whole thing up. Three Kyoma, small and spreading death like diseases because they were the harbingers of that exact thing, were rounded up and killed, their cores burnt to ashes by Sunimur's mother. Two acolytes died within this time, an old women from the Temple of Swords of heart failure, and a messenger from the Saint of the Sun who had come to inform their host of an outbreak of a disease in the blood in the capital of the Nation of Yellow Fruits. Her horse had been frightened by one of the Kyoma, and she had been stampeded by it, bleeding to death.
So, before they had left, they decided to visit the other temples. It wouldn't be long and they had no intentions of staying for the celebratory feast that would be held on that night. The Temple of Swords had nothing to be done. Only a quick greeting was exchanged and they weren't in the grey and silver Temple with its extensive rock garden for long before they left for the Temple of Ice. Though, Sunimur had liked the temple with it's clashing weapons and loud voices.
She had liked it even more when the first thing she felt as she stepped onto the bare dirt grounds of the Temple of Ice a numbing in her entire body. Almost it had knocked her off of her horse, and when it wore off in the minutes afterward, she had raised her head to see the acolytes bowing to her, and her mother seeming even more confused than she herself was.
When she had realised she was the new Saint of Ice, her mother had left her in the Temple and left for home alone. It hadn't been bad. At best she was missing her father and the people of the city. At worst she touched the pin she wore and felt her fingers freeze solid.
The Temple itself was pretty, with its marble structures and grand design. It wasn't one of the Temples which were built to be humble, and that showed with the comfort she was given. Training like a maddened bull, she spent four years unmoving from the wildlands. When she wasn't training, she would handle the affairs of the Temple, her Temple, and of the people who depended on it, her people. For though it was strange, this was all hers now. At least, she had thought, that she could fight better than before, and she had a good opponent in the Saint of Swords.
The Saint of Swords with her bright red hair and warm eyes. How she was jovial despite her wandering nature that others thought would make her detached, and her name that had the prettiest meaning. She was attracted to Sunimur, and Sunimur too felt a burning fire that sparked brighter, higher, whenever she thought of her.
Never a moment went by in which she hadn't thought of her.
They ended up talking in the dark hours of the night whenever she came, for the days kept Sunimur busy, and the candles kept the rooms dimly lit. Sunimur knew how shadows worked because of that. Of how they'd leap with the flames, or learning of how they'd sleep on certain places, never to leave (like behind the ear or under her neck where she adored kissing her. she knew because when she talked her eyes had a darkness that would grow black and show itself. and when Sunimur made love to her she'd see every single inch of her body so of course she knew. she studied it, for her love was a religion and her lover her goddess. and though she is it's only believer, she keeps the altar burning brighter than that of the Temple of the Sun) even in the light of the day.
Some said that it wouldn't last, and when one day Sunimur watched her go into the marshes east of the wildlands, never to return for her death brought a new Saint of Swords with it, they said that they knew it would end this way. She only shook her head at that, amused, of course it would last. Just because her goddess had left didn't mean she would stop practicing her religion. It would be in her bones till she died, keeping them heated, and one day someone would dig her up and they would be frightened, for even then she would be burning with her love.
She cared for her Saint of Swords dearly. So dearly that when the next Saint of Swords came to be in the steel Temple, she left the wildlands with a hammer that didn't fit in her hands but that she knew belonged to a girl with hair like snow.
Yes, Sunimur adored her Temple, and yes, she adored her people, but she adored her dead lover more, so even though she still worked only for them, she went to her city. Her home.
Her heart longed both for her beloved, and her first love. You could never describe her as cold.
Already she was twenty-two, and when her father saw her for the first time since she had went to the wildlands, he cried. Her mother had been out when she came to the house, and her father had become a seamstress for his back had been ruined by his work at the docks. It wasn't something he had to do, for her mother had made enough to live off of for decades and until they died, but though he did all the housework, he liked to keep himself busy. He didn't ask for money, deigning to do it all for free.
As he added seams and ribbons and other pieces of cloth to the fabric in his hands, she had talked to him, and by the time her mother returned, it was deep into the night and still his fingers had not trembled. If only, she thought, it was the same for her when she held the hammer, though she supposed that it did not matter much for it was not hers to use.
The morning that followed she ate what her father had made, and left for the Temple of Fire.
Her heart calmed as she walked through the bustling streets of stone, and dirt in the alleyways. Though she hadn't been in the city for some while, her feet guided her between the building with their decorative wood doors and windows. She found herself realising that she had missed the beauty of the fluttering colours of cloth curtains and the air tinged with the salty sea.
White. That's the colour she'd describe this place as. Not a pure shade though. It would be painful to the eyes if so, and tiring. No, this white was dyed with all sorts of colours, some lighter, some darker, but all as enchantingly soft and mixed together in harmony. Truly it was a beautiful and splendid place to be raised in.
Sunimur certainly thought so.
Still, she had came to an abrupt stop at the entrance of the Temple of Fire. Leaning against one of the pillars of the pailou was that man. The one who had laughed for Phulka.
He smiled gently at her but all she felt was fear, there was something in him that was fierce and violent and all teeth that prevented her from falling for his tricks, yet she walked up to him. Walked up to him and talked with him of the Temple of Fire, of Phulka, of the world and the Saints and everything. Not of how he knew these though. Not of how he knew how Phulka grew up or of how he seemed to know of everything that went on in the world. Of how he was more aware of the Temples and the way they functioned than her.
She couldn't question him on it. Oh how she had wanted to. Wanted to ask him how he knew all that he did. How he could possibly be aware of news from regions far away that happened but a day previous. Why he spoke of Phulka as if she were his child because she knew she wasn't.
Phulka's mother and father were the bakers down by the bard's shop. Alive and well and happy.
A cute girl ran out from the Temple towards them soon enough, another women with short auburn hair running after her. It was wonderful, for she didn't want to talk to this strange man. It was wonderful, because this tall girl with the same wild hair as the man's, was made of something gentle and kind and soft smiles which exuded a warmth unlike his blistering heat. Wonderful, since the woman next to her was obviously her lover. They weren't acolytes of the Temple, and as Sunimur greeted them, learning the name Dala for the cute girl, she understood that it was because she didn't need a weak power like that which a Spirit would grant her.
Yes, Sunimur knew that two of these three strangers were Spirits, and she knew that the man was Phulka's patron.
She watched them walk off, the girl clutching the woman's arm, and looked up at the sky when they finally went out of sight. Then she turned and entered the Temple, she had never been one for contemplation.
Two years later she and her dearest Phulka (her colleague, her companion, her lover) travelled far from home for All Heavens Temple required every Saint for an official meeting of some sort. The Saint of Words went with them too, but she knew of the relationship between the two, and left them alone whenever they wished it.
It was sweet of her, and Phulka took great advantage of it, holding her hand and kissing her hard.
She didn't mind it either, because she knew they wouldn't be able to do the same once they were at the Temple, and that there was no guarantee they would be able to find themselves alone. Welcoming her lover's touches, she imagined a pretty room of marble with velvet dressings, hoping against all her heart's rationality that one day she would be able to embrace Phulka in her own Temple. It wasn't possible because Phulka was loyal to her Temple of Fire and would never leave it, but she wished it was.
The meeting itself hadn't been much, but afterward the head of the Saints had ushered the two into a room with some others. All of them people considered to be some of the world's most powerful, and whispered in hushed tones of how the Majin's revival was near, thirty years away at most, and only a few years off at the least.
It had been obvious what she was saying, and after they left, returning home, Sunimur buried herself in training. Phulka did as well, but she also dragged her out for outings and made sure she ate. With sharp grins and lewd words she would lead her to bed so she wouldn't train her age away.
It was good, and as the sky turned red in the morning of a wintery day in her thirtieth year, she felt a dread creeping up her back. Phulka just smiled and went to packing their bags when a glaring pink marred their skin, though only after tracing the petals decorating her left eyelid and brow, and showing off the one on her own ankle.
She had been proud of the mark that rested there, and the entire time they journeyed to the Balca Peninsula she would kiss Sunimur's eye, giggling and remarking that it's because she couldn't kiss her own. Even the other Braves had stared at her mark, and Byrne had smiled gently at Phulka before telling her, "You're lucky to have such a wonderful woman. She's quite a beauty too." Only Emin had reacted in shock at the time, a bright blush on her cheeks, and Phulka had teased her with Ange chuckling at the two.
Then they reached the Plain of Cropped Ears and everything went wrong. Went wrong because they didn't expect that there were Kyoma who didn't follow Zophrair's commands. Kyoma that ambushed them while Emin and Fulmer had been injured. Wild and suicidal, they had risked everything to defeat them for the Majin. So because Phulka too was wild, and because she understood the Kyoma in a way that the rest of them never could. In that she too was loyal to someone so deeply that she would do anything, even die, even kill herself, for them (for her). In that she knew no wrong that Sunimur could do, and thought her a goddess, a religion, the way that she had thought of the Saint of Swords a goddess, a religion.
So it was then that Phulka took everything from herself and pulled it out to have a fire that would burn for weeks, a fire that would burn so bright that they would see it, feel it, even as they left the Balca Peninsula. Ashes and bones and glass. That's all that was left in those plains at the end. Not a sign of the Kyoma who had attacked them, or of Zophrair's Kyoma who had come at his orders to the scorching place. Not a sign of Phulka, who burnt herself, not to help the Braves, not to defeat the Majin, or because she was proud of being one of the strongest, but because she was in love with Sunimur and fell so hard that she couldn't live in a world without her. Even she herself had not been in so deep with the Saint of Swords.
Yet, that didn't mean she hadn't loved Phulka. That didn't mean that when she had pushed them out, when she had driven them away from her blazing glory, that she hadn't protested. That her heart didn't break, didn't tear, didn't shatter into powder that could cut you into pieces when she was far away and realised that Phulka was never coming back. That she was never going to see her sharp smiles, her wide eyes filled with bloodlust and just plain lust, feel Phulka's tight, painful, grip on her hips or back or legs again. That she'd never smell that horrific smell of old blood or taste her mouth. That her beloved was dead.
The realisation tore something out of her. Tore the warmth that made her who she was at the time, took from her all she had been, and left her so very cold. Left her freezing because all she could do to fill up the gaping hole was throw herself into what a Saint of Ice should be.
It terrified the other Braves of what she had become. Not Byrne, for he was strange and cared little except to comfort her with a compliment to the pin that Phulka had given, but the rest feared the frigid woman she was now. They were used to heat, for up till this point she had always been a warm person, and they had grown familiar to having both the Saints of Fire and Sun. Emin alone could never fill the emptiness.
So they went on like this, but then she saw the way that Byrne would smile at Zophrair whenever he appeared was the same way she had with Phulka.
It was disgusting.
She'd live with it though. She didn't understand how or why the man could possibly fall in love with a Kyoma, much less one that had not even a speck of human resemblance, especially when Fulmer was vying for his hand as well, but she found herself supporting it. It wasn't only due to how Zophrair seemed to return his feelings and would go easy on the Braves (though she doubted anybody else noticed), but because she couldn't ignore how she had been told of how her Saint of Swords would never love her back. Of how she had been told that her Phulka was a monster and that she shouldn't accompany such a person even if she was a fellow Saint. She also couldn't stop herself for caring for the young man (barely in his twenties) and she supposed that it wasn't so bad to be friends with a man as strange as him.
So, since she wasn't a monster, her coldness didn't freeze others. She didn't thaw, but she still wouldn't hurt anyone for she had been a warm person.
The pain that had coursed through Byrne when Zophrair had died travelled through her too. It was a blinding pain, one that made her want to cry and scream like she was thirteen again and her cat had passed away. It made her wonder how Byrne could possibly stand it for he surely felt so much worse than she did. Then she saw his tears, she saw the way he cradled Zophrair's younger sister close, and she stopped Ange and Emin from killing the Kyoma. Stopped them and made sure they knew that what Byrne wanted, she would grant.
That's how the Braves return. Two members dead and with Byrne hugging little Zenobia close as she coos in his hold. It causes an outrage but she ignores it, and takes everyone to her home. There she introduces Ange to her mother, and to the blind tailor who he falls in love with and marries three years later. Emin and Byrne she then takes to her Temple for she has neglected it long enough, and tells them that if they ever need to, they can come to her for she will help them. Byrne decides to stay with her, for he has little else to do than write of the events that occurred, but Emin leaves for her own Temple. She too is a Saint. She too is busy.
Countless years later Sunimur looks out to the sun rising from her Temple. Even now in her seventies, as Zenobia (a transforming Kyoma) perches on her shoulder while Byrne makes breakfast for the acolytes, she is the Saint of Ice. Every day since she returned from the Balca Peninsula she has looked out like this. She's not sure quite why. Maybe she's waiting for Phulka to return to her, or because she still hurts from her time as a Brave in a way that time cannot help, but she's never missed a day.
Behind her the doors of her Temple opens and a woman's shoes click against the marble.
"Come inside love, winter is coming and even as the Saint of Ice the cold isn't good for you."
Sunimur turns and smiles gently at Emin. Her wife has lived here for over two decades, and hasn't been a Saint for much longer. Her hair began to turn silver twelve years ago from stress, and she went blind a decade before that from a grievous injury. Yet, of all those things, she's been her wife the longest.
"As you wish my love," she says, and takes Emin's hand before they walk back in to start the day with a joyous banter-filled meal.
Yes, Sunimur has always been a warm person. Everyone gets a little cold at times, but always, always, they will return to being warm. Even if they really don't.