Sheeta has no love of winter.
It's the farmer in her, she thinks. Winter takes so much and gives so little and you can never get warm enough, even when you're swaddled in blankets and the wood stove burns close enough to touch. The cold has always gone straight to her bones and when it takes more than just crops from her - takes her father's laugh and her mother's smile - Sheeta thinks she will never be rid of it, that it's lodged in her chest like shrapnel. Frozen heart for a frozen girl, she remembers thinking, and it felt so morbidly appropriate at the time that a laugh splintered her throat, her first since she dug her parents' graves with her own hands.
She still thinks winter harsh and unforgiving but the months are easier to bear, now that she has Pazu. Sheeta knits and feels the memory of her mother's hands over hers even now, guiding the needles and making her stitches perfect. She likes seeing Pazu in the finished products: wool caps pulled tight over his ears, gloves encasing his fingers, sweaters that stretch over his chest and bunch around his shoulders (he's getting broader by the day, she can't keep up). Likes the idea of him carrying a piece of her everywhere he goes, of giving back some of the warmth he's brought into her life. A scarf takes shape in her lap and she winds it around his neck like a promise. He's thawed the winter in her heart, given her a place to call home and someone to call family. She never wants to see him cold.
They sleep in the same bed most of winter. It's innocent. The nights are less cold when they're sharing each other's warmth and for all that they were forced to grow up quicker than most they are still kids in so many ways. They're in no hurry to change that. His heartbeat becomes her favorite lullaby. Sheeta curls up against his back, arms wrapped around his waist, chin digging into his shoulder, and thinks, for all her spells, the real magic is how it never fails to lull her to sleep.
She grows accustomed to waking to Pazu's fingers, feather light against her cheek, and the look in his eyes when he murmurs good morning.
She brushes his hair out of his face, smiling at the way his eyes drift closed, and murmurs it back.
She learns there is softness in winter too.