Word Count: 2,216
Armin bit his lip nervously as he stood in front of the door that led to Annie's bedroom. He could feel the coldness lazily escaping the room and engulfing him, slowly invading the rest of the hallway, into the castle.
Bracing himself for the gust of freezing air sure to come, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It didn't move too far, and the door refused to budge.
Armin grit his teeth. It's locked. I should have known, he bitterly thought, then slammed his shoulder against the door, hoping that it was simply frozen shut. When it didn't move, he let out a sigh and slid down so that he sat on the floor.
He halfheartedly knocked on the door from there. "Annie?" he called, not expecting a reply, "Are you there, Annie? It's Armin."
He was met with, as he expected, with silence.
The blond boy sighed, then taking a few wires Hange had given him out of his pocket, and said, "I'm coming in, Annie."
Armin got up from his seat in front of the door and stuck a few lockpicking wires into the keyhole on the doorknob. Not too sure what else to do with them, he began to wriggle them around, this way and that, while attempting to turn it in the hope that he'd somehow opened it.
It took a lot of playing, but after a few minutes, Armin got the lock to turn and heard a soft click. "Bingo," he whispered as he withdrew his wires, then looked at them. He suddenly made a face and wondered aloud, "Why didn't I just ask Hange for the key?" He broke into laughter for a moment and pocketed the tools, opening the door to Annie's room.
He was greeted by a blast of cold air in the face, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand. Winter winds continued to blow around him, whipping his hair into his face and numbing his nose and cheeks, even after he closed the do, or behind him.
Annie herself was sitting near the window, staring out of it as the edges became covered in thick, thick frost.
"Annie?" Armin asked, a note of wonder clear in his voice when he saw her.
The girl slowly turned to face him, and a chill unrelated to the temperature ran down Armin's spine.
Her face was bloated, pale, and waxy, her hair lay dried, dead, and limp on her head, looking reminiscent of spiderwebs, her lips were an awful shade of purplish blue, and her eyes, swollen and dead, had webs of frost creeping onto them. Her cheeks were sunken and hollow, her fingers were turning blue, and Annie in her entirety simply reeked of frozen death.
"Armin," she said, very slowly and deliberately, her face slowly lighting up into a smile, revealing a blackening tongue and gums. She got up from her seat and began to approach him.
Armin felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but he allowed the girl to come near him.
"Armin," she practically sang, wrapping her frigid arms around his neck and gazing what her assumed to be fondly up at him.
"Y-yeah," Armin stammered, his teeth chattering and lips numb. He put his hands on Annie's shoulders and tried to gently push her away from him. "L-listen, An-n-n-nie," he began, but the girl simply closed her eyes, and pulling him down, crushed her lips against his.
Armin's eyes widened, his lips suddenly stinging with the cold, dry, pressure that came with Annie's kiss. It felt nothing like when he had kissed her when she was asleep; that had been shy and tender, soft even. This was far more harsh and cold, making his lips tingle and numb.
The kiss was over soon after it registered in his head, but the numbness in his lips didn't go away. In fact, it began to spread all throughout his body until he stopped shivering.
A kiss to stop the cold, he remembered, and his blood would have run cold if he were still capable. He noticed Annie leaning in for another kiss and his memory jolted again: and a second kiss to forget, the third kiss spelling death.
Armin jerked away. Annie stared at him, her expression half confused, half crestfallen.
Armin's thoughts were reeling, and his eyes flicked wildly around the room, trying to find something that might help him free Annie.
Everything in the room was completely covered in a thick layer of white frost, from the ceiling right down to the wooden floor. A few things in the room were completely unrecognizable because of it, but there was one thing that Armin saw that was still, strangely enough, completely intact: the fireplace.
Brushing a few frozen strands of hair out of his face, Armin slowly made his way to the hearth. His frozen hands fumbling, he grabbed a pack of matches off the top of the fireplace and clumsily took out a match.
Annie, who had been watching him curiously, visibly darkened when she saw what he was doing. Racing towards him as fast as her frostbitten legs would carry her (which wasn't very fast), she tried to pry the matchbox from his hands, but it was too late for her: Armin managed to strike a match.
He had been planning on restarting the fire in the hearth, despite the somewhat still damp logs, but the moment he saw the tiny flame of the match, he found himself captured in a dream.
His feet were bare and his clothes simple. The air smelled fresh and salty, and there was a cool breeze caressing his face. He felt something soft but simultaneously coarse between his toes, and the warm sunshine enveloping him.
A beautifully clear blue sky came into view above him and an equally blue expanse of ocean lay in front of him, the white foam misting just so that it barely hit his face. He heard the sharp cry of a gull above the dull crash and roar of the waves. Armin felt relaxed, at ease.
To his left, he saw Annie, looking perfectly healthy and happy and he was about to greet her when the sun was snuffed out and for a few seconds, he was engulfed by darkness and falling, falling, falling.
His eyes snapped open, and he found himself staring at a gently smoking match. Annie was next to him, looking as dead and frightening as ever.
Except for her eyes. Her eyes were no longer frosted and dead, instead they were sparked with a new life.
Armin thought of the brief vision he just (assumedly) shared with Annie. He'd never seen the ocean before, since his kingdom was landlocked, but he had read about it in books and had always longed to visit it. Armin was suddenly filled with an overwhelming longing to light another match, just to be able to see the ocean once more. He could feel Annie's icy fingers prying at his own in a feeble attempt to get the matchbox from him.
Gently, he pulled his hands away from hers and removed another match. It was a little easier this time than the last; he didn't feel quite as cold as he had, though considering the circumstances, that could be a good or bad thing.
He struck the match against the side of the box and Annie's room slowly faded, and the area around him became warmer and warmer, the air became dry and arid, and soon he found himself roasting in his own skin.
The ground beneath him was red, hard-packed dirt full of rocks and covered with small, half-wilted shrubbery. The sky above him was blue, far too blue to be considered normal in Armin's opinion.
He was sweating buckets already, despite only being in this new location for less than a minute. His clothes clung to him, his comparatively long blond hair was plastered to his forehead and neck, and it all made him smell atrocious.
A heated gust of wind blew dust into his face and eyes, causing him to tear up and sneeze repeatedly. Hacking and coughing, he turned away from the wind, and blinking and crying the dirt out of his eyes, found himself face-to-face with Annie again.
Her eyes were bright and alive, greedily drinking in their surroundings, but again, before he could say or do anything, the ground dropped from beneath them, and he fell into darkness. Falling, falling, falling…
Until he opened his eyes to yet another burnt-out matchstick.
The fragrant smell of wood smoke was lingering faintly in the room. Was it just him, or was the frost a little clearer?
Armin shook his head to clear his mind and looked at Annie. The color was returning to her cheeks, and while her skin still seemed waxy and fragile, it seemed her blood was beginning to circulate again.
Armin himself shivered; the bite the cold had returned to him, and for that he was glad. It was breaking what Annie had cast on him as well as her Curse.
He lit a third match. As he stared intently at the flame, the room and everything began to fade away once more.
He was in a forest, and it was night. Countless, innumerable silver stars filled the sky, which was a gorgeous mix of shades of dark blue, inky black, and deep purple. Poffs of dark grey-black clouds obstructed some of the sky, though there was a beautiful, pale, misty white streak that crossed the entire dome of the night.
Crickets chirped, the trees ached and groaned with the wind, and numerous small animals rustled in the underbrush. Leaves crackled beneath Armin's feet as they swirled around him on the breeze, getting trapped and crushed as he unwittingly walked on them.
Armin didn't notice. He was too focused on the setting. It all seemed so natural, clean, free of magic. The forest was perfect, a breath of fresh air compared to all the heaviness in the air he'd been feeling lately in the fairy realm.
"Annie," he found himself calling into the darkness, though he couldn't hear himself. "Aaanniiie! Are you here?"
He scanned his surroundings, but there wasn't a single sign of the small, blonde girl in sight. Armin bit his lip, slowly turning full circle.
A feeling of weightlessness began to form in his gut, and panicking, not wanting to leave this fantasy before tracking down Annie, pulled the matchbox out of his pocket and lit another match.
He began to run through the forest, unsure of his direction, but running nonetheless. It was difficult, since there was hardly any light, for the moon was not out.
"Annie!" he cried still unable to hear himself, shielding his lone lit match. He was stumbling through the dark, striking match after match that refused to even light his path.
"Annie!" he felt himself scream, time and time again, his throat becoming raw and voice growing hoarse.
"Annie," he croaked, his legs stumbling onwards through sheer willpower alone. His few remaining matches are burning dangerously low, and he has only two left unlit. Just before one sputters out, he lights a single fresh match.
Then, he hears it. The light, airy laughter of the sprites, their high-pitched, twittering voices talking above his head. Armin slows down.
They're all around him, the sprites. Little baby blue lantern lights floating in the sky, whizzing through the air: that was them, those were the sprites.
He feels a slight tug on his bangs, pulling him forward. He feels tiny hands on his back, pushing him forward, tiny hands tugging at his fingers, shirt, anything they could grasp, the sprites took hold of and guided him forward.
His match began to burn out, but a single, tiny, blue sprite blew at it and gave it life again. It giggled, then sped ahead.
Softly, gently, Armin was pulled through the forest. In the distance, he could hear the bubbling and running of a creek. The area in front of him was gradually becoming lighter and lighter.
Before he knew it, he had walked into a clearing near the edge of a cliff next to a waterfall. A girl with pale blonde hair in an elegant braid was facing away from him, her legs dangling off the edge. Sprites wove in and out of the forest, bringing colorful wildflowers and weaving them into the braid.
"Annie?" Armin hoarsely whispered, unable to believe his eyes. For the first time in what had felt like an eternity, he could hear his voice again.
The girl turned around, her eyes looking soft, gentle, and kind, not bored or baleful like he was used to, but despite the change in mood, it was clearly Annie.
Armin felt as though a weight had been lifted from his chest, and as Annie was picking herself up off the cliff, he tackled her in a hug, throwing them both off the edge as they began to fall, fall, fall.
Author's Note x. Every time I finish an Eremika chapter and have to switch to Aruani, I'm like aww man. Every time I finish an Aruani chapter and have to switch to Eremika, I'm like aww man. I was actually rather reluctant to describe Annie the way I did in the beginning of the chapter, to be honest, but an author's gotta do what an author's gotta do. I actually intended the Little Match Girl part to be for another character set, but it just happened so naturally like this that I was like, hey, why not. Anyway, if you liked the chapter, feel free to leave a follow or fave, they always make me so happy. Leave your thoughts in the reviews below, if that's what you're into, and as always, have a greaaat daaaay~~