Author's Note: This was written in response to one of the challenges on the saiunchallenge livejournal community. It's . . . overly poetic, and more than a little strange. The answer to most of your questions is yes, I meant to do that. I included poetical references at the end because I'm a huge geek like that, but they're not at all essential to the story, merely things that were in my mind while writing, and which are thus connected to the text. Yes, I know that this is not a sestina. I'll explain the bizarre workings of my mind where this is concerned if asked, but do you really want to know?

The tower was, impossibly, white stone, without windows or doors. Its fancifully curled roof trees were the grey-white of the luminous moon, and the many phases spangled the back-arching rafters, intertwined with carved vines. The smooth sides were made smoother by a sheen of ice, one that radiated cold and never, ever melted.

He scaled it easily as a cloud passed over the moon. The penetrating freeze of the walls made his fingers ache, made his skin prickle and shudder, but it was nothing to the fire that laced through his blood from where it smoldered, like an ember-flower blooming within the prison of his ribs.

The room at the top was like a garden inside a trellis of white icicles; its priceless flower enthroned and chained at its heart. He knelt at her feet, and the silver chains melted away like snow from the spring sun, leaving him holding the treasure of a delicate ankle in the rough palm of his hand.

He looked up at her, not knowing as he did so that his eyes had changed from blood-red to fire. "Will you come away with me?"

The first time she had laughed at him, and called him a mad fool. This time she laughed at him, removed her foot from his possessive hands, and raised him up. "You're a mad fool," she told him, and allowed him with amused, queenly condescension to take her in his arms.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The buildings and walls that bounded the garden were earthly, dusty red. The fruit trees wore their bound straw coats with ponderous dignity, bedded down for the winter. There was no snow, but the waterfall among the rocks was a frozen floe, the pond a mirror edged in white gilt ferns. The brown and brittle stems and leaves were rimed with it, and even the gravel of the path was frosted silver in the moonlight.

He found her in a hidden bower, surrounded by twining vines. She never seemed to feel the cold, but he draped the extra robe he carried around her shoulders anyway, and his arms around that. Her hair against his cheek was cold and smooth.

"You should come inside," he said. "It's freezing."

"I wanted to listen to the flowers one last time," she said.

Tongues and feathers of ice adorned the curled brown leaves where they dangled, dry and empty of life. "They'll bloom again in the spring," he said, as if she needed the comfort of his words.

"They're not dead, silly. Look." She reached and broke off a silver-traced, desiccated stem, closed it in her fingers, and blew gently into the gap between her thumbs. When she opened her hands, petals bloomed like fire in the cage of her ivory fingers.

He breathed out, a momentary white cloud in the still air. "Beautiful."

She twined his fingers around the green stem of the rose, then turned in his arms and laid a hand on his chest. "For you," she said, easily drawing his face down to her. "Since this is the last time."

Her breath frosted his lips with warmth just before she kissed him, and his heart kindled in its cage underneath her hand.

References:

"What would I give" by Christine Rossetti

What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,
Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do;
Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.

What would I give for words, if only words would come;
But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb:
O, merry friends, go your way, I have never a word to say.

What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding tears,
To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,
To wash the stain ingrain and to make me clean again.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

From the "Song of Songs," 2:8-10.14, 16; 8:6-7

My beloved spake, and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of the singing of birds has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is hear in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Let me see you,
let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet,
and you are lovely.

Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.