After seeing Rozie to school, Yeva sat at her workbench, crying. She had caught sight of a blood stain she hadn't seen before.
The others had faded over time, after Yeva had scrubbed as much away as she could, but this one was a dark brown scar—evident of a cut one couldn't heal from, as though the shed itself had bled out.
Her tears blurred the tools and her own hands. Like the mark in the corner, they too were dark brown, the color of Yeva's gloves, the wood, and the table. Yet, Yeva kept sanding down the leg of a chair.
The wind picked up. Written in the thousands of flakes it held, it contained her name.
Yeva didn't answer but wiped her face. Her coarse winter gloves scratched, but that didn't stop her from rubbing their unkind prints over her cheeks.
The cool breeze called her again, the same temperature as the Snow Queen's breath.
"Why are you bothering to talk to me? Don't you usually write on the window?"
"I did write," it answered. "You wouldn't look."
Yeva choked around a jagged breath.
"I could see you trying to ignore your feelings, but you mustn't deny them, lest you turn into a Snow Queen too." A laugh played on the breeze that engulfed Yeva. It rotated around her, like the handle to a music box turning. "I would be curious what sort of Queen you would make," she said, "But believe me when I say this isn't the sort of existence anyone should aspire to. It's terribly lonely."
Held by the breeze, Yeva cried harder. "He always told me to be careful with the tools—and just because he was upset enough after Mom died, he came out here drunk and sliced his arm open—" Her expression changed, warped from soaking. "Rozie doesn't even remember him—not his stupid smiling face, or his light blonde beard. She'll never know what it's like to be scooped up by him—"
"But you can scoop her up," replied the wind.
"It's not the same," Yeva cried, "and I can't forgive him—"
A silence resided over the breeze, which seemed to grow arms and shoulders made to hold Yeva. It was cold, but calm, and held her in place.
"You don't have to forgive him, but you should acknowledge what's happened. To look inside your home, it's as if neither existed."
Yeva cried harder. The wind seemed to weep with her, blowing by at similar frequencies.
Storm clouds that had formed overhead seemed to lighten up when Yeva stopped.
"I try not to think of it, but when it comes back, it hits me so hard."
The Snow Queen said nothing, but had drawn several small hearts onto the shed window, leaving Yeva again with the sense that her chill had been seeped away on the wind. It left her like the flakes blowing by, and slowly, she went back to work.