When she is a child, she dreams of war, and the end of… the end of. There's night and snow and distant howls and cold, always cold, lacing her sleep with ice and working its way deep, deep into her bones. And when she wakes up, the night and the snow and the howls are gone, but the cold is there, bone-deep and dormant.
She can feel it there, waiting beneath her skin, but even as a child she knows better than to tempt fate and pull the cold out with words. The cold teaches her patience, teaches her solitude, and even as it freezes her it fills her with fire, because everyone knows that fire's the only way to stop ice.
The dreams don't stop, even as she grows older, and the ice settles deeper, and the fires blaze stronger, and she knows that all these things can't be for nothing.
And she waits.
Her coronation is held on a bright, gentle spring day. People say there's never been a more beautiful day, but of course that's only fitting for such a beautiful queen, isn't it? And of course the new queen's reign will be all peace and softness, because what else could it be with her such a sweet young thing?
But she knows- knows, like she knows the dreams that never stopped and the ice that's getting stronger and the fire that burns within her- that the beauty and the peace and the softness are just a front, because whatever power is in this world has not made her for such things.
She's a creature of ice and fire, of patience and stillness and solitude and strength. She has to be for something.
And she waits.
One night the dream changes. The night is still full of snow and wolves and howls, and the cold. The cold is stronger now, and it names itself. It is the dead silence on pitch-black nights and the unbidden flinch at the touch of an icy finger and the darkness behind the stars.
And there is also the voice, so full of sadness and eternity. It is coming, it says. I am sorry, my child.
And for the first time, she gives voice in her dream. For what else was I born?
At the sound of her voice the dream shatters and she wakes. The only thing she knows, in the single moment in which she hangs between this world and the dreaming, is that she is burning, burning deep in her bones and in her mind and in the very heart of her.
She doesn't know if she burns because of the fire, or the ice.
And her waiting is over.
News comes that day- the Tree is dead, blasted beyond recovery, and the Winter is coming, descending from the north with a vanguard of wolves. Her people are in disarray, her army uncertain.
But she rises, calm and in full possession of herself, for the wolves have howled in her dreams since her childhood and she knows what this Winter is. It is the silence, the flinch, the darkness.
But she is Swanwhite; she is the shout, the stillness, the flame.
And if she is to be consumed by this icy Winter and by a fire of her own making, well, for what else was she born?