3.
When Barthomeloi wakes up it is still dark but the night sky is clear of falling snow. Years of hunting human leeches made her more or less nocturnal. Members of the battalion even joke that they are eternally on night shifts but never in her presence of course. She shakes the sleep away from her eyes and pats down the hay she calls her pillow. It should be degrading for a queen to sleep in a stable, but Barthomeloi is a magus as well. She had made it so the bundles of hay on which she slept was as equally as comfortable as her bed back in London. Her only annoyance that night was the ridiculous man singing in the stable next to hers.
As if reindeer are better than people, truly.
After her conference with the now former queen of Arendelle, Barthomeloi extended her senses and found this incredibly shabby but still quaint little shack also known as Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna. It was disgusting. The store itself was all cramped and humid. Barthomeloi was relieved after learning there were actually two stables behind the trading post. One was visible but the other needed to be dug out.
Before she let out one final yawn, Barthomeloi checks her gown in case there is anything distasteful that needs to be magically swept off. Last night the owner, Oaken, had asked her if she needed warmer clothes. At first, Barthomeloi was not against such an idea until she saw the selection. One word, atrocious. There was even an outfit with a magenta hat and a royal blue skirt that belonged in the eighteen forties. As if genuine people still wore outfits like that. If others were worried about her outfit she can always just cast an illusion and with that in mind and the sun starting to peek across the mountain, Barthomeloi set off to secure a spiritual ground.
"At the beginning I was like 'Whaaaaaaa? Why is everything so small, did I become some kind of giant?' You know. Then everything started moving so I was like, 'no way, I must be flying!'"
Barthomeloi just nods, disinterested, but at the same time there are the beginnings of a frown eroding her stony face.
"But then I started falling so I tried to flap my wings, but then I realized…. I didn't have any wings! So then how was I flying? And then I noticed that I didn't have my body. And then I was like 'no way, you're flying and you don't have a body or a wings, you must be a bird head.'"
She is a hairs breadth, or rather a snowflake, away from telling him off, but a Barthomeloi must show restraint even in the most frustrating of situations especially when facing a talking snowman.
Making her way to the top of the mountain once more, as if racing the sun, Barthomeloi was almost at the peak when, "Hi, my name is Olaf and I like warm hugs."
Something as preposterous as that that stopped her in her tracks.
Of course, like any ordinary person, the first thing that Barthomeloi did was kick its head off. Just the fact she did should demonstrate how far Barthomeloi had degenerated.
"Hey, why is everything.. wow~... I can see everything from up-," as the head sailed down the mountain Barthomeloi could clearly hear this Olaf's voice and see the pathetic, bloated body running after it before tumbling and amassing into one giant snowball rolling down a mountain. Not even spending a moment to ponder, she ran after the body. The sun wasn't even up.
Barthomeloi didn't doubt that the snowman was some sort of familiar like her stag and leopard. She had seen this type of familiar, or rather puppet; there used to be a Director who used Ether Clumps as Slimes but that wasn't the point. In many Northern countries like this where the days were short and the land was white, many magi preferred to create familiars who could handle the conditions. Eventually, after creating cumbersome chimera and freaks of nature, many turned the environment itself into a being, creating snow puppets and ice golems. However those were merely puppets, more like automatons, forcing what should not be able to move to move with magical energy. However, the main differences in this snowman was that he did not leak magical energy. He did not have a magic circuit implanted into him nor was there a spirit used in the process as far as Barthomeloi could tell. Yet here he was, 'alive.' Barthomeloi didn't even need to light a fire in her Mystic Eyes to see that and therefore could only define him as a type of Phantasmal Species. If that was truly the case what magical theory could even begin to explain how this Olaf was put together? Was there even a magus alive who could create a Phantasmal Species that wasn't just a chimera?
So she followed his body down the mountain and found the head perched in the fork of some branches and watched the body eagerly trying to scramble up the tree in an attempt to retrieve one of the thirds which made it up. The body tried to clamber up, reaching a quarter of the way by smacking its snow against the trunk until it ran out of strength, falling back down only to try again. Something like a dog trying to pursue a cat stuck in a tree. To Barthomeloi it seemed like he should have stopped after the first time. After waiting four or five cycles of this, Barthomeloi sent a gust of wind, blowing the head out of the tree.
Landing at the base of the tree, the head rolled a few meters as the chubby white body hurried, trying to reach its complement. It took long enough that Barthomeloi started rolling her eyes and needlessly inspected a frozen waterfall that she guessed would start glittering in about twenty minutes or so. Not solely because the sculpture-esque way the waterfall had frozen, but also because the jewel-like fish that had just started to scuttle about underneath the ice.
When it finally reached the head, the body promptly took it with its stick arms and ploinked it right onto the cavity, and then after clearing its imaginary throat turned to her and said, "Seems we got off to the wrong foot so how about one more time? Hi, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs," as if it expected her to say something in the instant between his switching of topics to his description of "what it felt like being a flying head."
Barthomeloi kept her silence and decided to go with it, that is the silence as well as the snowman. She did not know what to say. After all, small talk was not part of her education and even if it seemed like this snowman was made up of more small talk than snow Barthomeloi hadn't even introduced herself after all.
"...Why is it so white?" Until he asks something as ridiculous as that.
"Because it's winter." Barthomeloi says feeling like a father trying to answer why the sky is blue. That is, immediately regretting even saying a word.
"What's winter?"
Once bitten twice shy. Something not limited to human leeches.
"What's winter?"
There is no way Barthomeloi is going to answer that question now, she is going to look forward and wait for this ridiculous snowman who calls himself Olaf to change the subject.
"Ohhhhh, winteeeer~ Whaaat art thooou?" Until he starts singing.
"It's a season," comes a displeased reply. Just like a father to whom the novelty of answering his child's question has lost its charm, because he knew,
"What's a season?"
His answer will just lead to more questions.
Nevertheless a parent is a parent and even if Barthomeloi is in no way a parent and even detests that thought at this point, because of her pride or so she leads herself to believe, she feels obliged to answer.
"The year is split into four seasons, summer, autumn, winter, spring," it feels like talking to the child that Bathomeloi wishes she will never have. "Each one lasts for three months," and then she pauses, "You know what a year and a month are right?"
Olaf quickly nods his head twice, "Pshaw, that's obvious, everyone knows what they are, why?"
Barthomeloi just gives up then and there. She can stand idiotic humans because there are billions of them; however, as a magus, she can not stand an idiotic Phantasmal Species. It is probably a failed product.
"Anyway, if it's so white because it's winter, I wonder what it's like during all the other seasons? I bet one of them is yellow, and the other is chartreuse, and... and... there has to be a rainbow one."
So it knows what chartreuse is but not a season?
"Autumn is primarily red; spring, green, and summer is hot."
Olaf bursts out laughing, slapping his protruding belly. "Oh you're funny, hot isn't a colour!"
"No," Barthomeloi keeps her face as much as a line as possible, as a slow grinding sound makes its rounds once more, "It's not."
And then all of a sudden the grating, incessant laughter ceases as if he looks at some sort of monster behind Barthomeloi.
"What?" she asks.
"What's hot?"
"Hot is what happens when it's summer," replies Barthomeloi trying to keep the level of her frustration as cryptic as possible. Maybe if she stupidly argues around in a circle the snowman will understand that it is futile to continue prodding her like this.
"I see, makes sense," the snowman murmurs to himself as he starts to pat Barthomeloi's waist. Because of the shimmering fabric, it feels like someone dragging a rake across her skin, but a Barthomeloi doesn't cringe. Something like this doesn't affect Barthomeloi because this the first time that someone has done something like this to her. In fact, it is so sudden that she momentarily let her shields drop. "So when it's summer it is hot and when it's hot it is summer. I guess that's the only way to tell if it's summer then," he finishes, clapping his hands together in delight.
"No..." even Barthomeloi is surprised her voice piques up. "Well, you see all this snow here now, in summer it's not there. Instead, everyone goes to find a different kind of snow, called sand."
"Ohh, sand, it sounds positively, absolutely..." he tries to twitch his non-existent nose in thought, "like snow! I bet it falls out of the sky and I absolutely bet it's black, after all it's like the opposite of snow right?"
During the snowman's exclamation Barthomeloi closes her eyelids. She knows the answer, of course, but it wasn't out of experience. No, The Queen, Barthomeloi, has never been to a place with sand before. The scope of Barthomeloi's life betrays her.
"No, it's already on the ground," opening her eyes again only a wry voice is left, "many people go and tan in places with a lot of sand and even if it can be black sometimes, it's usually yellow."
"So then summer is yellow? Hey, hey, hey. What's up with that? Wasn't summer hot, not yellow?"
"Summer's a variety of colours. It's not as simple as you think. You see this gloom in the sky? Well in summer its blue with just tuffs of whiteness that you spot from underneath that tree you visit every day after your lessons, and here," she points to a patch of white, "It's a deep, prickly green that curls around your toes as you walk through it, like a carpet, but just one that no one complains about." Uncharacteristically Barthomeloi allows herself to be swept into a full reverie. "And then you hear the bees and run away but never get that far because the dandelion seeds just trail behind you as if showing the bees the very path that you ran." She speaks of a naive time, one a lifetime away from the human leeches she now enjoys hunting. When did that happen? For the first time in forever she asks herself what changed that to this and more importantly was this always that?
Olaf just keeps nodding at what comes out of Barthomeloi's mind and more importantly her mouth, and when she draws for breath...
"Summer sounds positively gleeful, ahhhh, how I wish it was summer already. But winter… winter… Snow here, snow there, ice here, ice here, white, white, white everywhere, there's not much to make a snowman happy."
Barthomeloi snorts, "You say that."
"I really don't see what so great about..."
Barthomeloi cuts him off with the beginning of an incantation that at first rustles before sweeping through the clearing they eventually arrived at.
"Wow~. How is it so pretty now? How did you do that?! You gotta tell me how you did that." Both sticks hands are on the snow he calls his cheeks.
Barthomeloi drops her clasped hands and examines her handiwork. The spindly trees that created the barrier known as the clearing now gleam, as if winking, at the sun still trudging its way across the sky. Even if it seems a contradiction ice crystallizes into drops that hang from limpid clotheslines of frost linking tree to tree as if ornaments heralding that jolly old-timer, Christmas, himself. Only rather than a single tree the entire clearing has frozen over, yet it was not the season's prisoner. Instead it relished in winter so that the morning, twists, sings, and even dances to a song of ice and forest.
"Secret," she leaves him with that.
Olaf sits himself down and crosses his arms dumbfounded. "Well, we've talked a lot about what happens in summer haven't we? Enough that I absolutely bet you I could sing a song about it."
Barthomeloi nods. It's something she'd rather forget.
"But then what happens to solid water like me in summer?"
What a self-centered question but something like that is to be expected, no?
"It melts." A short, sharp answer that has to be expected as well.
"Is melting a good thing?"
Absentmindedly, Barthomeloi looks at the sun before nodding to herself as she moves away from the clearing. This snowman, no matter what he is, doesn't know what he is so then she has to meet the one who created him. Barthomeloi has a good idea who that is at least.
"Is melting is a bad thing?"
"Neither." Perhaps she says it a little too quickly. Making up for that Barthomeloi's brow crinkles for a while before, "Some things are worth melting for." Even if her distaste is visible, she will admit that much.
The snowman's eyes bulge for a moment. "Things... things... So then people as well?"
Finally, flippantly, "Yeah, sure, I guess there are some people out there worth melting for."