"Stop talking half a minute," he says, "and listen."
She does so, not out of any sense of obligatory compliance but because she is out of breath. The air, sucking sharp into her throat and coming out in cloud-shadows against the white brilliance of the ground, is insufficient for both speech and walking, when walking takes so much effort.
So she falls silent, scowling a little at him, but he only smiles, amused, and whispers again, "Listen."
She listens, into a stillness, a velvet breathlessness. As far as sight, the world sleeps under a diamond-flecked shroud. The trees stand silent around them, branches jutting out in bare and brittle grey bones with the sky pouring blue into the shivering cracks between.
"Oh," she breathes, a sigh frosting into her hair. Before her eyes, an airy filigree of ice floats over a low-hanging twig. Higher up, every gnarled wooden finger is strung with crystal beads, each shattering the sunlight into sparks.
A tinkle of faery chimes breaks the silence as another tree, somewhere, shakes off its jewelry. Below them, a cloud of snow, blown from a branch by an errant breeze, drifts like a wraith through the dark firs.
"Oh," she says again, past the lump in her throat.
"If you cry," he warns, "the tears'll freeze on your face."
"I'm not crying," she protests, but she is.
He looks away politely, having learned this much, at least, and says, after a moment, "Why did you make such a fuss about coming out?"
"I've always hated it," she sniffs, swiping at her eyes with the back of a rough woolen mitten. "When everything is freezing and damp, with never enough blankets or stockings or firewood." She sweeps her arm across the expanse of silent, winter-wrapped trees, the smooth flow of dimpled cream beneath. "I've never seen anything like this."
"Not in Spiral Castle, I reckon," he acknowledges. "But didn't you ever go out?"
"Only when Achren made me go into the courtyard with no cloak and stay there until I was shivering and almost blue," she answers, failing to swallow the bitterness in her voice. "She used to punish me that way."
He stares. She pretends not to see the smoldering anger behind his eyes, casting her own down. The white powder underfoot glitters with shards of rainbow fire.
"Then...then you've never actually...you've never just played in it?" His voice is incredulous. She turns to look at him; his nose is a red strawberry over a woolen scarf. His eyelashes, under his fur-lined hood, are frosted white and she wants to laugh but the question makes her too sad.
"I never played anywhere."
He stares again, so long that she's embarrassed. She marches away from him, boots crunching knee-deep through the feathery, blue-shadowed brightness.
She's arrested by the cushioned blow of something thumping between her shoulder blades, something that feels firm but crumbles instantly with a puff and hiss. Startled, indignant, she turns. "Did you just-"
But then her face is slapped full of burning cold softness that turns instantly to wet, freezing froth in her mouth, and she gasps at the shock of it as he brings both mittens to his cheeks in mock remorse. "Oh dear, I didn't think you'd turn around!"
She shrieks and dives, hooking into the snow with both hands, flinging it wildly at him in great fistfuls, missiles too impulsive for accuracy. He dodges them with a whoop, turning to stumble back along the trail they've broken, down the hill toward the cottage, pausing just long enough to pelt her again. It's a mistake; before he can turn back she's plowed into him like a blizzard, sprawling him into a deep bank. He flounders there, bundled-up and clumsy, yelping when she scoops an armful of snow over his face. He roars, scrambling up, shedding white clumps like a bear prematurely awakened from its den. Their laughter curls, dragons' breath, on the icy air.
"I'm hot," she gasps presently, in astonishment.
He chuckles. "Because you're dressed properly. And you're moving. I told you."
She looks down at her layers of wool and grins, throwing back her hood.
"You've got snow in your hair," he observes, with what sounds like admiration, and she feels her cheeks tingle.
"That's your fault."
"I'll teach you to sled next."
She lies back into the drift, staring up, through the white-web embroidery, into the blue. There's a memory, hazy and half-formed; she follows a tall, dark shape and merry laugh; stepping high into deep footprints cut through the cold banks and giggling when strong arms swing her out over the sparkling air. She shuts her eyes, grasping, but it's gone, just like the tiny crystal stars on her sleeve that dissolve into nothing when she looks too close.
"Sometimes," she whispers, "I think I've lived here before."
From the corner of her eye she sees the quizzical angle of his head. "Not here, exactly," she explains, "I...I don't know what I mean. There's something...it's like trying to catch the wind."
"I think I know," he says, after a brief silence. "It's being happy. Being home."
She looks at him then, at that crooked smile and strawberry nose, and then away, because it's too much, still, this happiness; it's a trembling, wavering thing, a candle flame afraid of being blown out before it can grow.
He clears his throat self-consciously at her silence. "I mean...that's how it seems to me. I'm sure it would take longer for you to feel...I mean, I know it's not quite home for you, but I hope it's...that you're..."
She tosses a fistful of snow at him, the flame inside her burning warm. "Stop talking," she whispers, with a grin, "and listen."
A/N: Inspired by this year's Christmas vacation in Vermont, where we have been enjoying -20 degree weather, snow unlike anything I've ever seen, and the delights of Dylan Thomas's classic, A Child's Christmas in Wales, whose poetry makes me want to weep at my comparatively clumsy handling of the fickle English language. I needed, in my way, to capture the magic of the landscape, and since I filter pretty much everything through an Eilonwyan lens, this is the result.