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Rapunzel made herself comfortable on her tree branch, little flowers blooming where her fingers rested against the bark. Of all her seasonal spirit friends, she loved watching Merida at work the most. The transitions between other seasons were well-defined, her spring bringing new growth, Hiccup’s autumn the turning of leaves and ripening of crops, Jack’s winter building from delicate morning frosts to the glory of first snow. When they arrived, their presence was unmistakable. Merida, though... her work was more subtle, here. In other places she brought fire, drought, storms easily on par with Jack’s blizzards and often far more destructive. But here on this rainy island nation Merida had called home, back when she was mortal, her coming was felt in subtle ways.
A slow climb in temperature, the crops growing more hardy, the sun brighter when it fought through the clouds. But then, the sun always seemed brighter when merida was around. Jack and Hiccup might call her Sunshine, but it was Merida who commanded its warmth to the greatest effect. She even looked the part today, her dress a warm gold hemmed and belted with the tartan she refused to give up, red and green and blue a rich reminder of who she had once been. Rapunzel had never known her, as she had been. Merida had simply appeared to her, one day near the end of her first spring as one of the season’s heralds and keepers, and introduced herself. All spirits like them spoke a common tongue, near as she could tell, but she’d never heard another of their kind with so thick an accent as Merida.
Hiccup said it was because she remembered too much of her mortal life, but Rapunzel didn’t really care. Merida any other way wouldn’t be Merida, wouldn’t be her brusque, confident, sunny friend. It had been a bit of a rough few years early on, Rapunzel would freely admit, but once she’d gotten her feet under her and straightened herself out, duty-wise, Merida had warmed right up, much like the weather that surrounded her.
“Oi, Blondie!” a pebble bounced off her forehead, and Rapunzel realized Merida was waving her down from the tree. “Ya know you’re welcome to watch up close, right?”
“I like being up in a tree, though.” she grinned, and Merida reached out to tweak her nose with a laugh.
“I’ll never understand you, lassie.” she teased, flicking a hand to call a break in the clouds, sunlight the same gold as her dress pouring warm over them. “If your head’s in the clouds, keep your feet on the ground. Less liable to drift off that way.”
“And you get into more adventures.” Rapunzel finished with a chuckle. “So you’ve said a hundred times.”
“Och, a thousand at least.” Merida laughed. “I’m mostly done here, if you’d like to go for a fly?”
“A flight sounds lovely.” Rapunzel grinned, taking her friend’s hand and calling a gentle wind to lift her off the ground. Merida rose faster, hot air and physics and all that, but once they reached mountaintop height their speeds became more equal. “Where to?” she asked, and Merida rotated slowly, tapping her chin as she thought.
“The fire falls.” she declared after a long moment. “The sun’ll be setting soon, and they’re beautiful in that light.”
“Lead the way.” Rapunzel gestured, and Merida took off, fairly dragging her by the hand. Fields soon gave way to thick old forests, trees which had stood since before Merida’s time as a human, maybe since before Hiccup’s. The land rose up to meet them, and Rapunzel glided lower with Merida until they touched down atop a spire of rock next to a thin waterfall. It wasn’t too different from the one in her glade, save that this one was in the open, and when Merida gestured for her to sit she did so gently, running a hand over the weathered stone surface.
“I climbed this, a few times.” Merda said proudly as she parted the clouds again, giving them a clear view of the sun sinking towards the horizon, letting its warm light bath the waterfall and the stone around it. “Used ta be a challenge.”
Rapunzel hummed an absent answer, watching Merida from the corner of her eye as the sunset lit the water gold and limned the edges of Merida’s hair in firey light. For all that her powers in life had been a gift of the sun, between the two of them she knew who truly embodied it.