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The stretch of Winter is vast over this sprawling continent, spread wide over the stretches of mountains and plains that feel her touch eternal or know her only for a time. She sleeps, and wakes, and sleeps again, sending idle drifts of snow and ice to parts she has often visited, loosing her creatures into the ranges and valleys they have vanished from. They are few in number, her creations and her messengers, the magic that tells all who live of her power and her presence; they are few, but they are fleeting in thoughts concerned with storms and squalls, and it takes her too long to realize that there is something strange in one corner of this ice-locked land.
Once she turns her mind to it, though, and sees the creatures that should be free bound instead to a single man’s hand, her rage is swift and biting.
Those who brave Winter’s wrath never live to see the warmth of Spring.
She steps out into the snow-covered glade in a land her view has long drifted over, her thoughts rarely touched on. It takes little effort to draw on the small form of her vessel, to pull pale skin and white furs around her so that she may face this man and send terror writhing into his heart before she kills him. And kill him she will; the red that seeps into her hair is a promise of revenge, and rage, and blood. His blood.
She will see that the first taste of it goes to the raptors he has tainted.
The cold wash of her fury pushes fresh snow into a barrier between the trees, a wall to trap the man she hunts and the creatures she claims inside this space with her, and when she opens human-like eyes she finds him staring in fear at her.
As well he should.
“Oh, shit,” the monkey breaths, as simple in panic as the basest of all creatures. It’s too late for that; if he had feared her anger only a little more he would have let her creatures be. Instead he has touched them, tamed them, and for that, he will pay. For that all who live in this valley could very well pay.
She turns her gaze from him and studies the raptors beside him, the fae who belong in the hills and ice-covered landscapes, who should be free to hunt and cry and remind all the living of her chilling gaze. They are four in number, as beautiful and perfect as the first that she made to take after the hunters of Summer, the clawed and toothed and elegant beasts who would never have survived her own season. The curves of their killing talons are graceful and clean, the white coats of their warm feathers are unruffled and smooth – but for where they are crossed by the harsh lines of human-made harnesses.
“How dare you.” The wind that blasts through the clearing carries the barest edge of her rage and still it is enough to send the trees creaking in cold-touched agony. The raptors circle around one another to shelter from the stinging flakes of snow lashing at their faces and tails while the human ducks his fur-hooded head and raises his arms against the fury. The blow dies as suddenly as it began so that he can hear, he can see, he can understand the enormity of his folly before she lets the raptors devour his heart. “They are mine. They are fae, they are more than you can possibly comprehend, and they are not for you to use.”
“Winter,” he croaks as he lowers his arms, turns his face towards her. But he does not drop to his knees and beseech her mercy; she has none to give, and well this man who has lived in her touch all his life should know it. Instead he remains standing, his thick boots buried in inches of new snow, his expression recovering from shock to turn into serious entreaty. “Winter, I ask that you listen. Please. I’m not using them at all.”
"You're controlling them." Another layer of ice crystallizes on the trees around them. Every minute detail is outlined in perfect white: the gnarled scars in rough-hewn bark, the needles of the evergreens and the newer frost-coated buds set to burst into leaves when her sister wakes. The human's breath becomes another cloud of white around his mouth to dust his skin and fog his vision. Her power swirls through the air around him, and still he does not back down. All the more fool he. “Tell me, how is that different?”
"No. No, it's not about control; it's about respect." His body language is cautious, guarded, his posture angled so his shoulders are lower than hers; he is giving her the higher ground, giving her the upper hand. As if she does not have that already. "I can't make them do anything they don't want to."
"And yet you live." She feels the bright embers of the raptors who stand now off to the side, sparks that mark each one in her sight and burn with the magic of the cold. With a single, lazy sweep she could push them into tearing him apart, send them ripping into the warm meat of the monkey who has so arrogantly used them as beasts, as animals. But against all expectations her touch finds their signatures to be pure and clean, untainted with the mindset of dumb creatures, untarnished with the smears of human magic. Moreover, more than that, they have withdrawn from her reach as far as it is possible for her creations to go; they do not want to kill this man. Such resistance is unheard of. It puzzles her, stays her hand, and is all that stands between him and his justly deserved death. "Do you know how many of your kind they have killed?"
"Probably just as many as those who die in your season every year." He holds his hands palm-out when she begins to sneer, contempt curling her red lips. "I'm not saying you mean to do it, and it's not truly your fault, but every time someone gets caught in the open during a squall, or runs out of supplies because the ice is too thick to cut, or gets buried under the snow, they die. A part of my family, my people, dies." He is not pleading or frantic in the face of her silent threat, but he is desperate to be understood. She understands humans well enough; she does not need to listen to him anymore.
Then he gestures towards his chest, still holding her gaze.
"The same way you feel about these girls, and every other fae out there like them? I feel about those people."
She hesitates, tries to imagine what he means. It is not that she cares about the raptors individually; their kind breeds fast enough that her slow rhythm has already encompassed thousands of their number. It is the possession, the violation, the sundering of their freedom and her claim to them that rouses her to such rage and draws thick gray clouds over the silent forest. They are hers, and they have been taken. And she will make such an example of him -
The haze that rage draws over her sight with that thought is a harsh reminder of her boundaries. It is hard to stay contained in such a small body for long when the form draws on warm blood and cold air and measures time far faster than her true self does. Enough, then; it is time to end this, to demonstrate for all that Winter's creatures are untouchable and removed. The wind picks up, howling through laden branches - and the rippling sound of a raptor's call interrupts her thoughts.
The raptors have watched her warily, aware that they are not vulnerable in the same way this monkey is, aware that the conversation centers around this abominable scene. But the blue-eyed one steps forward now, crouching in much the same way the human is, and its sinuous body, the way the other three crouch as well, sends a clear message.
They are ready to defend the reeking, clawless, mortal man in front of her.
The man swallows as she stares at the raptors, amazed and horrified.
"When I found them, they were young, they were close to dying," he says, speaking earnest and low. She wonders distantly if he knows his pitch now matches that of the raptor's cry. "So I saved them, or tried to, and once they could make it on their own I thought they would be gone. But they stayed and I needed help, so I asked them. I asked them to help me save my people.
"Every time I go out into a storm, I know I might not come back. I make my peace with the fact that they might leave me out there. I'll die, the people I'm trying to help will die; I accept that. But they haven't left me. Not yet. And every time we’ve gone out, it's been their choice. I'm not making them do anything. I'm just asking for their help."
"They are my creatures." Whatever strange, twisted fate has taken place here, she cannot let go of that. Will not let go of that.
"And the people out there are my people. It's my responsibility to take care of them, protect them. The raptors just help me do a better job of it." He shifts, the skin around his eyes paler now with the first signs of her touch, the numbing kiss of frostbite. She finally looks back at him, feeling for her certainty in the strangely uncertain footing of this confrontation, and knows that if she holds him here he will die of exposure while the warmth of his body leeches into the snow and wind and ice. The monkeys are so easy to kill. So undeserving of her notice. But that inattention has left one of them to find and save a raptor pack; the same pack that would now defend him.
"I'm sorry. I did what I thought the right thing was. You can take them, can make sure I never see them again, can kill me." He swallows again, the understanding of his imminent death clear in his torn expression. "Just, please, don't take it out on my people. They had nothing to do with this."
The raptors are watching her steadily, jewel-like eyes attentive and intelligent, and the embers of their souls burn with the sweet purity of the truth.
They are still hers. They always have been. It is her touch, her gift, which gives them the strength in their muscles and the beat of their hearts; without her they would not exist. But it is this human’s care that has saved their lives and without him, they would have been dead.
Better dead than aiding a human they should have rightly killed, and yet.
She holds out her hand and the blue-eyed raptor steps forward, moving easily through the freshly fallen snow and newly-made ice with a grace that marks her as more than animal, more than beast. Its feathers are smooth when the raptor places its head against her fingers, perfect and warm, proof against the harshest wind that her powers can call down. It is whole, and willing, and leans into the contact while its bright eye watches her carefully.
The work of a moment sees her vessel’s fingers pricked by the curving white teeth, a moment more bright beads of blood welling up from the wounds. She draws those fingers over the raptor’s head, leaving crimson streaks to mark its feathers and crest against the ponderous gray clouds heavy with snow, and turns her own head towards the human.
“They will kill you, or I will.” She makes no mention of the sled she has seen their harnesses pull, says nothing of the storm now making its way towards this land. She does nothing more at all, beyond stroking the raptor’s jaw with healing fingers, before she releases her human seeming and all that she is rushes back into the cold.
But her attention remains, even if her visible presence does not, and she sees him shudder with a sigh that drops his head, pulls his shoulders in. She sees the raptors turn and circle him, chirruping and nosing at his hands until he reassures them with weak laughter; she sees him stare at the streaks of blood on the one for a moment as his jaw tightens and loosens with another long breath.
Winter sees the humans glance up at the darkening sky, reading the signs of brewing weather there, and pat the two raptors closest to him on their backs.
“All right, ladies, looks like we’re in for it. If you’re up for helping me, we can go get ready.”
The raptors answer back, hissing and talking amongst themselves, and one pushes ahead to break a trail while the other three fall around him as he begins making his way back home.
It snows with incredible ferocity that night, piling up fast and heavy on the already packed drifts, socking the humans in their homes and bringing down the weakest of the tree limbs. But the first light of morning that breaks through trailing clouds finds four sets of prints and sled marks heading out into the worst of it, going to find the sick and the stranded.
From across a vast continent, through swirling flakes and frozen rivers, Winter watches them go.