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To Isan’s relief, the Winter Maiden banquet reuniting for the very first time his family and Eltere’s in the palace was going well. If he could keep this up, maybe he could bring up his desire to marry her the next time he’d meet up with the Firrans’ parents.
As he was engrossed in a very interesting conversation with Eltere’s father about Firrans’ traditions during the Winter Maiden festival, a loud bong interrupted them. Everyone fell silent and looked up to the ceiling, wondering what it was. Suddenly, Eltere gasped.
“By Tahyang’s whiskers, it must be Nebe!” she exclaimed.
“Huh? The God of Winter?” Isan raised an eyebrow.
“Of course! Have you ever played a snowball fight with him on Winter Maiden night?”
Eltere’s jaw dropped when Isan’s silence screamed a violent no. She clawed his arm and pulled him out of the room in a hurry, ignoring the Crown Prince’s protestations. She forced him to run up the never ending staircase to the top of the palace without a break, before pushing the window wide open. A freezing gust of wind invited itself within, as if the Firran God Tahyang himself was mocking Isan for his lack of athletics.
But Eltere wasn’t done. She climbed out of the window, and started pulling herself onto one of the pillars, hauling herself up towards the roof. Her ear twitched when she realised she wasn’t hearing the clinking sound of Isan’s numerous jewels nearby, and looked down to the window.
“What are you waiting for?” she yelled over the wind. “Nebe’s not gonna stay here forever!”
“You want me to climb?!”
“How else are we gonna get up there?”
Isan grumpily grumbled but complied. He watched as Eltere hauled herself up in just a few swift and agile moves. Meanwhile, his royal robes kept hindering his every move, at times getting caught in the roof decorations or flapping in the wind so strongly that he thought he might take off.
Once he finally made it, he nearly slipped all the way down due to the snow that was resting on the curved roof, if not for Eltere who caught him. When he regained his breath again, he noticed a short humanoid figure standing at the top of the roof, back towards them, white hair lifted up by the wind. A large pile of snowballs lay at the stranger’s feet.
“A child…?” Isan whispered, incredulously.
Eltere slapped a hand on his mouth.
“He’ll hear you!”
She prepped a snowball of her own, before skillfully throwing it in the stranger’s direction, who dodged at the very last second. The child turned in their direction, silver irises glinting with malice.
“Finally, a worthy challenger!”
The snowball fight ensued for a long while, the childish God of Winter having an obvious and unfair advantage, Eltere having a blast, and Isan feeling like he was being bullied. But at the end of the night, they all had fun.