Work Text:
Coco loved the winter.
Heavy snow covered the trees in a fluffy blanket, and the moosedeer traveled in big herds like small avalanches of movement and sound. The spell of ice and burning wood stoves penetrated the air, and everything was just a tiny bit more silent. Even the birds quieted their song.
Back when she’d still lived with her mother, there’d been less work to do during the cold months. They went to the village more often to share laughter and heat and stew. Her mother would tend the fire, and on the evenings when darkness came before it was time for dinner, they would cuddle on the couch in the workshop while her mother told her about her father, about the seamstresses that had come before her, about the monster that used to live in the woods.
Coco stubbornly refused to acknowledge that this was her first winter without her mom.
Instead, she decided to make the best of it.
Neither Richeh nor Agott appreciated her attempts to get them out of bed, but Tetia went willingly when Coco barged into her sleeping chambers.
The Atelier was still sleepy when they made their way downstairs. Putting some heat stones into their bags, pulling on the snow boots Mr. Nolnoa had traded them for one of Olruggio’s spells, both Tetia and Coco were careful not to wake anyone else. Master Qifrey surely needed the sleep, and Master Olly was always awfully grumpy in the early morning hours. The dark months helped his disposition none, and so it was better for all of them if Master Olly got his eight hours of sleep.
Covered from head to toe in scarves Master Qifrey had knit over the last few months, Coco carefully opened the front door. A gust of snow-filled wind covered the front entrance in a dusting of snow flakes. Coco shared a look with Tetia. They giggled.
The entire front yard had been swallowed up by a thick layer of white, the fence marking the edge of their property more of a suggestion than an actual landmark. The snow gave when they stepped on it, the crunch satisfying every single time. It felt a bit as if they were walking on clouds.
“Race you?” Tetia offered breathlessly, the red of her cheeks matching the pink of her scarf perfectly.
“Yes!” Coco beamed. “Where to?”
“The big tree in the forest over there?” It was quite the distance Tetia wanted them to cover.
Coco narrowed her eyes. “Glyph shoes allowed?”
“Obviously!” Tetia’s grin brightened the entire garden, even though the sun had barely begun its daily trek across the sky. “It’ll be so much fun!”
“Well, in that case…” Coco squared her shoulders, her toes tingling in excitement. “Ready, set—”
“Go!” Tetia slammed her boots together and shot forward. “The loser has to do the dishes today!”
“You cheater!” But Coco was laughing. Her own glyph shoes connected, the power of the spell propelling her forward.
The wind blowing in her face sliced her skin, ice forming on her lashes when she blinked away the snow. The world around the Atelier had been transformed into some sort of Wonderland. The house itself was little more than a white mushroom peeking out from between the hills, Master Olly’s chimney and its never-ending billow of smoke the only sign of life.
Tetia had a few yards on her, her pink scarf trailing behind her as she did a complicated maneuver around some of the pine trees along the river leading into the forest. Coco could hear her laughing from here.
A few wild giant geese used their impressive wings to flap across the sky, their honks the only sound for miles.
Twisting to the left, Coco trusted in her own spell work. Her glyph shoes tended to be faster than everyone else’s after all – just ask Agott. She didn’t want to see the world turn all blurry, so she mapped her path beforehand. Ignoring the cold, Coco clenched her eyes closed and followed the movements of the wind until she could overtake Tetia’s pine hopping from the side.
The speed made her heart beat fast. Her entire body was filled with electricity and heat – it was amazing.
“Hey!” Tetia yelled when Coco passed her. “Who’s the cheater now?”
But even that was filled with laughter.
Coco pushed forward. Spurned on by her own success, not even the cold could touch her anymore. She was winning.
Blinking her eyes open, Coco tried to spot the big tree. Her eyes teared up immediately. Below her, the forest, with its snow covered tree tops, and the clearing, where the river was supposed to be, appeared awfully uniform. Twisting, Coco spotted Tetia behind her, a shooting star in vibrant pink. So at least Coco’s direction had to be right. It could very well be that the big tree was even further away than Coco remembered—
“Coco! Look out!” Tetia’s warning came a few seconds too late.
Coco turned back around only to collide head first with one of the giant geese on its way south. From down below, they always looked so fluffy. Hit in the face with 40 pounds of hard muscle, fragile bone, and a deadly beak, and it turned out that no amount of feathers could possibly soften the impact.
Coco’s nose broke with a soft crack, the pain immediate and piercing. The panic in her chest overrode every lesson on how to use glyph shoes, the consequences of her shock – a moment of flailing – immediate. She fell. The confused and hurt goose fell with her.
Someone screamed.
Coco couldn’t tell whether it was her, Tetia, or the goose.
Maybe all three.
The ground raced up to meet them. Twisting and turning, the wind whipped into her face. It felt as if her blood froze immediately as it trailed down her nose, but it was hard to tell. There was only the biting wind burn and the underlying numbness. Coco tried to slam her feet back together, but her limbs wouldn’t work the way she wanted them to. She was no match for the forces of nature. The goose’s panicked flapping didn’t help, their tumble comically janky as the goose spread its giant wings in an attempt to escape.
Mostly it just hit Coco, succeeding in turning them around if nothing else.
The forest floor was white.
Coco hoped the snow would soften their landing.
It did not.
Because it wasn’t just snow.
Coco’s shoulder connected with the ground first. This wasn’t the forest floor. This was the frozen river twisting its way through the woods. She expected it to hurt. She didn’t expect the solid hardness. Or the crack that followed immediately after. Or the freezing wetness seeping through her winter cloak. Her lungs seized up as soon as the cold hit her skin. Air escaped her with a gasp, even though she knew better than that.
(her mom had taught her many winters ago)
You were supposed to keep your mouth closed. Otherwise, you were dead before you knew it.
Coco didn’t even have time to finish the thought before the rest of her weight (and the goose’s) crashed into the ice, breaking through it with little resistance. Darkness engulfed her. The river swallowed her whole.
From above, the water hadn’t moved. Tranquil serenity in the middle of winter.
Now that they’d broken through the surface, Coco learned that rivers didn’t stop flowing just because they iced over.
She was still distracted by the burning of the water against her skin, when Coco realized that she had already drifted away from the hole in the ice they’d just fallen through. In this part of the forest, the river wasn’t quick. It didn’t really matter. Her eyes prickled, but even so she could tell that the distance between her and the surface was growing. Her clothes were soaked. Her scarf was choking her. The goose had gone silent against her body, tangled up in her cloak. It was heavy. And probably dead.
Her heart ached at the thought. She didn’t want the—
A cascade of bubbles escaped her when the currents turned her around. It wasn’t fast, just too fast for her to fight against. Coco envisioned her mouth closed, but her lips were too numb to tell whether her body was actually following her command. The weight of her limbs didn’t help. Her skin stung from the sudden drop in temperature, her heart frantic as it tried to push heat back into a body that was rapidly running out of it.
The reality of her situation finally reached her. She was freezing, drowning, dying.
She couldn’t feel her shoulder, her face dead to anything but the freezing temperatures. Once, when she’d been seven or maybe eight, she’d placed her hand on the stove while her mother was cooking. Paradoxically enough, the blistering of her skin back then reminded her of the ice cold burn engulfing her body now.
Her feet brushed against the riverbed. That’s right–this far downstream, the river was more of a creak, not all that deep. And despite the pain, despite the frantic beat of her heart and the iron band across her chest, Coco hadn’t given up just yet. Pushing against the solid ground, she aimed for the surface. She barely moved. Too heavy. Too cold.
Her legs would only react sluggishly as if dragged through mud. There was no strength to them. When she tried again, her muscles seized up. Her hands were basically dead. The spell on her boots had only been drawn on, so there was no chance to fly away either. Still, she aimed for the sky.
Spurned on by the erratic gallop of her heart, Coco flailed – the dead goose moved with her. It was hard not to consider it a bad omen. The added weight felt damning.
Time acted against her.
Adrenaline running out, the cold gained another dimension. This one was dark and made her eyes droop.
Everything was slowing down. Each blink of her eyes took half a century, even her rapid heart beat sluggish as she struggled to shrug off her cloak. The goose was being pulled along by the currents, and in turn, it dragged Coco further down the river as well. Coco had to survive. This would not be the winter she died.
But she was freezing.
And her body was so heavy.
And her chest hurt.
Why did her chest hurt?
Her eyes were trained on the endless expanse of unbroken ice above her. It was unreachable. When she pushed against the constraints of her body, it barely swayed. A victim to the currents. A sacrifice to the cold.
Now Coco was the one frozen
Was this what it felt like for her mom? Stuck in one place, unable to move, aware of your own death?
Coco really, really hoped not.
More air escaped her contracting lungs. The bubbles got trapped underneath the ice, just as unable to break free as she was.
They’d just been playing. It was so unfair. If she had the energy left, Coco would have cried.
A spidery light spread over the ice above her. It looked pretty, like snow flakes drawn big.
Each thought moved slowly through her mind with no hurry as the cold burned the ability for speed out of her very soul. Still, the realization reached her eventually. A spell. This was a spell.
The layer of ice crackled, the sound fierce enough to reverberate through the entire river. It melted away while Coco watched. It was a struggle, her eyes desperate to fall closed. But she tried, chest tight, mouth open. Her heart had slowed to nothing more than an occasional beat.
The pain was gone, the cold a numb memory.
Awareness was an ephemeral flicker. Here one moment, gone the next.
Coco wasn’t sure if she was still awake. She blinked, and her eyes remained closed for longer than they should. She blinked again, and a pink shadow pulled on her clothes. Tetia. This had to be Tetia.
Coco tried to smile.
Her eyes closed.
She wasn’t cold anymore.
The first thing Coco noticed when she opened her eyes was the dead goose staring at her. Beady black eyes gazed listlessly at the gray sky, at Coco in her wet clothes, at the snow covered river bank.
The second thing Coco noticed was how unfathomably cold she was. Her entire existence distilled down to the shivers racing down her arms, to the shaking in her thighs she couldn’t stop. Her teeth chattered. Her chest hurt. She couldn’t feel her shoulder. It was numb. Or broken.
Her skin had been set aflame, only the flames were invisible, the fire crystalline and snow white.
Each brush of the wind against her exposed back sent another violent flinch through her body, only she didn’t have the energy to move that much, so mostly she just startled. It was an incredibly miserable experience.
Forcing herself to look up, she spotted Tetia a few feet away. Her cloak hung off her shivering body like an unshapen sack, her pink hair plastered against her head and half frozen. She wasn’t smiling, but the frown on her face wasn’t filled with anything near the despair Coco had to constantly swallow down.
(half the time she choked on it)
Tears spilled down her cheeks, tiny pinpricks of ice against her raw skin. Her chest hitched, the feeling not unlike the drowning she’d just survived. Coco wanted her mom. She wanted to sit in front of the fire at her mom’s workshop and design new dresses for their customers. She wanted to drink her mom’s hot chocolate and listen to her stories. She— She—
Pulling her legs against her chest, Coco buried her face in the wet fabric covering her knees. She was so cold. She’d never been cold like this when she still lived with her mom.
There hadn’t been any dead geese back then either.
“Oh, Coco…” Tetia had noticed her despair and dropped what she was doing. Her hands were surprisingly warm when they brushed against Coco’s face.
Coco looked up. There were a few tears glistening in the corner of Tetia’s eyes as well, though her scrunched up nose spoke of stubborn determination. “I-I’m so, so sorry, Te-Tetia.”
It was a struggle to get the words out. They were frozen stuck in her throat.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Coco!” Tetia huddled down next to her. They were both shivering, the careful hug Tetia pulled her into not offering any immediate relief from the biting wind. “I’m just– I am fixing Master Olly’s heat stones. So we can warm up. And then… and then I’ll get us home, and Master Qifrey can get a Healer from Khalm, and… I am sure Agott will make us a pot of hot chocolate. We’ll eat stew tonight. It will be amazing.”
“I just— I want my mom!” It was such a childish wish. Coco was a witch apprentice now. She should be above such whimsical and impossible things. But this was her first winter without her mom. She missed her.
Tetia tightened the hug. “I know.”
Above them, the giant geese moved on, unaware that they had lost one of their own.
Using the frayed edges of her cloak – almost frozen solid – to wipe away the tears, Coco tried to untangle herself from Tetia. Her muscles were awfully stiff. At least the shivering had died down a little. “Hey—?”
“Tetia! Coco!”
Coco was interrupted before she needed to figure out what it was that she wanted to say to Tetia. When she looked up, the familiar silhouettes on the horizon made her sluggish heart beat faster. Master Olly and Master Qifrey were speeding down the no longer frozen river, Agott hot on their tail.
“We’re here!” Tetia yelled.
“Yes!” Coco’s voice was more of a whisper, worn down and raw. Still, she joined in. “We’re here.”
Coco caught a glimpse of the pure horror on Master Qifrey’s face when he took in their sorry state, but she had no time to think about that. His feet had barely touched down on the uneven ground before he launched himself at them. His arms were longer than Tetia’s (longer than her mom’s had been) and warm. His hug reminded her of home.
“Girls, I was so worried for you.” His voice shook with relief. This close, Coco could smell the always present scents of the Atelier on Master Qifrey’s cloak, her face buried in the comforting aroma of magical ink and homecooked meals. “Oh, you’re freezing. Olly and I’ll get you warmed right up.”
He wasn’t her mother.
But at least Coco was no longer alone.