Time continued forward inexorably. To the glee of children and the consternation of adults, snow began to fall on the day of the winter solstice. The cold deepened and frost clung to the world, transforming the lands of the north into a winter landscape for the first time in over a decade.

I was meditating with Brother Augur when a snowflake fell on my hand. I glanced up in time to catch another on my face. After realizing it was snowing I could no longer focus on my meditation. Lost in his trance, Augur paid no attention when I left his arboretum. Philosophers no longer rested in the hammocks between the trees. By now most had left the Garden, returning to warm homes with sturdy walls.

Avarus was one of the few who remained in the Gardens. I never missed one of his lessons, though the other disciples had left until the only remaining students were Felix, Mara, and Irele. Felix and I rarely spoke, only interacting when Avarus would have him spar me and Irele at the same time. Our wooden swords would clack together and more often than not it would end with Irele disarmed and me on the ground.

Avarus would lecture about precisely what we had done and why it was wrong, and each time I lost I learned a little more.

I was unsure what to think of Felix. His arrogance and temper were off-putting but nothing about him was malicious. He seemed like the lost and broken type. Too much like myself.

Caedius was spending the winter with an aunt in the city. Proximity had forced us into a shallow friendship but I was by no means sad to see him go. While he was harmless he seemed to consider me something of a rival. Likely because of how much Felix eclipsed both of us, he enjoyed his temporary superiority. Mara encouraged this one-sided competition in a half-joking attempt to brew up a little chaos.

The other five acolytes spared me little attention. Sometimes two brothers named Soren and Parish joined Avarus’ lessons, but they kept to themselves and treated it as more of a novelty than anything. Mara was certain at least one of them had a crush on Irele. The other two were Velia, who spent most of her time reading in quiet places and wandering off whenever someone intruded, and Rosha, who hadn’t made an appearance in the Gardens since before I arrived.

I walked through the empty Garden, feeling very alone. It hadn’t snowed this far north since I was a child. One of my earliest memories was spending an afternoon watching snow drift past a window. The memory was a bittersweet fragment from my childhood. Back then the winter meant heated cocoa with cinnamon sticks. Now it made me think of corpses in the snow, marked with a white rose.

I paused outside of the barracks, collecting my thoughts. My mind had started wandering down some dark roads. I made sure that the others never saw me appear uncertain or troubled. Always polite, always controlled. For the past four months I had interacted with the others and the only happiness I saw was between Caedius and Mara. Everyone else would remain silent, together but separate, lost in their own problems.

Truthfully, I did like the others. The issue was I had no idea how to make them like me. It felt as if an invisible barrier separated all of us and I lacked the courage to reach out and see if it was only an illusion. I took one last glance back at the falling snow and leafless trees before entering the barracks.

Mara was the only one there, lounging on her cot, lost in thought. When I entered she glanced my way, then looked again after something grabbed her attention. Her smile was charming in its wickedness. “Is that snow in your hair?"

She looked surprised when I returned her smile. Absently I realized I hadn’t actually smiled in months. She set her book aside and joined me at the entrance, holding out a hand to catch snowflakes. Her perfume smelled like vanilla and rose in olive oil.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen the snow,” she said, a beatific smile on her face. “My sister and I were little terrors. We pelted each other with snowballs all afternoon until I got her with a chunk of ice. Cut her forehead up real good, blood everywhere.”

“Sounds like a cherished memory,” I said.

“It’s a warning, actually.” She grabbed her boots and began pulling them on. “You boys play with swords all day and think I’m over here sewing quilts. I’ve been practicing my aim, waiting for this day to come.”

I grabbed my fur cloak from my pack and slipped it around my shoulders. She had mocked me for wearing it when it was not quite so cold. Now she glanced at me with purse-lipped envy as we walked out into the snow. She wore only a thin woolen jacket over her grey uniform, and gooseflesh prickled her exposed skin.

“It’s the winter solstice,” I said. “We should go celebrate.”

I waited for her to laugh. It would be easy enough to correct the embarrassment with my power. I had learned to rely on it, perhaps a bit too much, to impress the others.

To my surprise she shrugged. “Sure. I haven’t been to town in a while and there’s nothing to do here. Most of the philosophers couldn’t care less whether we froze to death or end up in jail.”

“Those are our only options then?”

Without answering she set off along the path, decision made; we were heading to the city and that was that. Was this the secret behind friendship? A shared smile, an invitation? I had grown up around others my age: the scions of Velassan wealth and old blood, even the children of the servants whenever they had reason to come to our manor. With the highborn our conversations were little more than diversions demanded by etiquette. Talking with the servants always made me self-conscious. I slept in a big, warm house while they lived with a dozen other families in insulae complexes like concrete honeycombs.

Mara was different. I couldn’t quite call her approachable, but she had a caustic warmth to her; she was perceptive and honest the way children are, blind to any social boundaries or consequence. Her temperament, mixed with her education as a disciple, would seem arrogant if she was not so self-aware. But there was a warmth to her nonetheless, the flame that can warm or burn, depending.

The exotic forestry began to thin as we walked, the landscape becoming tamed into carefully plotted rows of shrubs and flowers, wilted in the sudden frost. The paths were empty, abandoned in favor of solstice festivities or a warm hearth.

“You’ve been with us for a while now.” Mara broke the lingering silence. “What do you think?”

I exhaled a plume of cold air. She would appreciate honesty the most. “It’s different. My whole life was simple, planned out. My education came with curriculums. Others cooked my meals. It was a very small world, but I liked it. There’s some joy to be found here too, I think.”

Mara held out a hand to catch snowflakes. “You think we have joy? The Gardens must be the strangest place I’ve ever been.”

“Brother Augur can meditate for days, only pausing to drink water, and the whole time he looks blissful. Sometimes Avarus smiles and I know he would rather be doing nothing else besides criticizing my form. There are a lot of strange little joys in life.”

Mara stopped, hugging her thin jacket closer. There was a mischievous glint in her eye. “Interesting speech. That may be more words than you’ve said to me the whole time you’ve been here. Do you know why Caedius didn’t like you the first time we met? Why he still shoots daggers at you from time to time?”

It occured to me there was a certain impropriety to us standing there together, in the same Gardens where lovers would promenade about with bottles of wine. I glanced about, as if looking for Caedius, and laughed. “No, not exactly.”

“Because you had curriculums and cooks.” Her red hair whipped about in the wind like a fan. “You came in one day, unannounced, with nobody knowing who you are or what you want. You never deigned to tell us either. Kept to yourself, as if you were better than us.”

I had introduced myself, in fact, but now didn’t seem the time to argue. Or had I? Did I turn back time in that conversation? Hard to keep things straight.

“That’s a big assumption to make based off of me being quiet.” I continued walking down the path, hiding my face from her.

She must have heard the annoyance in my tone. “Felix is quiet around most people too. Have you talked with him much?”

“Not exactly conversations.”

“He can be charming in the right place and time, with the right people. I don’t mind him but Caedius is more sensitive. It’s one thing to act superior to other people. It’s another thing to prove it to them. Felix proves it.” She paused for a moment, as if remembering some incident from the past.

“He's definitely talented.”

She snorted. “He’s the philosophers’ golden boy. They brought him here when he was so young. Give a child that age to a group of philosophers and they’re going to see him as an experiment. I’ve only been here for a year and I can already tell something about me is different. You know about Felix’s gift, right?”

I remembered the night Felix saw me crying. Of course I had reversed time to erase the moment---that was too personal, too weak for anyone else to witness. But I remembered his words, a memory from a phantom reality. The Increate blessed me with luck…

“I’ve heard of it,” I said, “but how can luck be a gift?”

“I’m going to let you see for yourself.”

In the distance drums beat and muffled shouts of delight became audible. We left the Gardens through the eastern gate, leading us to a district of gabled manors and lively taverns. The buildings here had windows of fine glass, permitting glimpses of laughing families and servants balancing trays heaped with food.

The sun had barely begun its early descent and already Odena was feasting and drinking. After living in the Gardens it seemed impossibly welcoming.

And of course it was winter solstice. In Velassa festivities were subdued, at least in my household. Here a pair of men wrestled in the streets, shirtless despite the cold, while strangers gathered to shout encouragement and insults. From the taverns and the wealthy homes came music, mingling and discordant, on occasion punctuated with laughter.

We passed a troupe of firetwirlers, and beyond them a crone with milky eyes who claimed she could tell me my future. Mara had to drag me after her when I stopped to watch a man tilt his head back and swallow the blade of a sword.

We came to a large tavern named Amelie in Yellow. A pretty young woman sat by the door, holding a parasol against the snow.

Mara bared her teeth at me in mock sternness. “I hope you can handle your drink.”

I almost responded that I was too young for the taverns to serve but thought better of it. In the past few months my voice had become more husky. Rigorous exercise sliced away the fat of an easy youth. My shoulders had grown broader and stubble marked my lip.

“One silver apiece.” There was a dullness to the doorwoman’s voice and movements that made me take a closer look. Her eyes were glazed over, pupils constricted into pinpoints. Recognition slowly broke through her haze at the sight of our grey uniforms. “Your friend is up there.”

Mara slapped a pair of denarii into the woman’s hand and gave her a tightlipped nod. I followed her in, bracing myself for a rowdy affair, patrons singing bawdy songs and spilling ale all over each other. The entrance fee of one silver should have alerted me Amelie in Yellow catered to a different type of clientele.