“Well, then I have a list of things I’d like you to go down to the village and- Aya, where are your shoes?”

“I, uh, I forgot them.”

“Oh, Aya. If you were any more clumsy, you’d freeze your toes off,” she laughed as she stood, walking over to pull her daughter into an embrace.

“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” she said, then pulled away.

“Now, there’s no time like the present,” she said, moving to get a list scrawled on a scrap of parchment. After giving her with some money, for the vendors that would accept it, and eggs for those that wouldn’t, her mother sent her back out the way she came.

Aya stood on the path, looking up at the sun to gauge the time. She wasn’t going insane - it was some time into the afternoon. Stewing in her own thoughts as she began to tread back down toward the village, albeit in warmer clothes this time, her discomfort only grew.

What had happened to her home, to her parents? Had she done this? Was she to blame?

She paused as she crested the top of the main hill, the body of the village laid out below. The rings of little houses, some with chimneys still smoking, stood as eternal to her as the mountains. She’d never seen so much as a single house added nor destroyed throughout her entire life. What would happen, she wondered, if she told them about the strange happenings? Would they try to help her or to harm her?

Either way, she doubted that they could do much for her at this point. The doctor, the priest, they’d had less and little impact. Her mind flashed back to Carnes, and his recommendations to seek out ‘Efrain’. Maybe she could find a mage that could help her if she went to Karkos, but she doubted it. There was a dread certainty that nestled within her that this illness, this curse, whatever it was, was not curable.

The thought of suffering her whole life with this was almost too much to bear. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she descended down the path to the village. What had she ever done to deserve this?

There were two people coming up the path toward her, a young man and woman. When they got close enough, the latter rushed to meet her.

“Aya!” Shyana said, her blond braids glimmered in the afternoon sunlight as she pulled Aya into a hug, before backing off.

“You’re not still sick… are you?”

Aya managed a tired smile.

“Getting better,” she said.

The boy to her side was tall, his thin dark hair was made even blacker by soot, streaked over his forehead by sweat. He smiled awkwardly as he regarded the younger girl, before Shyana stepped in to save him.

“Aya, Gyles. Gyles, this is Aya.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, stumbling over almost every word.

A nervous disposition, something that Shyana seemed to have a weak spot for.

“Nice to meet you too,” she said non-descriptly, feeling a need to keep her distance from the boy.

“Gyles had just finished work at the forge for the day,” Shyana said, “he wanted to take me to the meadows past the church.”

She promptly made eyes at him and the boy blushed a frankly hideous shade of red. Something was bubbling within Aya, something molten and thorny that clawed at her insides.

“Maybe, now you’re here, you might want to come with us?” Shyana said.

“No. No. Not with him,” Aya responded.

Wait, why had she said that?

Shyana flinched back at the comments, as did Gyles, who looked nervously between the two of the them. Aya felt a rather absurd need to give her a tongue-lashing, considering how she had left her to suffer.

“Shy, maybe we should-” Gyles began.

“Oh, you two have pet names now? What’s next? Marriage?” said Aya with blistering sarcasm.

Shyana’s face was paling by the second, and Gyles stepped backward and forward.

“Aya, I-” Shyana started.

“I don’t want to hear it!” she screamed, far louder than she intended.

Something was wrong - Shyana didn’t deserve this, neither did the boy. But her body felt like it was on fire, molten metal running through her body.

“You-”

“Did you know how much it hurt? The things I’ve seen? That I’ve laid in bed day after day after day, praying for sleep that never, never comes?” she said, voice rising in pitch as she threw the basket to the side of the path. Gyles and Shyana backed away, trying to put some distance between them and the raging girl. The motion only served to infuriate Aya, who stalked after the fleeing couple.

“I-” Shyana barely had time to squeeze the vowel out before Aya cut her off.

“It’s always the same. I’m always alone in the end. Every time.”

The words made no sense, nor were they sourced from any grievance Aya had. Still, they propelled themselves out of her mouth, as if someone else was using her mouth.

“I never meant to-” Shyana said, before Gyles stepped in front of her.

“I think we better go,” he said, taking her by the arm.

“No!” Aya screamed, “You won’t leave me again! I won’t let you get away, not like last time!”

The two were already turning and walking quickly away by the time she had finished the sentence. She reached out after them and the world unfolded as she saw through the couple, focusing on Gyles. This man, this boy, would not take her sibling away from her.

She wouldn’t allow it.

Something dark snaked around her, something that she knew and had woven. It was an ugly, shifting thing, constructed from cobwebs and mustard seeds, sweat-soaked nightmares and the smell of her mother’s cooking. It pounced through the air at her bidding, spreading like a great net, or some lunging, multi-legged beast.

Just before it wrapped its victims, she heard a sound, a voice.

It was a voice she had heard long ago, or was it recently? Time had become a mercurial, capricious things, subject to whims and fancy. It resounded from a long way off, piercing through the fog of anger and bitterness that hung around her.

“Aya, no!” she heard it scream.

She turned to find a woman grasping her shoulder, and in that moment, she stopped.

She was a girl, her name was ‘Aya’, and this woman… this woman was her mother. She turned to pull at the great mistake, the darkness that stretched through the air. As the attempted to wrested it, pull it back from inflicting whatever damage she’d designed it to do, she felt a snap, like a tense rope suddenly severing.

When Aya next came too, she was lying in the centre of the path, cradled in her mother’s arms. Her mother’s tears dripped onto her face as her own eyelids fluttered. Her head lulled to the side, the muscles of her neck and arms completely dead. The last sight she saw clearly was a circle of dry, rapidly wilting grass around the path.

There was the sensation of being picked up, and a blur of colours, the sound of a door opening and closing. Aya drifted in and out of consciousness as her parent’s voices swept in and out of hearing. All that she could make out were panicked whispers and a warm blanket being left over her body. Finally, exhaustion could not be denied, and she was smothered in darkness.

She floated in the darkness, finding herself moving gently back and forth. It was not cold or warm, a sensation as unnatural as it was bland. When she opened her eyes, her first impression was that of grey. A mass of overcast clouds without so much as a gap between them rolled above. As she glanced down, she came across a great expanse of water, like one of the glacial lakes in the depths of the mountains. Waves crashed across her body, sliding up the grey sands below her, ever so slowly. Rain hit at her exposed eyes, at a snail’s pace.

She had heard this sound before.

Just earlier this morning? It felt like it should’ve far longer.

The rain and waves, all grey, all slower than they should be.

She sat up in the sand trying to figure out just where she had come from, and whether there was a way to go back. Then there was another sound, something crackling a long way off.

And she was back in her bed, the planks of the ceiling standing still and eternal. The first pit was on in the next room, her mother poking at it. She tried to speak, and made a sound approximating wind being drawn through a reed. Her mother though, possessed of better hearing than most, dropped the poker and rushed to her side.

“Aya,” she said, helping her daughter sit up, “tell me everything.”

And so Aya related the tale of the morning, the church, finding the still house, and her confrontation with Gyles and Shyana.

“What happened to them?” she said, sipping water from a cup that that her mother provided.

“Nothing. They were unharmed as far as I can tell. I made them swear to me that they would never speak of this to anyone,” she said, stroking her daughter’s hair, before taking hold of her face.

“Aya. When I found you, the entire meadow of grass was dead around you. If that was this… magic that caused that, and if it had touched either of them…”

Aya’s head drooped, not just because her muscles ached with fatigue, but with shame, with fear, all the terrible implications rattling in her head.

“Aya. I need you to look into my eyes, now,” her mother said, “this curse, this magic, whatever it is - is not your fault. But you might hurt others, or worse, yourself. We have no other options.”

“What am I going to do, mama?” Aya sobbed, the words catching in her throat.

“What are we going to do,” her mother gently corrected, “we are going to pack up some food and our warmest clothes, take a horse, and seek out this ‘master’ of the Frozen Vale.”

“And if he doesn’t help us?”

“Then we’re going south to find my mother, and we’ll not stop until we find someone who can,” she said.

For the first time in a long while, Aya began to cry, not with pain or fear but with relief. The fact that there was someone there, who she could rely on no matter what.

“Come, now. We should prepare,” she said, pulling back, “we leave tomorrow morning.”