Threads 414 Taming Winter 3
Winter became spring, and the snow became floodwaters.
But this was only the last verse of her song, and one she had fretted over too much. When focused on the oncoming summit, the peace she hoped for in the future, it was easy to do. But the future did not only include peace.
They were going to war next year. They were going to battle the ith.
It was going to be hideous.
Winter devoured. It consumed. It crushed. The falling snows, so beautiful in their glittering majesty under a newly risen moon, suffocated the last embers of life lingering on from autumn's slow decay.
That was another difference between her song and Master Zeqing’s. Zeqing's Frozen Soul Serenade was the black heart of eternal cold, a freezing song that never ended. It portrayed the chill of the cloud-piercing peaks, exposed forever to the cruel stars and blackest sky, and slew only what trespassed upon its domain.
In its way, the snow that swept across the world was a much hungrier beast. However, in the end, it was a beast that was sated, that retreated, and gave way to warmer seasons in time. It was not a bottomless and unceasing hunger.
There was a dichotomy she had not grappled with, in these concepts.
"I like how it feels around here." Hanyi’s pale eyes sparkled as she looked up at the cloud-wreathed peaks ahead. They stood on the lowest slope, the foot of the mountain. They had gathered quite a train of lesser faeries, a glittering, whirling constellation of icy lights winking among the clouds.