Page 104 of Midwinter Wiles & Valerian Dreams
Talvie
Snow falls. Soft and unending. Swirling through a sky with no source.
It doesn't sting or melt or even touch me, yet a thousand flecks of white catch in a slow waltz, weightless and directionless.
A forest emerges from the haze. Big fluffy flakes float between needled boughs and bare branches. I follow a path I don’t remember, but my feet seem to know. Each step melts into another memory. Every tree I pass changes shape. Every shadow breathes.
My feet float above cobblestones that turn to pine needles, then polished marble, then frozen water. I glance behind me, but I leave no footprints. No sign I’m even here.
Visions flicker; each parting tree bough reveals a new tableau. A candlelit table in the cottage kitchen. Petal-bright laughter with Lark’s amber-green eyes. Moonlight glinting on ice. A pile of blankets and children. Snowballs mid-flight. Taynia braiding my hair. No—yanking it. No—tucking flowers behind my ear.
Everything blurs. The more I chase it, the faster it falls apart.
Spinning. Swirling.
Somewhere, someone is humming a familiar tune. The song is sleepy, long forgotten, swaying in my soul.
“Val?”
A voice in the wind. A shimmer on water.
“Talvie.”
My heart twists. I know that voice. I know it like the shape of my hands, the beat of my own pulse. But when I turn, no one is there. Just the whisper of trees and snow that doesn’t touch me. The echo of a name I tried to bury under snowdrifts.
The forest pulses and shimmers around me. Someone whispers near my ear, and warmth brushes my cheek like a soft quilt. I hear the murmur of children, familiar voices, wrapped in safety. Katja. Aili. Mikael.
Then more voices join. Voices I shrink from. Voices that make me want to hide.
The trees close in.
The voices hunt me down until my mind latches onto one that stings with betrayal. “…Princess Talvie hiding with you…”
Princess.
Anything but that word. I don’t want the weight of it. I want the first voice. Lark’s voice. I want him calling me Val, his hands around mine, his smile crooked and his dimples heralding trouble.
“Taynia seems different. Go on…” Beron says.
Taynia.
A sharp ache slices through the fog. A name I once whispered with love, now tangled in thorns.
She changed once before, but is that what he means by different? Or has she changed again?
The snow shifts. The trees flicker and fade. Whispers float. Then finally, I hear the voice I crave.
“Lumi?” Lark calls softly.
The name comes from far away, muffled and distant like the voices that follow.
The snow stops falling.
A faint glow pulses just beyond the trees.
At first I think it’s only another trick of whatever world I’m trapped in, but then the light steadies, stronger than the drifting flurries, warmer than moonlight should be. Something stirs inside me.
The moonlight curves in the sky, a soft crescent gathering itself into a whole.
