From the family tree

Name: Deyanira
Origin: Greek
Meaning: "capable of great destruction"
Gender: Female
Relatives: Hmm, there seems to be a smudge here.
Age: Unlisted

Scrawled in the margin...
I am the queen of the icy lands of the universe. Tread carefully, darling; you don't know what dangers you may encounter hidden in the snowstorms.

Credit:
Background image from The Bella Life Blog.
Headshot by User not found: seven

Frozen Matters

Tapping a long fingernail on the glass, I peered out into the Arctic Frost. Another snowstorm was waging, and I couldn't see much into its depths, but the blanketing white was comforting.

Soft pads landed on my shoulder, and the only warmth in this place now rested there. My small Snow Fox, a friend acquired shortly after my exile.

"They'res comings," he hissed lightly, and I nodded. "Yes, I felt that, too."

Eris curled under my long, brown hair, and let his tail wrap around my throat. A kind of comforting strangulation. I left the window and sorted through various glass jars displayed in the small space that was my home. Finding a particularly ice-covered one, I selected it and tapped it, as I had the window.

"Wake up," I called to the small creatures inside. "Vakes up," Eris hissed along with me. A small rumbling, and the glass shook, its vapors chilling the air more than was necessary. When the molecules reformulated, the small balls of frozen matter peered up at us, their sad eyes covered with icicles.

"Find the intruders. Don't let them get too far, but don't let them escape back home either," I commanded them. They looked up at me dumbly, blinking their large eyes slowly. Sighing, I curled my finger and gestured toward myself, inhaling at the same time. The frozen matter caught inside the chain of ice I had created. "Don't make me repeat myself." I snapped my fingers sharply together, shattering the ice, and they seemed to understand. They dissolved back into vapor, and shortly after, the temperature inside climbed again.

I wrapped a ruffled scarf around my neck loosely and exited the building after them. I knew I wouldn't be able to find them until they returned, but they'd return shortly. Outside, the wind whistled through the snow dunes, creating noises out of the smallest of divets and variations in the land.

I glanced down and spotted small snowmen that had been created, with twig arms bent in horrific shapes. I stomped on them. It was a game Eris and I played. He created minions for me to crush, and I gladly did so. Today, the snowmen emulated fear. Normally, they looked apathetic or ignorant. The new poses in them suggested that Eris had known of the invaders before I did.

Stomping through the snow, compacting it underneath my equally white boots that were already accumulating ice, I reached out for the intruders again. I could feel them in the air, as I had felt the vapors of the frozen matter, but distant. The frozen matter were leading the intruders away. "Shall I finds zem?" Eris hissed, a soft pink nose peaking out from underneath my hair.

"How long do you think it'll take you to?" I asked. "Nots longs. They'res not far aways," he hissed in reply. "Find them, then. If it takes too long, then come back before it gets too cold." He made a low growling sound in reply and leapt into the snow. A small pile of flakes fluffed into the air as he dashed away from me, but I knew he'd follow through. He wasn't nearly as useless as the frozen matter was.

"Plotting again?" a cool voice chimed behind me, and I inwardly cowered. How annoying to have him stop by. I turned and faced the snowy owl clinging to a bare, snow-covered tree. "Ah, Guardian of the Polar Waters, what brings you here?" I asked cheerily, hoping that he'd tire of annoying me and leave.

"Those men, they're the one's you're after?" He tilted his head in the direction that Eris had been in. "Maybe. I'm investigating that."

"And what will you do if you catch them?" he asked, his voice dancing around in the air. I disliked the way the tone of his voice seemed to mellow me out. Aiming for revenge is useless when you're not angry enough to realize it. "Nothing," I replied honestly. "I will simply let the winds eat them."

"You're really that angry over your exile still? After all these years?" he cooed again. I closed my eyes and sighed.

It'd been maybe ten years, maybe fifteen. I'd lost count of the days and years in the endless snowstorms of the Arctic Frost. The humans. Their fear of a ridiculous, half-bit excuse for a prophet had prompted them to abandon me when I had been so young. "We will watch that girl destroy us. Piece by piece. Men, women, children, animals. This town will disappear into nothingness as long as she's still here.

And in their fear, those idiots believed her, and cast me aside. I hadn't hated them before the old woman had come into town, but... "They chose to make their own prophecy come true," I told the owl. I turned to face him, and found that he had left.

A soft mewling sound caught my attention, and I noticed that the frozen matter had returned. "Well?" They buzzed in the air lightly. "Why would they be coming this way?" Just a while ago, the frozen matter had been leading them away. What prompted the humans to change their mind?

I spotted two black spots in the snow, and as I leaned down to recollect Eris, I saw the blood staining the snow. Almost frantic, I collected him quickly. And I saw why the invaders would be coming this way: in between Eris's sharp teeth, a small hand bled, the dark liquid dancing over blackened fingernails and sliding down the end of the bone that had once connected the hand to the arm.

I held him close and we went inside to wait. My home was the only place in hundreds of miles. If they came looking for the child's hand - and the frozen matter and Eris both confirmed that they were - they'd surely run into me.

And then, they too can watch themselves dissolve in the frozen flakes of the Arctic Frosts.