Nira Oswen's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nira Oswen knelt on the open ice and cupped one seedling in her palms. Green shoots always followed her steps through Shiverveil, but they froze the moment she moved on. She was a spring goddess in a land of endless winter, and she wanted only one thing: to keep a single bloom alive long enough to spread its warmth. The seedling in her hands curled, stiffened, and turned to frost. She swept the dead thing away and pressed her fingers to the ice for another try. The wind cut through her white dress. Frost already edged the hem, the way it always did. She breathed on the fresh sprout and coaxed a bud from it. For three heartbeats it held. Then it cracked and died like all the rest. She had no warm place to shelter even one. The open ice killed her work as fast as she made it. A small voice spoke behind her. "You keep planting in the wrong bed." She turned. A little goblin stood there, gray-skinned, with snowflakes dusting his shoulders and green leaves sprouting from his head and wrists. His bright eyes watched her, not the ice. He held out one open hand, the same way she held her seedlings. "Who are you?" Nira asked. "Someone who knows where the cold can't reach." He waved for her to follow, then trotted off across the snow without waiting. She hesitated. Every step she took would leave more shoots to freeze behind her. But every step she stayed would kill more too. She stood and followed his small tracks. He led her over a rise to a building she had never seen. Glass walls glowed from within. Iron framing curled around every pane, and warm light spilled out onto the snow. Inside, green leaves pressed against the glass. Flowers bloomed in beds that no frost touched. Heat breathed from the doors when the goblin pushed them open. "A greenhouse," Nira said. Her voice shook. "It holds the warmth in." "It has waited a long time for someone like you," the goblin said. He stepped aside and let her enter first. The warm air wrapped around her. For the first time her skin did not ache with cold. She knelt at an empty bed of dark soil and set her hand against it. A shoot rose between her fingers. She waited for it to freeze. It did not. A bud swelled, opened, and held. One flower, alive, its petals soft and unbroken. Nira laughed and cried at once. She had her warm, sheltered spot at last. She had her single bloom. Then the goblin's smile faded. He pointed past her, to the far wall. Behind the glass, one large pane had cracked. Frost crept in through the gap, white fingers reaching across the floor toward her new flower. The warmth was leaking out. And she did not know how to seal it.