Natalia hadn’t dramatically eaten snow like she had on her first attempt at skiing, but still, she was dead tired. Most afternoons were spent learning how not to fall, and it turned out to be even more exhausting than crashing head-first.
It helped that lissa followed her closely, sohow always managing to catch her by the elbow just before she went down.
By the ti they checked into the double-bedroom lakeview suite, Natalia felt as though her body had been flattened beneath a snowplough. She dozed off without realising it.
When she woke, it was dark beyond the balcony glass. Her stomach made its complaint loud and clear, and she sat up, also complaining as she did. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”
Turns out, everywhere hurt.
Glancing at her phone she realised it was only 9:00 p.m. Her stomach protested again and she muttered, “Alright, alright, I get it.”
Two soft knocks at the bedroom door. Natalia opened it to find lissa in the suite’s little living room, finishing a text. The powder-blue midi dress she wore was asymtrical and elegant, long sheer sleeves drifting at her wrists.
lissa pocketed her phone in a white leather purse and smiled. “And here I thought you’d stay horizontal until morning. Co here.”
She guided Natalia down to the sofa. A faint blue glow kindled in her palm as she reached out, but Natalia caught her wrist before she could touch her.
“There’s no need for that, l.”
lissa tilted her head. “Pale skin, slow reflexes, and…” She pressed Natalia’s forearm with two fingers.
“Ow. Ow! Okay. Rude.”
“I heard you through the wall, Red. You’re sore and fatigued.” lissa paused. “Also, your stomach made it pretty clear that—”
“I’ll just grab so snacks from the fridge. It’ll be fine,” Natalia’s stomach betrayed her again with a loud protest. Traitor. She glared at it, then at the cartoon monkeys on her pyjamas who looked, frankly, ridiculous.
“Well, the Grill is still open. Want to grab a bite?” lissa sounded amused.
It sounded expensive, but Natalia nodded anyway. At first, lissa had wanted to cover the entire trip, but after Natalia protested, she agreed to send Lionel a third of the bill.
lissa pulled a forest-green turtleneck over her head and tucked it into high-waisted boyfriend jeans. The belt needed an extra notch since she’d lost weight lately. Those nightmares had dampened her appetite. She’d only managed three burgers at lunch.
She shrugged into a red bomber and stepped out. lissa was waiting in a long beige wool coat. Side by side, they looked like opposites, but sohow, Natalia never felt self-conscious around her.
In the corridor towards the resort’s restaurant, lissa gave Natalia a quick once-over. “Are you sure you don’t want my help? You’re walking a little funny.”
“I do not walk funny,” Natalia said and exaggerated the wobble. “Besides, pain is good. You said so.”
lissa laughed. “Ah. The masochist archetype.”
“Again? No, please, what?” Natalia puffed one cheek. “Anyway, you said pain is the body warning you to avoid dangerous or harmful things.”
lissa lifted an eyebrow. “One. I’m impressed you listened. Two. That is not an invitation to collect more data.”
“Glad to know you think I’m a total airhead.” She nudged lissa’s elbow with hers. “But I do have a point.”
“Oh? I love points. Go on.”
“If you take it all away, I don’t know. I feel less like a person. Because when I stretch, ow, okay, bad example, but it reminds why I hurt. Which was skiing. Which you suggested.”
“Ah, so I’m on your mind, then,” lissa teased with a pout. “The harmful source of your pain.”
“Harmful of—no, that ca out wrong. How do I even explain…”
“You don’t have to.”
Natalia searched for the right words, lost them, then tried again. “I an, I’m grateful, l.”
lissa slowed.
Natalia’s voice did too. “Every ti I almost fell—”
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“Closer than almost.”
“Will you let finish?” Natalia huffed. “Every ti I almost fell, you were there. It was supposed to be your holiday, but you spent half of it catching . I want to be reminded of… that. I an—”
lissa stopped her rambling with a gentle touch, brushing a tear from her cheek. “That’s… not what I expected you to say.” Her voice held a tenderness she rarely let anyone, including Natalia, hear. “But I enjoyed every mont.”
“Of seeing fall?”
“Of seeing you get back up every ti, refusing treatnt from the World’s best doctor.”
“Humble too,” Natalia added.
lissa rolled her eyes. “So might say you’re stubborn as hell. I’d say…” Her voice dropped as she walked ahead, glancing over her shoulder with a soft smile. “You’re unexpectedly… brave. Choosing to feel pain to rember the care that followed, that is sothing I’d forgotten existed.”
“Naïvety?”
“Optimism. Sothing uniquely you,” lissa said quietly.
“Is that… a complint?”
“It might even be two.” lissa smirked and faced forward again, her soft blue hair catching the amber corridor light.
The sight tugged at a distant mory she couldn’t rember. Déjà vu. Natalia curled her fingers to stop herself from finding out if lissa’s wavy hair felt as soft as it looked.
Touches had been easy, once. After all, lissa had spent that night, or dawn, on the balcony, holding her when she was most vulnerable.
Now, it felt strange sohow.
Stranger still for reasons she couldn’t explain.
After a delicious venison dinner at the Grill, lissa tipped her head towards the lake. “Wanna check out the lake?”
Natalia followed her through the restaurant. The doors opened onto a stone terrace, a circular white lounge wrapped around a low firepit already burning. They sank into the cushions and chose a seat that faced the water. Across the lake, the town centre glittered softly, almost lost beneath the colossal ranges.
lissa drew a long breath, then frowned. “How odd.”
“What is it, l?” Natalia watched the flas dance in the icy wind and fought the ridiculous urge to toast a marshmallow.
“The air has felt right on the verge of snow all evening, but nothing has happened.” lissa leaned back, arms crossed.
“You said it’s expected to snow tomorrow?”
“I am expecting it to snow now.” She glanced at her wristwatch, then opened her palm and flexed her fingers as if she could read weather from her own skin. “It is holding back, or… sothing’s holding it back.”
Sothing in her tone made it sound serious.
“Is that why we’re out here trying not to freeze to death?” Natalia added a playful chatter of teeth.
“So dramatic. You know you could warm the place, right?” lissa still glared daggers at her own long, slender fingers.
The air ward at once. Heat shouldered the cold aside.
lissa’s eyebrow climbed in surprised approval.
“I don’t mind waiting here with you,” Natalia said earnestly.
lissa’s shoulder tensed, then softened. “Who’s the one speaking without a filter now?”
Natalia chuckled as she watched the flickering flas and let them hypnotise her to sleep. Many strange things had happened, and yet she felt oddly safe here. Her eyelids drifted shut.
The flas kneeled, bent, rose, then roared to life. In the dream she was back on the day her Gift awoke.
She could sll smoke and burnt timber.
Worse, she could sll herself — that disturbing scent no one should ever know.
Her arms were blistered, then charred. Her own flas were attuned to her essence, but the fire that burst from the old gas heater was not. The apartnt blocks she’d grown up in used an outdated system. She had been too inexperienced to control an external fire.
Glass shattered outward, yet she could not hear it. The world went silent, as though her body and the fire had fused into one.
Gold light beca orange, then whitened out until light tasted like heat. Until heat tasted like—
Life.
She woke with a gasp and t lissa’s blue, concerned gaze.
“You okay?”
“Nothing. I… Just a bad dream.” Natalia blinked away the shock and rolled up her sleeves to her elbows. Her arms were blemish-free.
She didn’t rember being hurt that night. Everything was fuzzy. Partly she had been too young, partly she had not wanted to rember the pain and the rest of it.
But now that she let herself think about it… why did it feel so real?
“l, the night you found and Lionel, was I… hurt? Did you heal ?” Natalia blurted.
lissa looked surprised, then pursed her lips. “No, only…” She glanced at Natalia and lowered her voice. “Only Lionel. Why? Is everything okay?”
Natalia pressed her face into her palm, and drew a deep breath. It was just a dream. It must be. It was not the first ti her dreams had touched sothing real and bent the truth out of shape.
“I’ll be all right, l.”
lissa wrapped an arm around her, and the mint-and-ocean scent flooded Natalia’s lungs. Her shoulder sagged in relief and only then did she realise the sensation of charred skin still clung to her, vividly.
She buried her nose in the crook of lissa’s neck and ignored the way lissa straightened, startled.
Natalia did not hesitate this ti. She felt a little braver because, with lissa, maybe it would be all right. She threaded her fingers through the azure waves, the strands slipping like liquid.
Like water.
Oh.
She rembered doing exactly that a long ti ago, a warm bright morning followed by a night that tasted of ash and fear. The words then had been all maybes and regret, and for a long ti she forgot what happiness felt like on that very day. She had chosen not to rember pain…
And in doing so had almost forgotten the person who stood beside her through every mont.
lissa.
Natalia could fall, could sink until the water turned black, and sohow a hand would still find hers.
She rembered.
Her eyes stung. Her heart throbbed. It felt like that night long ago, when lissa had been all she had after Lionel was hurt because of her. This wasn’t the sa. This wasn’t tragedy.
“You do look like a real rmaid now, you know that?” Natalia whispered at the crook of lissa’s neck, suddenly embarrassed by the truth of it.
lissa’s blue eyes widened. A beautiful smile played at her mouth. “I wondered if you’d ever rember that.”
“The hair gave you away. It is so much softer now.”
“And here I was hoping it would be my voice that did it.”
“Please, never sing,” Natalia laughed. “You’re good at almost everything, l—just not that.”
“Rude.” lissa laughed too. “And you still hold on the sa way, you know. Like you’re afraid I’ll vanish.”
“Maybe I am,” Natalia whispered. “You did, twice.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” lissa said again, and a small, childish part of Natalia wanted her to repeat it.
For now, she felt safe. She would focus on that, and that was all that mattered. She should not focus on the sudden quickening of her heart at those now familiar promises.
Sowhere beyond them a single flake dared the fall, then vanished, as if the stillness had swallowed it.
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