Frosty feathers of heart & A touch that ignite

"My prince, may I enter?"

The sudden touch of knuckle on the hard wood of Elsie's chamber is a startle to her. Her tear-smeared face snaps up to the door at the voice of Misae.

Elsie roughly rubs a hand over her face, sniffling, counting to three in her head as she tries to force her eyes to not build more tears and her voice to not waver. "You may." She manages.

Within a second —that is before she could fully wipe off the last of the mistiness clinging to her face— the door scrapes open, revealing a tired-looking old woman. Her graying black hair is tied up in a neat bun, though, still a few stray hairs manage to slip through, dangling from either side of her wrinkly face. The cream silk robe she wore stuck close to her pliant body.

"I'm sorry, My darling."

Elsie presses her lips tight together to resist the sob that's trying to wreck through her, to break her. Tears start to refill themselves in Elsie's eyes, taking away the clarity of her vision.

Misae is a slightly smudged watercolor painting as she walks close to him, her steps steady and slow.

The adding up of wrinkles on her golden skin and the tiredness that is now always present itself in her aged features along with her slow movements and small voice are clear signs of the aging, and that's yet another pang to Elsie's already wretched heart.She shakes her head, biting the inside of her quivering lower lip. "You don't have to be…"

Just as she's at an arm's reach before her, she's strangling Misae into an embrace, pressing her face into the silk on her stomach. "I don't want to marry that monster, mother."

"I know, my dear, I know. And I'm sorry that I cannot do anything to protect you from this loveless marriage."

More sobs shatter through Elsie's shaking body. Her teary, icy, eyes cut to Misae's warm brown ones, "What would I do? I don't want to die yet."

She looks Elsie in the eyes, the desert in those twirling into life, looks through her, and invades her. "You won't, I promise." Misae's words are firm and determined as if she knows something Elsie doesn't. Her eyes search for the truth in Misae's words through her eyes which seem like an endless vast of grainy bronze sand.

"How can you be so sure?"

"This is not a marriage out of love, Elsie. This is purely an arrangement of tying the knots with the powerful." Misae's hands that hold Elsie close to her body loosens, her pliant hands slid down her shoulders and circle around Elsie's wrist, tugging her up onto her feet.

They walk toward the bath chamber in quiet. No one sounds an utterance, nonetheless, Elsie's head is filled with the sound of her own evocative thoughts, and it's loud, louder than she can put up with.

It goes on all the while she stands in her vast white stoned bath chamber as Misae runs a bath for her. And it continues even after she makes Elsie get in the tub.

"you're thinking so loud, my dear." If her words aren't enough to startle Elsie out of her never-dying thoughts, the cold water Misae pours on her does the job. She flinches, wide eyes finding Misae looking down at her with a smile that reminds Elsie of the first ray of sunlight after a long night of bone-chilling cold.

"I— uh, I was thinking."

"If I listen enough I can hear the wheels steering inside your pretty little head." She chides, surely trying to lift the mood.

Elsie hums, leaning her back against the cool pebble surface of the tub, breathing in the calming scent of Jasmine oozing out of Misae as she comes to stand behind her, the aroma of fresh flowers in the hot water making their presence known. Her long white hair flows down the tub like silk. Elsie closes her eyes shut, lips parting in an elated sigh as she feels the warm tip of Misae's fingers trace her scalp.

"You won't die, that I promise you. You won't die before I do." Misae whispers as if in a trance.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to say such things? I've heard enough of that absurdity already."

"I am stating the inevitable, Elsie."

Elsie falls silent, because she doesn't know what to say to that. It's the truth after all. Elsie's no fool to think that Misae will be sticking with her until the very end. Misae's just too old. She knows, but it still presides to leave a bitter taste in her mouth.

"What I'm saying is that my baby will not have to surrender to death just by marrying the King of the North." Misae's voice is smooth like the flow of silk against the skin, tone is as encouraging as a mother's. And she is one for her. Even if not by birth. She is still her mother.

She gives enough ardency of love to her to ever deny that.

"The King, he— I don't know, but I have a feeling that he ain't a monster, but just a man who had been shaped by those with a sharpness that made him rough. Maybe it's just the pain he had to push through that gave him rough edges. Or could it be the mask he chose to wear to hide how deeply scarred he might be?"

"And how about we just look at the fact that how much of a delusional you are?"

"Elsie." Misae warns, hands working on her hair with delicacy as she braids it loosely.

"I don't dare to wish, Mother. He killed his wife, what worse could I expect for him to do to me?" Elsie pushes out a long breath that threatens to suffocate her lungs.

"He didn't kill her intently. It was a mistake."

"We don't know." She whispers into the night.