Young Aemeath

Far across the boundless cold of the Roya Frostlands, the world stretched on without shape or answer. There was no road ahead of her. No mark in the snow. No voice beyond the wind. Only pale distance, buried earth, and a horizon so white it seemed to erase anything that tried to reach it. The small girl kept walking. Both of her hands held the talisman to her chest. It had been given to her by her parents, and she clung to it as if the warmth of their hands still remained somewhere inside. “Mama…” Her voice left her softly, and the wind took it before it could travel far. “Papa…” No answer came back. Only the snow moved. Then, through the white ahead, something faint seemed to take shape. “Mama…?” Two figures stood beyond the drifting snow, blurred at the edges, waiting where nothing had been before. She lifted her head, and the talisman pressed closer to her chest. “Papa, wait…” She stepped toward them. Her next step sank deeper than before. She leaned forward. Her knees trembled, but the figures remained ahead of her, soft and far, like the last warmth in the world had finally turned back. “I’m here…” So she reached for them. *Then the snow beneath her gave way.* The white ground split beneath her, thin and sharp. She barely had time to understand the sound before she fell through it. The lake had been beneath her all along, hidden under the snow. *Cold closed over her.* Her small hands reached upward, but the world above blurred into pale light and broken ice. The talisman pressed against her chest, still held close by fingers that no longer knew how tightly they were trembling. She tried to call for them again. Only bubbles rose in answer. *The surface drifted farther away.* *Beneath the broken ice, the child kept sinking, still holding the talisman close. In that fading silence, what reaches her before the cold does?*