[Aster]
The whole house was just a single room. A kitchen, a living room, and a dining room all crammed together in a space hardly large enough for one of those, with a weird-looking, cold fireplace at the far end. A table and two chairs sat by the boarded-up window, covered in a thick layer of snow that filtered through the gaps between the planks. Bare walls and floor, old furniture that looked about ready to fall apart, and was either covered in rags or in cobwebs, or both.
It didn't look good, but it wasn't the old barn they were sleeping in either. Or the dark cave. Or the cold, muddy forest floor they often slept on. That is why they still smiled at the sight of it, at all the dust and dirt. Though Nivalis did a little less when her blue eyes swept across the room and she noticed something was missing. "...there's no bed?" she asked in a quiet voice, her brows furrowing.
Margaret, who was standing with them by the doorway, let out a soft little hum. "Oh, there's one," she said, her lips curling up at the corners as she started across the room. "Something better than just a bed, even." Her footsteps creaked on the old floorboards as she made her way past the old table and toward the far wall where the fireplace stood. Again, a very weird-looking, big, stone thing that took up most of the corner it was tucked into.
There was a cloth hanging from its side, a curtain as it turned out, when Margaret pulled it aside, revealing a dark, wide opening in the stone... which didn't make any sense. The first thought Aster had was that it might be an oven of sorts, but it was just too big for that and didn't close in any way other than with a curtain. The looks his mother and sister had told him they were just as confused as he was.
"This is a hearthbed, dear. One of the few in the village, and the reason why the butcher's son wanted this house so bad," Margaret explained, a soft smile on her lips as she noticed their confused expressions, then pointed with a finger at the fireplace below, at the dark stones that made up its base. "You make fire here just like in any other hearth, but the smoke goes through the stones first, beneath the bed, before it leaves through the chimney. Warms up the whole thing nicely. We'll get you some furs for it, and you'll have the coziest sleep in the whole village."
That was genius. Whoever decided to combine a bed and a fireplace into one was a genius. Aster could already see it, a cozy nest of furs and pillows, with fire warming them from below, while the winter raged outside... he almost moaned at the thought. He looked at the empty opening and nodded, a lot, and so did the girls. "That's... I didn't know it was a thing," Nivalis eventually hushed.
With a soft pat at the stone, Margaret hummed back, "Takes a lot of effort to build, so they're not very common. We used to have one at my parents' house, and it was the best thing in the winter, even though it was a bit cramped with five of us in it. You'll love it."
Then she turned to look at the room again, her lips pursing. A cloud of dust puffed up from the floorboards when she tapped her foot on them. "As for the rest... it doesn't look good, I know," she admitted a moment later, "but we'll make it work, don't you worry. A bit of cleaning is all it needs, and we'll have a fire going in no time. It will be warm and cozy, just you wait."
Nivalis's breath fogged in the cold of the house as she whispered, "Margaret, you've already done too much for us. We can do it ourselves, you don't have to..." but she didn't get to finish. A gentle shushing sound from the woman stopped her.
"Hush now," Margaret said, waving a dismissive hand. "You had no idea this place even had a bed, love. I'm not leaving until I'm sure you three will be okay through the night." She pushed up her sleeves—coat and dress both—revealing pale forearms dusted with freckles. "Alright, let's make this place a home. Four women should be plenty for that. Girls," she turned to Aster and Silvia, "go outside and see if there's any firewood left in the yard or behind the house. Maybe snap some branches off the bushes nearby if not. Your mother and I will see what the house has for cleaning and look for something to start a fire with."
Aster sighed at being called that, but nodded nonetheless and, with a little glance at Silvia, led the way back outside, the coat swishing around his woolens. They opened the creaky door and stepped onto the porch, then into the snow that came up to their thighs. "So... firewood," he said over the wind, scanning the yard. There was nothing but snow around.
Raising her floppy sleeve to shield her face from the snowflakes, Silvia pointed at a suspicious bump in the snow right next to the house's wall, "Maybe there?" They went for it, struggling through the deep snow until they reached the bump and started digging.
Well, Aster did, while Silvia just stood nearby and "controlled the process," which she claimed was "just as hard." He rolled his eyes at that but didn't protest too much and simply attacked the snow with all the strength he had.
It turned out to be nothing but a bush, completely buried under snow. Silvia made a face like it was obvious it would be there all along, despite being the one to point at it, and was quick to raise her sleeve at another suspicious-looking mound a few steps away. "That one must be it. We always kept our wood at the corner of the house," she said with a confident nod, leading the way to her next guess. With another sigh, Aster trudged after her and soon enough found himself beating the crap out of the snow. And again, it was a bush.
A third one followed. Then, the fourth. They rounded almost the entire house that way, checking every little thing near the walls that looked like it could be a woodpile, until they actually found it—just a small heap of frozen, half-rotten logs near one of the windows. "See? I told you it'd be by a window. I know my stuff," Silvia said almost right away at the sight of it, which earned a little roll of the boy's eyes.
They quickly gathered as much as they could—two armfuls each, one slightly smaller than the other—then struggled back to the porch. Creaking the door open, they stepped back inside, a combined "We're back" flying from their lips. As one, they did a little jump to shake the snow off their coats, sending it flying all around.
That made their mother and Margaret look their way, their faces all dusty as if they had been through a war. "Oh, good, you found some. We were about to go out and help you," Margaret said, wiping a dusty cheek with the back of her hand, then motioned for them to drop it near the fireplace. They did just that, the logs clattering loudly against the floorboards. "Alright, let's try to get a fire going. Shouldn't be too hard," she muttered under her breath, taking out of her pocket an old flint and a small knife, rusty beyond words.
The three of them stood there in the dim and watched her crouch before the cold hearth and stack a few of the better-looking logs inside, arranging them carefully with her bare hands. Then, using a knife, she shaved off some small curls from one of the drier pieces, forming a small, fluffy pile in the center. Then, struck the flint against the knife's back.
Again and again, she moved her hands inside the stone opening, each time lighting up their faces with a brief spark that flew from the iron, little clouds of breath escaping her lips. None of the sparks managed to catch the tinder. "Come on now, work, you..." she muttered after a few dozen tries, whatever curse she had at the end of that dying on her tongue as she remembered there were children nearby. "...silly thing." Her strikes grew more and more frantic as minutes passed, and nothing happened.
Eventually, when Silvia nudged him a bit, Aster decided to help a little. "Let me give it a try. I, uh... I'm good with these kinds of things," he murmured, crouching next to her and taking the knife and the flint from her hands. A doubtful smile touched her lips at that, but she let him try, leaning back to watch with her arms crossed over her chest.
The flint felt heavy and cold in his palm as he settled on his knees before the hearth, the woolens pulling tight against the backs of his legs. Closing his golden eyes for a quick second, Aster took a slow, deep breath, then opened them and looked at the small pile of wood shavings before him. A few clumsy scrapes of flint. Barely any sparks flew, and even fewer landed on the tinder. The shavings caught anyway.
Margaret leaned back in and, with a soft, "How'd you—?" gave a gentle blow at the tiny, orange glow that appeared among the shavings. Then another and another, until her baffled face got lit by a tiny flame, which she quickly fed with smaller bits of wood, then carefully moved it beneath the larger logs. "Well, I'll be... you really are good at this," she murmured as she watched the fire in the hearth grow stronger. "My Tobi can't do it to save his life."
A soft hum and an innocent smile were all that left the boy's lips, after which he pushed himself up, leaving a dusty handprint on the floor. Nivalis gave him a little pat, a silent 'be careful' on her lips, to which he just nodded and leaned into her, watching the flames grow.
All of them did, just stood there in complete silence for a while, and watched the fire spread from one rotten log to the other. Everything grew brighter as it did, the entire room changing hues from gray to a soft orange. Got warmer as well, at first just making their noses and cheeks tingle, then to the point that they had to take off their coats.
Margaret was the one to break the silence. "Alright, that's better. We should probably start," she said, turning from the hearth and picking the rag from the pile of things nearby. Aster didn't even notice there was a pile of things ready for cleaning until now—an old bucket with a crack on its side, a small clay pot with a chipped rim, a bunch of rags, and a broom made of pine branches.
He let out a soft sigh, followed by a much louder one when he lifted his eyes and saw how filthy the place was. The light, although it made things feel a bit cozier, also revealed how much trouble they were in. Cobwebs more like curtains, dust bunnies so big that they might as well be dust bears, and an unholy amount of dirt on the floors, walls, and every piece of furniture. "This is gonna take a while..." Silvia muttered from beside him, her face scrunching up in the same way as his. Aster just nodded slowly.
Nivalis placed her hands on their shoulders and guided them over to the pile where Margaret was already in housewife mode. "Alright, girls, here's what we'll do," she said, pressing the cracked bucket into Aster's hands, then the chipped pot into Silvia's. "We're going to need lots of water for this mess, so you'll both be on snow-melting duty. Your mother and I will..." she began, and didn't stop.
...
There are levels to how much back can ache. The lower ones are a slight discomfort, a tiny pinch in the muscles that's easy to ignore. Then, the middle ones kick in, the kind that feels like someone's pressing a thumb into the spine, but nothing that a little bit of stretching can't fix. The higher levels are when you start walking funny, and your face scrunches up every time you do anything. And then there's the last level, where you suddenly don't mind as much to just lie there in the dirt for a bit.
Aster had been through them all and was now discovering a new frontier of back pain, after hours of nothing but scrubbing and sweeping and carrying stuff around. Almost the entire day, from the very morning to the late afternoon, was spent on turning this dusty, dark place into a home. Every single surface, every little corner, every nook and cranny that could be reached, was washed and cleaned, or at the very least swept. A few times, he and Silvia were even lifted up to wipe the ceiling and remove cobwebs from the corners; that's how thorough their cleaning was.
It was worth every bit of it, every ache in the back, every drop of sweat spilled. The house looked so much better now, with the floorboards no longer gray with dirt but a warm, honey-colored brown... the kind that made one want to walk barefoot. The table and chairs got scrubbed clean and now looked quite nice, even with all their dents and scratches.
The furniture—pretty much just a nightstand, a small chest for clothes, and a few stools—was moved around a bit to make more space, making the room feel bigger than it was. Shelves on the walls were dusted and cleared of all the junk that was there, now mostly empty and just waiting for something to be put on them. And even the boarded-up window no longer had any gaps, sealed from the inside with a bunch of rags. Everything was still old and worn, but no longer filthy. It was... livable now. Cozy. Theirs.
"I meant to ask, what are these... things?" Silvia said, looking down at a bunch of wooden figures on their nightstand, people of different shapes and sizes. Each with a different expression, pose, and a different thing in their hands. They were quite intricate, yet uncolored, and... really weird. A bit creepy, even. Hollow eyes stared in every direction, at every part of the room.
With a tired smile, Margaret came to her side, the floor making a little cracking noise as she bent over to get a better look at them. "The Twelve, dear. Took me a while to clean them all," she hushed, then began to point at them one by one while chanting something that sounded like a children's song. "Those who shaped the world we see: Mora, Vell, and Drenn make three. Lune the fourth, set rivers free. Five that brought the warmth to it: Selene, the Twins who share one sight, Elysia, and Obir the Bright..."
A small pause followed as she tried to remember the next part, a slight wrinkle forming on her forehead. After a moment, she got it, "...and three to guard us through the night: Eros fierce and Karn the strong, Brenn who stands for what is right." Her finger stopped at the last figure—a hollow-eyed man with a shield, face twisted in pain—and she finally took a breath.
Aster's brow furrowed as he shuffled closer to the nightstand. "This one... Elysia? Are you sure?" he asked, taking the little wooden figure into his hands, the one of a plump woman with round cheeks and a gentle smile, holding a small lute in one hand. Margaret answered with a nod, and he found himself shaking his head in return. That... didn't look like her at all. He ended up glancing at the ceiling and sending a smile to the skies, a tiny, amused little thing.
Taking the figure from his scarred fingers, Nivalis gave it a gentle twist, her own smile much smaller. "We had her a bit taller back home, and..." she trailed off, her blue eyes darting for a moment to those round ears on the figure. Clearing her throat, she changed the subject, "They're very well-made. You sure we can have them?" She ran a finger along the hair of the plump wooden woman.
Margaret hummed her confirmation and stepped back from the nightstand, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the room one more time. "They are yours, dear. Everything here is," she hushed, to which Nivalis nodded and put the figure back on the nightstand with the rest. "Alright. That's that. I'll be on my way now, got a husband to scold and dinner to make," she added after a bit more of looking around, her brown eyes meeting all three of theirs one by one. "It was a pleasure, girls. We've done a great job here."
After a chorus of quiet thank-yous and goodbyes, she was already at the door, with her coat back on and her boots laced up. "You remember where we live? If something happens during the night, don't hesitate to come over to us, or to the hearthwork. There's always someone there," she hushed, her one hand already on the door handle.
Another nod came from Nivalis, "We do. We will." Then she stepped closer and wrapped her arms around the woman in a tight hug, burying her face in her coat. "Margaret... we... thank you. For everything," she mumbled, and after a moment, Margaret hugged her back with a soft sigh.
"You are very welcome, dear. I'll come in the morning to check on you after I feed my boys, maybe with some milk if the goats allow," Margaret whispered, her eyes closing for a second as she squeezed her. Then she let go and, with a final, warm smile, stepped out into the snow and evening and closed the door behind her. A muffled "...have a good night!" came through the wood, and then just the wind.
Silence fell upon the house as the three of them just stood there for a moment, looking at the door and around their home. The fire crackled in the hearth, the boards creaked, and the wind whistled beyond the windows. "She's nice. And not only because of milk," Silvia was the one to break the quiet, right before she shuffled closer to the table where a bunch of stuff was laid out and, picking up a bit of cheese, took a nibble. A real cheese that one of the women from the hearthworks brought not too long ago.
Quite a lot of people had come by during the day while they were working. Hagen was the first to do so, bringing the old bag they left in his house and a large bundle of firewood. He was worried they didn't have any, so he just went and chopped some for them, enough to last them for a good couple of days. Aster couldn't even lift the thing.
Then came the women from the hearthworks, one by one, bringing smiles and a little something with them. A nice loaf of bread, two dozen chicken eggs in a fancy basket that they were to return later, a clay jar of incredibly sour pickles, a small bag of dried apples, and a larger one filled with all kinds of vegetables: carrots, onions, and beets. A nice set of wooden plates, bowls, and spoons. And, of course, the cheese. Silvia liked it very much and kept sneaking pieces of it throughout the evening.
Tessa, Anja's mother, came later and was quite nice, bringing some honey and mint to make tea with. She looked a lot like Margaret—same brown hair and eyes, just more rounded in the face and a bit older—so Aster ended up asking if they were sisters. They laughed at that, and it became something of an internal joke between them.
Though one visit wasn't quite as pleasant, when Mother Anne came to check on them and brought a bundle of furs for the bed. Herself, she was sweet and kind and very motherly, truly. It's just that she'd brought her son along to help carry them. A lanky, balding man who kept giving Nivalis these... looks. What little hair Aster had on his body stood up the very second it happened.
Though she and Silvia didn't notice any of it and kept saying he was imagining things. But he was really not. Luckily, whatever the man's name was, he seemed terrified of Aster's hands and kept flinching away from them, from all the scars on them. So, whenever he tried to get close to his mother or talk to her alone, the boy was there in between them, reaching out for a handshake. Worked like a charm.
With his arms above his head, Aster groaned as he stretched and did a little twist, a series of satisfying pops and cracks coming from his back. It didn't help with the pain, but it still felt nice. "Yeah... she is," he muttered under his breath, then shuffled over to the table and, with a sigh, took a bite of the cheese as well. Salty and a bit sour, but he still liked it.
After making sure the door was latched, Nivalis smiled at the sight of them just munching away like normal kids. "Leave some for me," she teased and joined them by the table, a piece of cheese and a chunk of bread in her hands a moment later. Not a word was said as they had a small, late-afternoon snack. Just chewing sounds and smiles, like a normal family. A spoonful of honey for each was how it ended, and it was delicious.
For a moment, they just sat there and looked around the house and at each other, not believing their eyes. It didn't feel real, any of it. Their own little house. Warm and safe and cozy. After all that cold, the endless running, all the hunger and fear, all the suffering, they were finally here. At home. "So what now?" Silvia asked after a while, her legs swinging beneath her.
Snapping from her thoughts, Nivalis gave a soft hum. "We... uh," she said, her nose scrunching up a bit as she looked at them, then at herself, noticing just how dirty they all were. They cleaned everything except themselves. "...we need to wash before bed. Right," she added in a soft murmur, her eyes darting toward the hearth, then to the bucket of clean, melted water near it.
Groans came from both Aster and Silvia at the thought of doing anything but going to bed. And yet, they knew she was right and just nodded, dragging their feet over to the hearth and undressing. Oh, the relief he felt at getting out of those tight woolens was indescribable, the air of the house kissing his skin and making it prickle.
He sighed, then shuddered at the sensation of his mother's fingers slipping into the waist of his panties and pulling them down, past his pale thighs and knees, to his ankles... and away. His limp boy bits, small and hairless as ever, were revealed to the room. "Oh, finally..." he mumbled under his breath, doing one more stretch.
Nivalis gave him a little fondle down there, just to make sure everything was alright after being squeezed all day. "Does it hurt anywhere?" she asked, looking up at him, her hand gently massaging his softie. He shook his head, after which she took off her own clothes and helped Silvia with hers, leaving them all naked in the warm glow of the fireplace. Same long, silver hair, same pale skin all over.
It was a quick affair, the wash. After Aster heated the water with his palm until it was just right, the three of them wiped each other down with a wet rag, then with a dry one, gave a quick rinse to their hair, and that was it. They were tired.
Then, it was bedtime. It took them a few minutes to drag all the furs from the table to the hearth and arrange them properly inside the stone opening. It was quite high from the ground, so Silvia needed a bit of help climbing in, but after that... it was pure heaven. Soft, thick furs beneath them that slowly grew warmer from the stone, and the nicer ones to cover themselves with, all the way to the top of their chins. And when they closed the curtain, it got dimmer and cozier. The perfect nest.
They lay in silence for a bit, the three of them, just breathing and smiling at each other. Nivalis in the middle, Aster and Silvia on both sides, all snuggled together beneath the warm furs. Only their legs moved, brushing against each other deep under the covers, while the winter was at its worst just behind the walls. Even more now, it didn't feel real. Any of it. And yet it was, just as real as that naughty promise Aster was given the other night.
...