"Take care of Yukina for me," Hina said sadly as she looked at Rui holding her in her arms, fast asleep, "I put the casket in the hole and closed it. The elders should assume my dead body is in there, even if they don't find the note first."

Rui's hair whipped around her face in the blistering winds of ice world as she asked, "Why can't you take Yukina with you?" She held her closer to her chest so she wouldn't freeze as she slept.

"The men in demon world might not be as horrific as the elders tell us," Hina explained, "but it's still dangerous, especially for a little girl. I'll be back for her once I find her father."

"What about your son?" Rui asked.

"He's been dead for years because of you," she said, "stop thinking he isn't, Rui. Just take care of Yukina until I get back." Hina turned around and left ice world for the last time, leaving everyone to assume she had killed herself.

"That memory again," Rui said to herself as she sat alone in her hut, "it's been seven years Hina, isn't that enough."

"Rui?" a 10-year-old Yukina asked as she stepped in the doorway, "What are you muttering about?"

She turned to her as she closed the door behind herself, then said, "Yukina, there is something I must tell you. There is a secret that the elders don't want you to know and there is something I've been hiding from you all of these years."

Yukina said, "I knew it! It always feels like you were hiding something from me! What is it?" She sat across from Rui.

Rui explained sadly, "Remember all those times you felt oddly alone? As if there was someone who was supposed to be by your side? When you were born, you had someone by your side. Your mother Hina, she gave birth to a boy at the same time as you."

"I have a sister?" she asked.

"'Brother' is the proper term for males," she replied, "since having a male is forbidden I was forced to throw him off the cliffs to demon world below. I could tell he understood every word we said, every horrible thing all of these women here said about him. I felt so sorry for him. I told him to come back and kill us all for being so cruel to a newborn."

Yukina asked, "You think he's still alive, that he survived the fall?"

She nodded and said, "He was born in an orange fire so intense, no one could touch him. We wrapped him in a sacred cloth. I think his energy signature alone could help him survive. I gave him the tear your mother shed for him before I sent him off. I'm sure one day he's going to come back and kill us all."

"He might not remember..." Yukina muttered, she looked up and said, "So he's alive, somewhere, with the same stone as mine." She held her necklace close to her.

"I believe he is," Rui said, "and there's something else. Your mother Hina, 7 years ago while you were sleeping, faked her suicide."

In shock, Yukina asked, "What? How?"

"With me, she put an empty casket in a marked grave," she explained, "she's been searching for your father ever since. I don't know where she is now but she vows to return. Yukina?"

"My brother," she said, "since he's still alive he must be going through some horrible things. I don't know if he remembers being thrown from that cliff but he must be wondering what kind of demon he is. I have to remind him what happened here. I'll make sure he comes back and kills every last ice maiden." She looked up at Rui who was a bit surprised.

"I'll be back by the solstice," the elder said to Rui before she, left several years later, "I'm leaving you in charge as the next leader, Rui."

Rui nodded and said, "I understand." As soon as the elder was out of sight, she felt a presence to the right of her and heard a strange noise. She turned and saw a young man standing there and gasped.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said slowly, "I'm looking for a woman I used to know named Hina."

He's looking for Hina? She asked herself, How odd. "Alright, I'll take you to her," she said nervously.

She lead the boy to her grave and explained, "This is where Hina has been. 15 years ago she started talking about meeting men on the survice world to see if they were as terrible as the elders here told us. Even though I warned her that she was reaching her 100th year, she told me she would come back in time to bear her daughter. That's something us ice maidens do every 100 years, bare a daughter exactly like ourselves. When she came back, she was pregnant with twins. She ended up giving birth to one boy and one girl." He glanced at her, and then back to the grave. "Men aren't allowed here, she the elders made me throw her son to his supposed death but I believe he's still alive. Her daughter, Yukina, was the most beautiful baby anyone had ever seen. When she was 3 years old Hina killed herself out of grief for her son's death."

"I see," the boy said.

Rui continued, "When Yukina was 10-years-old I finally told her the truth about her brother and she left to find him. That was 4 years ago now. Where are you going?" She looked over and saw him walking away.

As he walked, she examined him and realized why he seemed so familiar to her. "It's you isn't it?" she asked as she ran after him and fell into the snow, "You're the one. You're Hiei the imiko, Hina was your mother, wasn't she? I'm sorry for what I did to you. I was right...all along...you really are alive." She put her face into the snow as he walked away. Then she remembered Hina. "Wait!" she called, "Your mother!" He was gone.