Notes: So it's been a while. I don't go here anymore, but here's a thing from 2016 I found in my google drive.

i. The cold is all she's ever known.

So she thinks while crouching in a darkened alleyway in the corner of Vale, her stomach twisting with hunger and her hands numb in the bitter December air. It's snowing.

Snow is dangerous, she thinks idly as the snowflakes drift languidly through the air to land on her hair, her face, her bare arms. Beautiful, but deadly.

She hasn't eaten in...how long, now? It feels like weeks but it could just be days. She remembers the candies and pastries and desserts she used to love when she was younger. Butterscotch, triple-layered cheesecake, ice cream sundaes covered with hot fudge. She's always had a sweet tooth, and now her stomach clenches at the thought of sitting in front of the fireplace with a warm mug of hot chocolate in her hands.

Maybe she'll take one.

She stays hunched over against the cold, hard concrete wall for a little while longer, watching her breath turn to mist in front of her, until the shivers have gone away and she feels like she's made of ice.

.

.

ii. Cool metal and the absence of emotion.

Mercury doesn't understand how to love. Neither does she. This suits her just fine, so they develop a relationship (friendship?) centered around playful, sardonic banter and the occasional flirtatious joke.

"Never did like the summer," he confides to her once. They're sitting on the highest building in Vale looking down at the darkened city below them, and she dangles her legs off the edge fearlessly. She looks over at him, at his stone gray eyes and pale, muscled arms and strong jaw covered with the ghosts of scars his father gifted him.

"Why's that?"

"Too hot. Stifling."

.

.

iii. Cinder is warmth.

Blazing out from the bleak landscape around her, she commands the sun and moon and stars, flames of the deepest midnight blue and the hottest red dancing in her palms.

So she follows her like a moth drawn to a flame. She drinks in the heat of her love, her affection, her anger. Some days Cinder takes her chin in her blood-red fingernails and draws her closer, lathering her body with sickly sweet words made out of pure sugar. You matter. You are worthy. You will change the world. Other days she slaps her with those very same caressing hands, leaving red-hot scars across her cheeks. Pathetic. What are you hesitating for? Do you love me or not? Slit his throat and ask no questions.

She can't escape. From the moment she first looked into the flames dancing in her golden eyes, she knew she was finished.

"What's your name, child?"

"Emerald."