Goddesses; Sisters

Winter and Summer stepped out into a shining forest meadow in the full first blush of spring. Winter's skin shone as though it were made of diamonds hard and brittle. Her dark hair fell in a dramatic line straight down her back standing out against her slender gown of gossamer a shade so light blue as to be almost white. Her immortal eyes, dark and all-seeing took in the scene before her with a strange sense of boredom flickering from the ice blue eyes while tiny snowflakes whitened her black eyelashes un-melting even in the warmer weather.

Summer stood beside her foreboding sister, with a gentle smile on her sun-touched face. Her wild blond hair fell in a mess of tangles and curls with bits of leaves and even a tiny bird's nest, down her back. Her gown held all the joyous colors of her season, the riot of wildflower colors fusing with the shades of green into a harmonious whole while her brown eyes smiled at the group of dancing peasant girls just entering the grove.

Stepping forward, Summer approached the group of young women capturing their attention before they were caught in her sister's pragmatic gaze. With a wave of her hand, two of the girls moved apart from their friends and came to bow down before her bare feet. With a smile she nodded and the other girls, in a trance, left the meadow with their eyes full of stars.

When the others had departed, Winter stepped to her sister's side. "Well if there had been any doubts remaining about the time for fulfillment I suppose they've been laid to rest," her voice holding the calm of a snow-filled morning filled the meadow with a hush. "So the twin princesses of Munajoo have braved the consequences and joined the peasant girls in the Spring's first gathering of wildflowers?" The twin girls, now clutching to each other and staring at the grass with all the determination they could muster lest they disturb the fury of the goddess. "All is good then." She waved her hand to the woods and a scouting party of elves stepped into view. "Your new family awaits you, you may go to them." As if she was now bored with the whole situation, Winter turned away to study her fingernails as if searching for a hidden flaw.

The girls hurried into the arms of the elves where their destinies awaited and disappeared from sight. "Take my hand sister, it is time." Summer's warm voice held the joy of leaping streams and warm breezes as she turned to her sister with her hand extended. "We must assume the form of the two princesses and begin our lives as mortals, as it was foretold." Winter shivered with a look of revulsion on her face and then sighed dramatically. Even so, she placed her slender white hand into the tanned hand of her sister and the magic caught them up in a whirlwind of golden dust motes. When it left in a rush the blond princesses were back in the meadow.

"It could be worse." Summer sighed spoke but then squeaked and her dirty hands with chipped fingernails flew to her throat. "Is this my voice? It isn't melodious at all!" Her lip trembled as she looked down at the mortal clothing, her distaste for the garment obvious from her sneer. Winter bit her lip and then began to laugh at her sister. Before long, Winter was laughing so hard she had fallen down into the sweet grass, laughing at the affronted look on her sister's face.

"Oh Sister, it is not so bad as all of that! Well just feel the hot blood course through your veins with all the vigor of youth! I feel as though I could run for hours, or sing out at the slightest whim!" Winter smiled and beneath the mortal's merely pretty face her true beauty shone through for just a moment. Grabbing her sister's hand she tugged and pulled her along back to the castle. "Just think about all the fun we're going to have! No more merely watching as the seasons change but changing along with them!"

"We didn't ask their names you know," Summer said as they made their way through the forest. "We don't know anything at all about them you know, only that they are the princesses of Munajoo and that this country has been at war for two generations with the country of Jixon."

"Stop worrying! I can't see anything at all going wrong you silly goose!" Winter giggled and then sprinted off as the castle and the small town at its base came into view. Summer groaned but lunged herself after her sister hoping to stop her before she did anything stupid.

***

Winter and Summer settled in to their roles of mortal princesses swiftly. Their mortal bodies were young and far, slender and full of energy. Both had simple blond hair which was neither curly nor straight and simple mortal faces. Meriel and Alice were the names of the bodies that they had taken over and they were careful to call each other the correct names, at least in public but their happy outgoing natures were hard to tie down to just embroidery in the sun rooms of the castle. The two soon met their older brother and while they tried to be decorous one shouting match had led to them learning weapons along with Tierseck and the three were inseparable until his eighteenth birthday. At a celebration deep in midwinter the King jovially announced that his oldest son would be joining the army as soon as possible. Before the two sisters could cry, the King turned to Winter and with a wink told her of his plans for her as well.

"Meriel, my beautiful daughter just look at how you have blossomed! It is far past the time that we get you married and settled down! I have sent word to your betrothed that he should come as soon as he may so that you will not grow too stale for him!" The jolly fat king chortled at his own joke and did not seem to notice the sheen of sweat that had broken out across Winter's fair skin. The festivities continued until almost dawn and no one seemed to find it amiss that Princess Meriel should wish to spend time alone with her thoughts in the princess' bedroom in the tallest tower of the castle the next morning.

Outside her tiny windows a fierce winter storm flung its vengeance against the castle while Winter herself stalked up and down the length of her rooms dressed in a fur wrap from a snow leopard and the skin of her immortal body. Growling to herself and visibly shaking with anger she growled and the storm increased tenfold. Summer had made her escape as soon as her sister's mood had become clear and so Winter prowled her stone chamber alone with her thoughts. Just let some stupid pig-headed mortal idiot try to get to her while this storm lasted! Why she would exert her powers to make sure that this storm never ended! That way he could never get to her!

With a fierce bellow she yelled at the fire crackling on her hearth and it went out rather than face her wrath. Feeling at least a little mollified, Winter flopped down onto her lounge couch and threw her arm over her eyes what was she going to do? It was in this position that her sister found her a little later. "Still angry enough to freeze down Spring Himself?" She whispered from the doorway, ready to flee in case Winter's mood had not yet improved. Winter blew a piece of hair out of her eyes and stood, her fur wrap hitting the floor to reveal her perfect sparkling flesh. She resumed her pacing not seeming to notice that she was nude, Summer shook her head with a smile.

"How could a person say something that horrible to another person anyway? As if I wanted to get married?" Her voice had mellowed out enough that Summer felt safe enough to enter the room, biting her lip to keep the smile off as she took up a seat on the deserted couch.

"Everyone is whispering about this storm, no one has ever seen one this bad." Winter laughed outright at Summer's soft spoken voice. "You know that the King only wants to see you happy, well he wants to see his daughter happy and since he thinks that's you I guess it counts." Summer said no more than that for Winter had turned to her with her fingers curled into claws at her sides and she was growling under her breath. Summer wisely closed her lips and looked away. "The King is trying to get our brother to negotiate a truce with Jixon and if they can manage it I will be the offering to insure peace."

"I don't like it, a girl ought to have some sort of a choice." Winter mumbled to herself, relaxing slightly but then with a shout of renewed rage she ran to the window and threw open the shutters. The wind shrieked in as Summer gasped and jumped for the deserted fur. With a growl, Winter looked down from her tower to see through the eddies of snow a party arriving in the courtyard below. Someone turned their head up to look at her and Winter shrieked in fury, the storm responding to her fury redoubled its strength and the people below were soon skidding around and praying that they found cover. Winter stalked away from the window and with a growl made of revenge she dressed herself with magic in Winter's own gown of snow. Before Summer could stop her the Princess Meriel stalked from the bedroom looking terrible and frightening.

***
"My liege, what do you mean you saw someone? Everyone is taking shelter from the storm surely, only a mad person would have the shutters open now." Prince Yanning raised an eyebrow at his squire, but didn't say anything. He knew he had seen someone looking down at him from one of the towers, someone frightening with midnight black hair and a pale face. He only shook his cloak out and then handed it to one of the waiting servants. His father's kingdom was small, comprising several islands off the coast of Munajoo and their alliance was still new although the betrothal that brought them here was not. He sighed and straightened his shoulders, patting his shoulder length brown hair self-consciously.

The last time he had seen his betrothed, she had been a gawky child not yet eleven. Dangerously close to uneducated and as vapish as her mother it was not a match he had relished. Yan shook himself mentally, this was marriage not love and it wasn't like he would have to deal with this woman all the time she might even have matured into something beautiful. But just as he heard the King and Queen approach the receiving room where he and his squire waited in a hell hound stormed into the room.

Dressed in a gown that he was certain was made of diamonds and bearing a look so foreboding that he, a war-hardened knight, took a step back lest it was he she was after. Yet she was beautiful, a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and nose stood out against her porcelain white skin, and her hair had been left unbound and resembled silk. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the look in her eyes he would have been hard pressed not to try to win her into his bed.

"So, you're the pig they've dug up so that I can marry before I grow stale. You're the best they could do?" She had been after him after all and he gulped in terror. She had backed him against a wall and was taking him in with a more than frank stare, this couldn't be his shy betrothed, could it? After she had looked him up and down, she snorted. The woman actually snorted!
Before he had to say something, or try to defend himself against her, the King and Queen swept in.

"Meriel? What are you doing here?" The King bore such a look of startlement that Yan struggled to keep the smile off his face. "You shouldn't be alone with your betrothed, this is most unseemly." His wife, who if Yan remembered correctly hadn't much in the way of brains. Unfortunately for the King, his daughter had now turned on him.

"Seemly? Who the hell cares about being seemly or proper?" Yan and the King both dropped their jaws as the princess swept out of the room just as fast as she had swept in.

"Well," the King said eloquently. "I don't think she's very happy about something."

"What was she wearing?" The Queen put in with a touch of envy.

Yan didn't say anything and made certain that his smile was purely inside his mind, well this was going to prove infinitely more interesting than he had been thinking!

***
"Winter! How could you?" Summer was standing behind her sister, doing her hair for the banquet that evening. "You swore in front of the King? We're supposed to learn something while we're here and I know we're not supposed to be learning foul language." Implacable as always Summer finished the last bow in Winter's hair and stepped back. "What is your betrothed going to think of you know."

"Maybe he'll think I'm not a doll that he can push around." While the display downstairs had lessened the degree of her temper she was still smoldering inside. Winter shoved her stool over as she stood up. "Come on let's go down to dinner, we're both ready and I'm in no mood to play around with ridiculous ideas of being fashionably late." With that she grasped Summer's hand and towed her out of their bedroom and down the halls and stairways to the foyer just behind the Great Hall, there they found a few of the courtiers surrounding Prince Yan. Winter yawned loudly and studied her fingernails.

Summer elbowed her sister to try and get her to behave better but the shove was ignored. Prince Yan had already noticed and had broken free of the circle of courtiers to bow before the princess'

***
How can two woman look so much alike, and yet so different? The last time he had been here, Yan hadn't been able to tell the two apart. Now he could tell at once which one was which and while the scowl on Meriel's face certainly helped that there was something else as well. He bowed to Princess Alice and kissed her hand when she offered it, her skin felt warm and she smiled at him and nodded. When he bowed to Princess Meriel, she bowed back!

"How are you this evening, your highness?" She asked as if bored by the whole process. "I hope you find your quarters to your likings, where did they pigeon hole you into, anyway?" Her voice was pleasant enough, when she sheathed her claws. He looked into her eyes, a serious breach of etiquette but the woman provoked him. When he would have answered, he stared transfixed at her eyes. Her eyes were the palest shade of ice blue he felt his breath catch in his throat.

Princess Alice seemed to notice something was amiss, because she stepped into the conversation. "Is something wrong Your Highness?" Her cool voice seemed to snap him out of whatever paralysis had gripped his limbs and he shook his head.

"No, I'm fine it is merely that I seemed to have lost the second round to your sister and I lose heart to think that I will never lose a battle against her." Just as he finished speaking the King and Queen appeared and it was time to go in for supper.

***

"Princess Meriel, may I ask what it is about me that you find so distasteful?" Yan was smiling as he worked his way through the first course of the meal, and he had cocked his head to the right to see if his betrothed would favor him with a response when he suddenly found himself falling again as the impertinent lady favored him with her smile. He had never before felt such an odd reaction to a woman's smile, what could be happening to him?

"Only that you are my father's choice for my husband and not mine. It doesn't help that you are obviously a man of little courage and are possibly only a knight because your father is a king. I don't think you could even lift a sword! You are too skinny to be a real knight." She stressed the word real with a sneer of her lips though her smile returned quickly. Yan gasped and turned his face completely to stare at him. Why the wench had called him weak and unmanly!

"Well wench perhaps you would like to see me practice tomorrow morning then?" He smiled back at her, who was this woman and why hadn't he met her the last time he had been here?

"I would much rather fight you myself, your men probably let you win when you spar against them." Her tone was definitely teasing now and he chuckled at her.

"I could never raise my sword against a woman, it would go against my oaths as a knight."

"Then before I come down in the morning I shall bind my chest and hide my hair." One of her eyebrows was cocked and he felt his fingers twitch as he wished to trace the high curve of it. He smiled and shook his head.

"No good, I would still know that you are a woman and I could not possibly lift my sword against you."

"Well then my victory will be swift, sir knight." And with that she returned to her soup, surely his jaw had just dropped into his own bowl of soup. Surely the wench would not insist that he spare with her? He wouldn't wish to hurt her, for all that she seemed quite fierce she was still a woman, and thus delicate. He shook his head and prayed that he would not see her on the morrow.

***
"Winter, please I'm begging you. It was cute when you charmed the guardsmen into giving you lessons in fighting but this is taking it too far. Please pretend to be a lady." Summer was down on her knees in front of her sister as Winter laced up her soft boots over the bottoms of her loose trousers. She had designed the fighting outfit herself to provide the most comfort while she was fighting. Needless to say no one approved but no one had stopped her either when she had decided to learn the art of war and the guardsmen had at first been amused. She had earned their respect over time though and she was one of the best fighters in the whole castle and castle town.

Winter shook her head, "no I'm going to do this. The least he can do is give me a nice work-out." With that she marched out of the room with Summer at her heels moaning in fear at what tragedy lay just ahead of her sister's folly this time.

***
"Don't look now my liege but your betrothed just walked onto the practice grounds." Yan had been doing a few warm up stretches before giving his squire his daily lessons but at this news he stood up quickly to greet his lady fair. Surely wearing a dress and a proper attitude. But what he say made his skin freeze over. Standing beside the arms-master of the castle was his betrothed but he could tell that she was in nothing like a proper state of decorum.

She was wearing loose leggings that did nothing to hide the healthy curve of her legs or the shape of her perfectly round bottom. Her shirt was tight across her bosom and he knew that she hadn't held true on her promise to bind them for which he was giddily happy. Her hair had been pulled into a tight braid and out of her face and just as he was staring at her, she turned to stare back at him and smiled.

Approaching him, Winter checked her muscles and was pleased to note she was certainly warmed up enough for a sparring match. She bowed before Prince Yan and smiled. "I hope you are ready to strike at me, for I will not show you any mercy your pompous-ness." The snideness of her comment hit him and with that he was done with letting her walk all over him.

"More than ready, though if you would like to warm up, please go ahead." He smirked and walked immediately into the closest sword circle, he didn't have to turn to know that she followed him. "Do you not want to wear padding?"

"The swords are practice blades, you can't kill me and if you can get a strike on me than I deserve the bruises." She smiled and took a practice sword from a rack before walking to one side of the circle and bowing leisurely in his direction. He took another that was the right side, noting that she had taken a light blade a little bigger than a saber but not anything like a broad sword. He bowed to her as well before advancing on her. He had decided to let her have one hit to be gracious when she spun into motion so fast that he blinked and before he could move she had hit him on his left unprotected side, he growled and joined in the fight with relish.

Within moments he knew they were equally matched and he began to enjoy himself. They were both sweating and both had several bruises by the time the arms-master laughingly called a halt to the fight. "You two are so perfectly matched that I call this a tie or no one else will get any practice." Winter and Yan both bowed to the man and then to each other. Winter with a smile on her face that showed so much happiness in it that Yan howled and picked her up in his arms and spun her around. She laughed and obliged by not kicking him.

"Why you wench I believe you are better than most of the knights I have ever fought against!" He said as he put her on her feet, his own grin stretching his face in two. "I hope to the gods that you are satisfied in my manhood now?" He quirked an eyebrow at him and she nodded laughing. Then she turned and started walking, sensibly cooling down from their workout.

"Enough for now I suppose, but do you only know how to fight with a sword? What about archery? Or bow-staff?" When he turned to stare at her in shock she giggled. "Kidding, you don't have to fight me with all the weapons I know, but perhaps someday you would fight hand to hand with me? I've learned some great tricks off the street and I've been meaning to try them out." She was heading towards the garden and he followed her as if chained to her side.

"I suppose sometime we will have to have another fight then." He smiled and folded his hands behind his back. "You have grown into quite the wench, Meriel." She giggled and shrugged.

"I suppose I don't really see the point of pretending to be something I'm not." She shrugged and sat down on a garden bench beneath one of the flowering trees. "Will you sit with me?" She patted the bench beside her and smiled sweetly at him.

"I will thank you," he sat beside her, enjoying the shade and her company both. "Meriel, I must say I could have sworn your eyes were brown." He said it calmly looking up into the branches of the tree, but her eyes had shocked him last night.

"They are." She said, sounding shocked and placing her hand on his arm. He tried to ignore the jump in his heartbeat as she touched him and looked into his eyes. "What color do you see them?" Somehow this question was terribly important to her and so he took her hands in his and stared into her eyes.

"Blue, ice-blue and it isn't a trick of the light because they are still just as beautiful as they were last night." For a moment she was still but then before he could say another word she had run off. "Meriel! Wait!" He stood to follow her but she was gone and he sat down in a huff, he wasn't supposed to love his wife but he was quickly falling in love with his betrothed and he only wished he could understand her a little better.

***
"I'm going home." Winter stood in her bedroom, dressed in her immortal skin before her sister. "I don't care about the prophecies, I'm leaving I've had more than enough of this." Summer stared at her sister and bit her lip to keep from crying.

"Winter, what happened?" She placed her hand on her sister's arm but jumped in shock as the cold made her fingers smart. With tears in her eyes she ran from the room, not even realizing it was unusual to bump into someone on the stairs leading from their bedroom.

Winter looked down at herself, still dressed for morning practice she looked ridiculous. Her diamond skin sparkled against the plain cloth of her short sleeved shirt and her long hair kept catching the rough fibers of the breeches. With tears in her eyes she turned to the door as she heard a gasp and looked at Yan standing in the doorway. "Yan? What are you doing here?" As she talked she cursed her voice, so hard with ice it felt like her heart was breaking.

"Meriel? How?" Yan walked closer with wonder in his eyes but Winter took a step back.

"Don't touch me," she whispered as his hands closed over her bare upper arms and brought her closer to him so that he could study her closely. Her lips quivered as she waited for his rejection but instead of pushing her away or dropping her arms to nurse the frostbite that surely must be developing in his hands, he put his arms around her and put his lips against hers.

And Winter's heart melted, and her arms drew up to circle his neck and one of her hands moved into his soft hair. After an eternity, he moved away smiling so broadly. "I'm sorry, please don't strike me down." Winter blinked her eyes and looked up into his eyes, they were so deep, so blue. "I've known about the prophecy for so long, I never thought I would love you."

"What? How?" Winter's voice squeaked out of her throat and Yan laughed.

"How are you not burning me? Allow me to show you," he stepped out of her embrace and bowed low before her. As he stood up, Yan was gone to be replaced by Fall. His hair was a deep brown full of leaves of red and yellow, his skin was lightly tanned and his eyes had the look of a storm behind them. He had dressed in warm caramel velvets and he stepped forward to hold her in his arms again. "The prophecy of course you silly little fool." He nuzzled her neck, nipping at her frozen skin, "no wonder that storm was so bad. I should thank you for my life I suppose." He laughed and pulled back enough to look into her eyes. "Did you think you were the only lesser god to be asked to take on a mortal body and be one of them for a lifetime?"

"I didn't think," was all she managed before he swept her up and started carrying her to her bed.

"Well now I know your weakness, Winter. All I have to do is take all of the wind out of your sails and your not terrible at all!" He laughed and dumped her on the thick mattress, sending a strong wind to slam the door shut and leaving dried leaves to eddy over the stone floor.