White Out

[archiveofarethusa]

In winter Dawn sometimes finds herself stepping out wearing her mother's favorite widow's veil, the black blotting out her visage like a great helm. A widow keeps a silence far longer than her veil, and in the darker months silence and stillness is the one thing that doesn't make her feel hollowed out and aching in places even deeper than marrow. Something is there in the bright, blinding whiteness that envelops winter like a glove, and it clings to her skin and sinks into her veins, something more insidious and evil than anything hidden in the darkest shadows of the city. Her parents suggest marriage, predictably. Dawn rather thinks that if marriage was the miraculous cure they claim it is then they might be happy at any given time and not carry daggers in their chests where they have clawed out each other's hearts.

Dawn has learned a winter's patience. Her happiness is as inevitable as the first snowfall.

But the veil is always there upon her crown every December, and every December she gets a little less patient.