1. peasantry

Winters were always the most harsh.

Nonetheless, there was always something to be enjoyed during those long months. If the blizzards allowed it, ones who lived in the agrarian lands could journey to town to acquire little trinkets forged at the local blacksmith to give each other at Christmas. That was usually when the children would slip the little iron figures between the folds of their cloaks, for all the snow and smoke made it hard for the blacksmith to see the reflection of light off his metal being stolen away by the little demons called children.

But for those who could not afford the journey nor the thievery, winters were spent inside their cruck cottages on hillsides suffocated with snow that sometimes made it hard to even open their front doors. For those, enjoyments had to be found inside the home.

Nyx had always loved fire. She would sometimes beg her mother to light the fireplace even in the summer simply because she wanted to sit and watch the bright flames that burned the tip of her nose and made her eyes water. So in the winter months, when the fireplace was always burning, she would sit in front of it for hours at a time with a warm mug of cider gripped in her gloved hands, those bright brown eyes sometimes refraining from blinking for several minutes. She was encompassed by the flames, by the warmth they never failed to bring her.

Her mother would scold her for sitting too close, threatening that her golden blonde locks would catch an ash and burn into raven black. Her mother, Valerie, had always adored Nyx's hair, and even as Nyx grew into a young woman, she would still brush her hair every night. She always said that her golden hair reminded her of the sun and brought her more warmth than it or the fireplace ever did.

Nyx thought about these things as she sat with her legs crossed in front of the fireplace, sipping on her bittersweet apple cider that was already turning cold as her mother chopped up the last of their potatoes and carrots for a stew. They weren't sure where their next batch of potatoes would come from, since there was a horrible blizzard brewing and would surely leave them stuck in their home for weeks.

Her mother never seemed to fret, though. She had this invisible courage that Nyx had always envied, this impenetrable valor that was skeptic of fear itself. Nyx almost believed it was some sort of magic, because right when they had nothing to eat and nothing to drink, some potatoes and carrots would come along their way and give them another night's dinner one way or another.

Finally blinking her dry eyes, she turned them away from the fire, glancing over to her mother who stood at the table across the room with her back facing her daughter, leaning over as she chopped up a small potato.

It was rare that they ever had any beef or venison with their stew. Other families who had fathers that hunted would sometimes give them the leftover scraps out of pity, and her mother would accept them with clenched teeth. Nyx never asked much about her own father, but that was mostly because her mother never said much. She would only ever give a tight smile and tell her he was such a good man, but not once did she ever tell her what happened to him or why she had never even seen his face. Her mother had never outright said it, but Nyx caught on over the years that her father was most likely not alive anymore.

There were always more things to do than pester her mother with questions even if the answers were well-deserved. Their small barn behind their cottage that was filled with a handful of chickens and two cows was more than enough to keep her busy. She had named each of the six chickens, much to her mother's dismay before she told her young daughter that once the hens were older they would be the meat in their stew. Nyx had always thought that the wolves stole away all their chickens while she was growing up.

"I sure hope this blizzard doesn't do more damage," her mother mumbled disinterestedly as she began dicing up a carrot. Her words came right as a strong gust of wind from outside made the little wooden cottage creak and whistled through its skeleton of cracked bones. Nyx's eyes averted to the rusty metal bucket sitting on the floor in the corner of the room right below a leak in the roof. It was almost completely full from all the melted snow on their roof dripping down into it.

Even though her mother's words sounded dreadful, she knew that she still was not fretting. "I'm sure it won't," Nyx spoke as she picked herself up off the wooden floor, feeling the cold invade her again as she stepped away from the fire. She brought the mug to her mouth and sipped the last of the lukewarm cider right as there was a loud knock on their front door.

There was only one thing Nyx's mother ever did fret about—strangers. Every time there was a knock on the door, her fists that were already balled from the cold would clench just a little more, and her brunette eyebrows would cinch together in fright. As Nyx looked from the door to her mother, she saw that look of fear on her face so rare in sight. "Who is it?" Valerie whispered urgently, hand turning white around the dull knife that was piercing through the tip of a carrot.

Setting her mug down on the wooden dining table in front of the fireplace, Nyx licked the remains of the cider off her lips and neared the door, already assuming who it probably was, as they rarely had any visitors.

Alas, as she opened the door that swung back a bit hard from the gusting winds, she was met with none other than Henry. "Hello, Henry," she greeted him monotonously.

"Good evening!" greeted that husky voice that she was beginning to hear way too often. He nodded downwards, his pearly teeth forming a wide smile that broke between the dark hairs of his thick beard. He held some sort of package in one hand while his other hand held down his cap that was threatening to be blown off his head by the wind.

"Oh, Henry!" her mother exclaimed with relief and excitement over the loud wind, setting the knife down and pulling the front of her grey shawl over herself because of the cold air that blew in from the door being opened. "Nyx, let him in! It's cold out there."

Restraining a roll of her eyes, Nyx bit the inside of her cheek and did not even attempt to return the man's smile as she stepped aside and let him in.

The tall and burly man's boots clunked against the thin boards of their floor as he stepped inside and brought trails of snow along with him. "Good evening, Valerie!" he greeted Nyx's mother as the girl closed the door behind him. He glanced over to the table of potatoes and carrots that she had obviously been dicing and then smiled, holding up the small brown package. "Well, it looks I came just in time! Fresh venison!"

"Oh, Henry," Valerie exclaimed as she saw the package in his hand. "You shouldn't have." She quickly swiped away some loose strands of her greying brunette hair that was pulled up in its usual twist and graciously took the package from him. "Are you sure you don't need this?" she asked him, eyeing him seriously.

"No, no," he shook his head and looked down towards his feet, his cheeks glowing red either from the warm fireplace or from Valerie's closeness to him as she took the package. "A whole deer is too much for one man."

Nyx leaned against the dining table and crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing the tall man up and down. Henry had once been married, but his wife and their small son had been killed by the illness that had plagued their village a few years prior. Ever since then, he brought venison and wood to Valerie and Nyx almost weekly. It was a nice gesture, but Nyx couldn't help but feel like he was trying to replace his own dead family with them, or that he was trying to worm his way to her mother. She saw the way he always looked at her.

"Thank you," Valerie told him with sincerity, grabbing his buff arm that bulged from under his coat and squeezing it while smiling up at him gratefully. "Please, eat with us."

"No, no, I couldn't," he chuckled deeply, taking a few steps backwards.

"Now, you sit down," Valerie scolded, being the charmingly stubborn woman she was. She playfully took his cap from his head and tossed it down onto the dining table, pointing to one of the chairs with playful threat as she walked backwards towards the other table where she was preparing the stew at.

Henry shook his head with a defeated smile, sighing as he sat his large self down in the chair that looked too small for him. "You're too kind to me, Valerie," his gruff voice spoke as he tapped his fingers on the tabletop and watched the woman with gleaming eyes. He turned towards Nyx who had moved away from the table and was now leaning against the cold stone of the fireplace with her arms still crossed.

The man looked at the girl whom he knew was wary of him, yet he thought she was funny nonetheless, giving her an amused and genial smile. "How d'ya do, Nyx?"

She returned his smile with a smug one, having to dig her teeth down into her tongue to keep from being rude. "Dandy."

He chuckled at her territorial attitude, completely understanding why she would feel that way. She only ever had her mother, so it was understandable why she would be protective of her. Henry was a good man, and even Nyx knew that deep down; but the thought of someone else coming in and changing the way her household had been functioning for her entire life made something inside her wrench with dread.

"You know," Henry began, situating himself in the small chair as Valerie began chopping another potato. "The old man who loiters around the bakery in town has been blabbering nonstop about how he seen one of them so-called faerie creatures in the woods again."

Valerie's knife came down on the table rather hard, but not hard enough for Henry to notice. Nyx, on the other hand, had the sound of her mother's chops practically memorized, and she knew something was wrong by the way her body seemed to trembled as she stopped chopping altogether, her shoulders tensing ever so slightly.

But Henry continued before Nyx could understand what had made her mother so suddenly upset. "He claims that they told him they're waiting." He clicked his tongue and tapped his fingers against the tabletop in a bored manner. "I would say it's a shame to be so senile in yer golden years, but he's not the first to claim to see those fae, or whatever they're called."

Nyx had always heard those old stories and legends about fae, mythical creatures said to have wings like an eagle, the body of a human, and otherworldly magical powers. People used to say they were the ones that cursed humans with tortuous weather just like the blizzard brewing outside. But it was all from a children's storybook, and her mother had always seemed to have quite an aggravation with the old hoax passed on through several generations.

"It's all myth and mouth," Valerie spoke in nearly a whisper, her left hand still gripping the half-chopped potato while her other hand held the knife right above it. Then, ever-so-subtly, Valerie turned her face only half a degree towards Nyx across the room, and eyed her with a look more fearful than fear itself. There was a glare of tragedy in her mother's eyes that locked with hers, but the woman snapped her head away and returned to chopping the potato as if nothing had even happened.

♔

After she had finished eating, Nyx (with her everlasting snarky attitude towards Henry) excused herself from the table, and she went straight to her tiny room that was nestled right behind the fireplace, her mother's being on the other side so that they both could feel the heat of the fire throughout the night. If it ever got too cold, they would just take themselves and their old, flattened pillows to the fireplace and sleep in front of it.

It was so cold in her room that night that she was unable to fall asleep without being in front of the fire, but Henry was still there, chatting with her mom at the table even though they had been done eating for hours. Nyx could hear their laughs echo throughout the cottage, and with every one she sunk further into her small bed whose mattress springs always delighted in tickling her sides. Each laugh told her that Henry would soon marry her mom, and since Nyx was turning eighteen in a couple days, they would expect her to find a man to marry and move out.

But she didn't feel like marriage was what she was destined for. The rich and royal would have laughed at her, for peasants were not destined for anything besides surviving. The poor were made to work, mate, birth, die, and nothing else. Nyx couldn't find any purpose in that; she couldn't understand the point of existence if that was what it was all for.

Her mother had always fostered this way of deviance from normality in her daughter who had been strikingly independent even as a toddler, but nowadays it was like her mother wanted her to be "normal." She was beginning to push marriage on her, always talking about how excited she was to be a grandmother in the near future.

But the thought made Nyx want to puke.

There was nothing for the girl in that sort of life. She could feel it in her bones that there was something else out there for her, that the type of life her mother wanted her to live was made for anyone but her.

There was nothing she could do about it, though.

It was winter, and she would be cooped up in that cottage for months on end.

It was only in the flames of the fireplace that she felt some sort of hope, some vision of who she was meant to be.

Maybe she had just drank too much cider.