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then: mermista
The Horde troopers are approaching when you finally reach the little yellow ship, and they're coming fast. She-Ra may not be able to hold them off for long. So you twist yourself around on top of the little ship, folding your fin awkwardly under you against the smooth metal hull, and try to brace yourself to pry the lid of the cockpit open. You can only hope the pilot is alive--but it may be immaterial if you can't get the ship open in seconds. The Horde claw has the little ship in its grip and you, perched on it, are rising towards the Horde cruiser on the surface of the lake.
So you throw yourself into your effort, and the force of your will coaxes the water around you to help. You call your element from dry land with a whisper of force and a rush of command and shaping threads of magic. Here, wrapped in its soft caress, there is so much more to do that if you drop your senses into the water, you run the risk of trancing on it, being drawn into the cross-currents tingling through the water and ripped to shreds in their seductive ragged pull.
Nonetheless, you do it, and the water falls around you and thickens, pressing down to slow your progress through the water, putting its strength behind the fragile strength of your hands, making narrow blades as your mind narrows and tightens to focus it, pressing on the lower edge. There must be a spot. A way. It has to give, and you are so fiercely willing it that you are almost surprised and give a pained gasp when it finally opens. The water pours in, and there are a pair of slender white shoulders, narrow wrists sheathed in pink wrist-guards of some slick fibrous material, the round swell of breasts over delicate ribs and a narrow waist cased in pink. A helmet with two curving antennae that gets in your way, along with the waving strands of your own hair, when you bend to struggle with panic-numbed fingers with the straps holding her in her seat. Finally you manage it. You bend close behind her and wrap your arms around her. One flip of your tail and you dive away from the side of the boat, and swim towards She-Ra and the surface.
Now the water seems to drag you down, and you don't breathe it with the pleasure you usually take--exertion burns your lungs, and you move with deliberate short powerful strokes of your flippers, but you are not fast enough. You are relieved to see a plume of bubbles rising from the yellow helmet. If only it won't stop. You hug the slender form of the pilot to your chest, tilting your chin back to see around her helmet. She is very, very warm in your arms, a shock to your skin used to the icy water of winter lakes.
§
By Sea and Shore, she is beautiful. He-Man lifts the helmet, cradling the slender form, dwarfed by his muscular arms. A cascade of silken rust-red hair spills down over her shoulders, bound with a pink coronet with fine feelers in the front, over the high emphatic arches of her brows--at least you think those are part of the coronet. Tiny, delicate nose, like a sea-sprite's; skin translucently-pale, chilled in the water. Lips dark-flushed and the fullest you think you have ever seen. Long dark lashes decorated with water drops that rise only slowly.
She blinks slowly, and answers questions with less speed. Her blood must be sluggish still after being so cold. You think you are not paying attention to what is said, only watching her face and the slow hesitant movement of her red mouth, and the uneasy rise and fall of her chest. Droplets of water still tremble on her arms and her smooth neck, on the expanse of her chest, in the shaded cleft between her breasts where they vanish under the yellow dress. You find yourself licking your lips, and wondering about their taste. Her eyes find you and do not linger long--but can it be your imagination that they do linger? You drop your gaze, marshal your thoughts.
You whose will can bend waves, sculpt water and call it from dry air, cannot shape your own mind as you wish it.
Not paying attention? Oh, but you know, and you hear. Her name is Sweet Bee, and you can taste it on your tongue. "That's a sweet name," says He-Man with a kind smile, the same protective instincts aroused in him that she has awakened in you. Perhaps not quite the same instincts after all, though. The dip of her eyelashes makes your heart leap in your breast. The feeling is so new and wondrous, like the force of a powerful deep-ocean current, troubling but not wholly unpleasant. You do not attempt to fight free of it.
then: frosta
You know Mermista, your cousin, well, though she lives in the Whispering Woods, far from your Kingdom of Snows. You speak to each other when water freezes in the northern waters, when ice melts in the polar caps, when snow falls on warm ground and turns to rivulets racing for the sea. Her presence is everywhere, and you hear her thoughts, sometimes, when you walk alone on the frozen turrets of Castle Chill. It helps dispel the loneliness. You are a ruler, and always, always alone. Mermista, who lives only a little apart from the Rebels at Crystal Falls, cannot understand this entirely, but it doesn't matter. Her distant presence eases you.
You know at once, when she heaves the pilot of the ship out of the water. You can feel it in the air like the warning of snow. Her desire colors the water clinging to the scaly sheen of her legs when He-Man lifts the helmet. Mermista stands a little apart, behind She-Ra's shoulder, at first. The snow swirling through the air keens with longing it has drawn from the surface of the lake. Mermista feels now something akin to what you have felt for so long, but still not the same.
She soothes you with human contact. But she does not understand the isolation of the ruler.
When She-Ra and He-Man appeared at Crystal Falls, you were standing on a tower of ice you had been amusing yourself and your cousin with. You had never met He-Man, She-Ra's brother, before, but everyone in the Rebellion knew of him. He was not from the Rebellion. He was a leader, like his sister--like you. He would understand. He wore the respect he had earned and the power he had been born to like a shimmering cloak, and dazzled you.
Perhaps you could distract yourself even further? You had come to visit Mermista out of restlessness, seeking companionship, not adventure, but adventure had found you. The air was pregnant with tension. You would embrace it. A smile curved your mouth, and you moved purposefully towards He-Man. And if something else happened as well--
But it appears now that that is not possible, from his obvious dismay and embarrassment at your advances. You do not betray your exasperation; you can be patient. But you had thought to have more time. He-Man is clearly admiring of the soft voice, the apparent innocence, of the pilot of the ship you have found. Your eyes narrow: miscalculation? Who would have thought He-Man, of all people, would prefer that--? But you could not be as she is if you tried, and you still, after all, would not be other than yourself.
If you cannot succeed with He-Man, you will be alone when he leaves.
If you do succeed, you will be alone when he leaves.
If he could understand how you feel, you ask yourself harshly, how would that alleviate your loneliness?
then: sweet bee
The first you feel, after the shock of icy air on your wet skin, is broad warm hands on your arms. Not the delicate hands belonging to the slender arms that cradled you close in the womb of water. You open your eyes and smile, and you listen to them and nod politely. You give your name. It would be permitted, for they will help you, and you must return to the Hive. In the meanwhile, you seek for the one you owe your debt. Your eyes roam over them, and there--she is a creature of the water, her hair deep aqua, her slanted eyes huge and violet over the insolent curves of sharp cheekbones, her body limned silver-green in the light of the sun shining from--are those scales?
She is built much like your people, and much, too, like these who surround you--but she is different, light and graceful, clean and slender-lined. Beauty. You tilt your head down a little and your eyes leave her, but the image of her remains. She is, you think, very beautiful, no matter how strange her lack of wings and antennae and the slide of her slick skin.
It is true that you owe her a debt, and it is obvious what she wants, though she will think you cannot see it. You can smell it on her, overpoweringly sweet. The man who helps you to stand is thick and heavy with muscle, and he has a scent too, but one which is most amusing--he is in awe of you, as though you were the Queen, when you are only a Scout like hundreds of others! The woman named Frosta smells possessive. She wanted this one for her own, and she believes he desires you. You would frown; she is blind. He does not desire any of you, and he is not, you are certain, Frosta's mate.
The last of them is a magnificent creature--a Queen in her own right, terribly beautiful, white and golden like your own Queen. Her smell is subtle, like his; you cannot read either of them properly, but they are both kind. You divert your attention from them. The five of you climb onto not a ship, but a tremendous bird that the Queen ("She-Ra") calls a swan.
Yours--and no, you chide yourself, yours she is not, and you are not hers, though you would gift her a piece of yourself--whispers in the swan's ear, and with powerful strokes of its white wings, it lifts you into the sky.
The Queen has a safe place where they will take you. There, among lush green trees, you speak to them of the plight of the Hive and your mission, and your search for a new planet on which to settle.
"Your people can settle here, right, She-Ra?" says He-Man eagerly.
She-Ra is stern. "Wrong, He-Man!" Her face softens, and she explains, "This is not Eternia, my brother. This is Etheria--ruled by the evil Horde. If Sweet Bee's people come here, Hordak will surely enslave them."
Plans must be made to recover your ship from the clutches of this Horde, so that you may return to the Hive and warn them away from their peril. You are upset by the news, but you have trust in this foreign Queen--and in He-Man, who, you understand, is not a Drone at all, but another kind of leader, like a male Queen.
You will go under the cover of darkness, says He-Man, and She-Ra agrees. There is an afternoon to be spent here in the Rebels' camp. He-Man and She-Ra move away, to prepare, you assume; Frosta follows them, of course, and you turn at once to your--
To Mermista. That is her name. You speak it slowly, and her gaze darts to your face, swift and surprised. "You are--one who lives in the water, aren't you?" You ask.
She seems intrigued by your question. "Did you have mermaids on the planet your people left?"
"No," you say, "but we had many wide oceans, warm and cold. The people of the Hive cannot live in water, but we often live--near it. And you--you have the look of water. May I see your home?" It is important that you have her alone, but you have nearly surprised yourself with such a request. What is home but a planet you have not found yet, and until then, the Hive? What use have you for the home of another?
And yet when she smiles, something wavers in you, and you know that you want her back. You will not give of yourself because it is what you owe her, but because it is what you wish with a longing that is suddenly hot and undeniable, like the compulsion to follow the Queen, and to seek the Hive.
§
She is not looking at you, but at the falling flow of clear water where it splashes into a pool that sparkles like a gem among the trees. This makes it easy for you to step close behind her and put your hand on her shoulder, while the scent of new water tickles your face, and then you can smell her hair. It almost smells like water, but not quite. "Oh," you say, looking at the waterfall with her, "it is beautiful."
She is surprised that you are so close, and turns her head, bringing your noses very close--the width of a few fingers apart. Her eyes widen and the sun strikes them, picking out shards of blue in the irises. "Sweet Bee," she says, "what...?"
You reach for the fastening of your dress, under your arm, and unseal the seam. It gaps open, and when you shrug, falls away from your breasts and your ribs. You step out of it, leaving it in a pool on the ground, and reach for the waist-hooks of your leggings. "I would thank you for what you have done for me," you murmur huskily, watching her pupils expand.
"I--I don't need--want--to be thanked for saving your life," Mermista protests. Her fingers are tracing your collarbone, drifting down the cleft between your breasts. You smile, satisfied, and kick out of your boots.
"Then we will call it thank you for making me feel I want you," you reply. You know this is the right thing to say. You place one hand over her heart. It drums madly against your palm when you continue the touch, curving to cup the smooth under curve of breast.
"I do not know what to say," she whispers, but her fingers have already pushed up the back of your neck and threaded into your hair, lifting its weight off your neck, tugging your face forward to her open mouth, laughing-sparkling clean-water eyes.
You kiss her soft mouth and the satiny column of her throat, the dusky violet-flushed beads at the peaks of her white breasts while she whispers and cries incoherent sounds and tugs at your head. The silver may be scales when she is a mermaid, but when she has two legs Mermista's water magic can make it loosen and peel back, revealing the narrow curve of her waist, a dimpled belly, the tiny juts of hip bones and long smooth legs that open around you and close around your back to draw you close in their circle.
She wants to have you wet, and you plunge into the water. You have never been in water before today. You are surprised when your hair becomes suddenly weightless, drifting in a red cloud around your face that you can't see through. Mermista laughs at your confusion, and white bubbles stream from between her open lips straight to the surface. Then she stops, mouth open, and bends forward in slow-motion. The water is like a slow caress all over. Her hair tangles with yours when she kisses you again, water everywhere, in your eyes, your nose, your mouths, flavoring the delicate taste of her tongue, which you had begun to recognize.
Mermista can breathe water, but you cannot, so you burst to the surface gasping, water rolling and sheeting off the two of you, and she smiles and presses you to the ground beside the calm pool. She bends, and blue hair pools on your breasts, cold and wet on their sensitized tips so you gasp. Her mouth is wet as your skin and warmer as it trails down your stomach with kisses that make you gasp and moan and want again, so soon.
With long enough here, the Crystal Falls could have become home, if not for the Hive--but the Hive is not lost to you, yet, if She-Ra and He-Man are to be believed. You cannot hope to be stranded away from your kind. You are not capable of that. But--if, somehow, it were true--you could lie like this again, with no shadow of tomorrow or tonight or some day in the back of your mind.
then: she-ra
Frosta is standing a few inches too close to He-Man mere moments after they are introduced, her hands clasped behind her back. She looks up at him from under her eyelashes, smiling, and you smile involuntarily and hide it. You have never seen Frosta like this before, and it's odd for you--but Frosta has never seen He-Man, before, and he is famous everywhere. She cannot be blamed for this. In fact, it's the most entertainment you've had for weeks. Your brother has never been so discomfited. He blushes, and blinks, and his eyes widen. He throws you a despairing glance, but you only grin back.
"Oh, boy," you say under your breath to Mermista, and she smiles back, dimpling.
The day continues in the same manner. When you say He-Man should stay with Frosta, she exclaims, "I think that's a wonderful idea."
By this time she has begun to tease him, because she realizes how uncertain He-Man is when confronted with her seductive manners. You catch her eyes, which are twinkling brilliantly with mischief, and can't stifle a laugh.
He-Man appeals to you. "Uh--She-Ra..."
"No time, He-Man," you remind him, and you and Mermista leave them. The last you see is your brother's grim look and Frosta batting her eyes at him ostentatiously, which douses him in confusion again.
You wouldn't put it past Frosta to carry her flirtation so far he begins to respond directly, instead of pretending he doesn't know what she's doing. You can't stop laughing at every advance, and you have no sympathy for He-Man, since she won't hurt him.
He should enjoy it. Who wouldn't?
When He-Man lifts Sweet Bee's helmet and a lustrous pile of coppery hair spills down over her shoulders, you feel a sting of relief at the look on his face that makes you blink. Surely you weren't feeling sympathy after all?
Frosta is outraged by Sweet Bee's existence, and especially by He-Man's reaction to her. She gasps, stares and glares, turns her back and crosses her arms. Sweet Bee doesn't appear to notice, but you see her eyes on Frosta's back and, perhaps, a flash of amusement.
Frosta's fun with He-Man is over, but you all soon discover her pursuit is not. In the Whispering Woods again, you take He-Man to speak to Bow and Glimmer, and she follows, walking between the two of you so her blue cape swirls behind her. When you stop to duck and glance inside a tent, she does too, and its edge blows forward and brushes against your thigh.
You shake your head.
No Bow there.
It is not until you have found them and He-Man has begun speaking to them that you understand it. When she stands listening to official Rebel business, one hand resting on her hip, head cocked and face solemn, all the light mischief of the day, her little smiles and scowls, fall away and you glimpse something deeper that you've seen only a few times before. In the Kingdom of Snows it especially shines through, when she is a Queen surrounded with her people, far away from any amusements, carrying the weight of responsibility and care unflinchingly on her slender shoulders.
You understand that Frosta's control is not as complete and serene as it sometimes seems, and it is like a ray of light illumining you--
--for of course, yours is not either. Frosta, like you, does what she does because she is needed, because no one else would do it if she did not. Frosta, like you, knows what it is to be lonely of necessity, to find yourself smothering in the stillness of your own mind, stricken with self-doubt at just the wrong moment.
Frosta does not have Swiftwind, or Light Hope. But Swiftwind is not a human or a brother, though he is a friend; and Light Hope--well. Light Hope is magic and faith, and he seals your doubts away from you, but Light Hope cannot hope to offer even the simplest pleasure you get from laughing with Angella or Peek-a-Blue.
She, your friend, is suddenly a clear mirror held up to your soul, and when you look into it, you see first yourself, but when the image clears--you see her. So alone, the two of you, like the first time you visited Castle Chill and faced her across the expanse of purple runner-carpet, each cloaked in cold majesty, proud and alone. Each wanting--what?
You do not know what Frosta wants, but you are confident that it is not He-Man, whatever he thinks, and he will be gone soon enough anyway.
Self-revelation has shaken you, but your composure will not slip. You look on Frosta's beauty with new eyes, hungry ones that see the hurt hidden behind her face, the fragility of her narrow waist and slender arms. You may or may not do as you have discovered you wish, some day, and erase that hungry longing you sense in her, quenching the emptiness in yourself.
But you will wait.
then: sweet bee
It is all over incredibly fast. Horde troopers are coming, and the honeycomb you weave is huge, and you're sure it has never been used for something like this before. You can't help smiling, though, when She-Ra rolls the troopers up in the sticky honeycomb and makes them into a bag, which she spins over her head and throws--or when Frosta freezes the red-robed witch, and He-Man throws the great ball of ice and it flattens a few of the robots in its wake.
Hordak blasts your ship, but He-Man and She-Ra tell you to get in the cockpit.
Why bother, when all is lost? Your voice trembles, but you comply. All is lost, you are certain. You will contact the Hive to warn them away, somehow, but you will be stranded here. You do not look for Mermista out of the corner of your eye, but climb into the cockpit as they instruct. When all has failed, it will be safe for you to fall apart, and you know you can wash the grime of the Fright Zone off at Crystal Falls. Mermista did not say anything to you when you dressed again, pink leggings, stiff yellow boots, and your dress--but you see in her eyes that she does not regret, does not blame. She will grieve to see you go, but if she cries it will be with joy--she wants to see you home.
Then you lurch, and the ship is in the air. He-Man and She-Ra have lifted it over their heads, and they stand at the hole they've torn in the wall of the Fright Zone. All you see is the sky. Your helmet is on, your belts fastened--still wet from early this afternoon, but the smell is the smell of the lake, not the falls.
"Ready?" you are asked, and you say that you are. There is no looking back, but you are certain that Frosta and Mermista are there both--one much happier than the other to see you go, but both masking their emotions well. And you are happy to go, for as you survive to return to the Hive and your own Queen you must. You are going home.
On the count of three, you are airborne, speeding for the atmosphere so fast everything is a blur of black and white streamers of stars. You would not have known you did not have rockets, if you had not seen their smoking wreckage.
Home. Soon the Hive is in your view screen, and another scout ship emerges to escort you back. You are going home, you tell yourself again. Perhaps you could have made a new home, but now you will not have to. You will never know life outside the Hive, beyond this afternoon's single heady sip. Savoring it was the best thing you have done in your life. If only the memory never fades.
now: frosta
It is a day so alone that you choke in the throne room, standing on the royal purple runner, perched on your ice throne, standing against the wall, looking at the pale ghost of yourself reflected there like a memory. The ghost smiles, and you touch your lips to be sure you find the smile there as well. You sigh and turn away. Captain Brawn is in the doorway, and he salutes respectfully. "Your Majesty," he rumbles, "Are you troubled?"
"No, Captain," you say with a brilliantly cold smile, like glaciers, like diamond. He has a strong will, and would often lead your army without the wisdom required if not for your iron hand in its velvet glove. You control him effortlessly, now, ever since Modulok and his black snows nearly precipitated a war with Galacia and She-Ra was forced to interfere. He nearly rebelled, then, but held back. He knows that it is not only your own power he faces when he looks at you, but the strength of the Rebellion and She-Ra, your friend, who will come at your call.
It is in your interest to be believed more closely connected to the Rebels than you have been lately. You offer them what help you can, and they give you the same courtesy--but you have not been there since the fateful visit with Mermista, when that little slip of a Honeybee came and seduced your cousin and He-Man both. Your lips twitch into a wider smile of memory. He-Man's blushes at your flirting and teasing, Mermista and Sweet Bee's sated faces and the scent of sex, Mermista rolling her eyes, crying a little in your hair when she embraced you before you left, and She-Ra throwing her head back, laughing with abandon and her whole self at you.
A long, long time has passed since you saw either of them.
Captain Brawn requests permission to step up patrols; forces are adequate indeed, because as he says and you know, recruitment is up this year, and it is, of course, important for the youngest of the army to have experience. You give permission and do not wait for him to leave before you leave through a door behind your throne and seek the highest turret of the castle, where your gloved hands rest on ice and the wind threads long fingers through your hair. When you close your eyes, icy eyelashes kiss your cheeks, and you let out a long, slow breath.
There are clouds above--more snow ready to fall--and the breeze is damp and silent, so you can just hear the edge of Mermista's thoughts, been so long, and then in a shock of startling clarity, Mermista's laughter. You open your eyes and see large, soggy flakes of snow--they carry it, and you send tendrils of thought back along them.
Mermista's breathy giggles, a clumsy mental rush of affection, and a loud, clear bell-like laugh. In the next instant the ghost of an image flashes into focus in your mind's eye, She-Ra, head bent in helpless laughter, her hand resting on Swiftwind's neck for balance.
But of course you recognized the sound of her laughter already. It is one of the sounds that you suspect every Rebel knows, and any of the hundreds, you are sure, who consider She-Ra friend. She is benevolent, generous with her affection, as a Queen must be.
You feel the bite of loneliness again, a particularly fierce pang of it that shivers outward from your stomach and makes you rest your hands on the blocks of ice for strength. You draw power from the ice and breathe more easily, but your unrest will not leave you.
You are as generous with affection as a Queen must be, and as cold and distant with it too. She-Ra is not really a Queen, though, so much as the icon of the people. She does not live among them, ever-visible in a Castle--her dwelling is said to be in the clouds, and no one has ever seen it. She-Ra is distant, but she is not cold.
Her laughter rings in your mind, and as your thoughts stay with her, they reach for Mermista again. You cannot focus on her any way, even out here alone in the snow and the wind on the top of Castle Chill. You spread your hands on the ice until you palms are wholly flat and you can feel cold in every finger as you flex it. Then you close your eyes and drink the cold from the ice, drawing it up, taking it in and dispelling it to the air around you. You feel breaths of its icy caress on your cheeks, wafting away.
When you open your eyes, you have melted a pool on the cap of the crenellation. A few moments' concentration, and you can see through Mermista's eyes--Swiftwind bending his head to drink from the pool at the base of Crystal Falls, She-Ra shaking her head to toss a waterfall of brilliant sun-colored hair over her shoulder. A single strand, shorter, stays curled on her shoulder next to her neck, above her collarbone, sharp contrast to the metallic sheen of her gold choker.
Mermista leaps into the air, becomes a mermaid and dives back into the water. There's a dizzying cascade of blue, and then she surfaces again, to look at She-Ra from a new angle. And She-Ra has pulled off her golden boots and her red cape, and stands there barefoot like a goddess in her crown, smiling mischievously. Swiftwind whickers, "don't forget your crown."
She-Ra turns with a smile for him, reaching up carelessly with one hand to tug it out as she does so. The image is tiny, a few inches high, but you are totally absorbed in it as She-Ra tosses the crown onto her cape and the sunlight catches the delicate diagonal line of a tendon on the side of her white neck. Your breath catches, and you don't release it until She-Ra has dived into the pool, clad only in her brief white dress and wrist guards.
After a short swim, She-Ra pulls herself up to sit on the bank, dangling her feet in the pool, the white skirt plastered transparent to her thighs and her hair darkened and straightened, clinging to her neck and back. It is as she looks into the water of the pool, a thoughtful look on her perfect features, that your image becomes the clearest. Mermista was curious about your continued contact at first, but she has accepted it now.
You wonder if she can feel what is happening to you with the vivid certainty that you feel it, and if that is why she is not surprised. She-Ra's wet dress starts to dry in the sun, and so does her hair. The wind catches at a few strands of it and lifts them, and still she gazes at the pool. She looks sad, and you feel it in your bones--
She-Ra may be warm with her many friends and admirers, but she is as alone as you have ever been, if not more so. A yawning emptiness opens in your belly, so powerful you almost bend over.
§
You don't know why you didn't realize a long time ago. Perhaps the first time you faced her in the throne room at Castle Chill, both of you standing on your purple carpet, a stylized gold starburst on it between you. Memory, obedient to your wish, calls up an exact picture of She-Ra's face, solemn and concerned, with her lips just parted.
There is a silver salver filled with black water in your bedchamber, sitting on a table of ice, under your mirror. Your face wavers and vanishes in it as you concentrate. She-Ra is still with Mermista, you sense, as your cousin's face appears. She is asleep, perhaps. "Frosta," she smiles, "how are you?" She doesn't say "this is a surprise"--not after your extended contact earlier today.
You mirror her expression. "Just great," you say softly, "but I've been getting a little lonely. I thought I would like to visit you."
She seems pleased. "Expect us tomorrow!" And she waves her hand over the water, and is gone.
now: she-ra
You wake up with Swiftwind's warmth all along your back and stretch luxuriously in the early morning sunlight. When you sit up and look around, you see Mermista speaking gently to Enchanta at the other end of the pool, just where the Falls sends up a fan of white crystal, painted with stripes of rainbow in the light. The moss at the edge of this pool makes a marvelous bed. You should sleep here more often.
Mermista is far more She-Ra's friend than Adora's, which is why you have had to visit her in your transformed state. You have told your friends that you (that is, Adora) are camping for a few days. Which isn't completely inaccurate. You untie your hair and finger-comb it out of the braid you put it in last night to keep it neat. "Did you sleep well?" Swiftwind murmurs at your back. He is only teasing--he knows you did, as he was there all along, watching over you.
You raise an eyebrow at him. "Is my horse making fun of me?"
"I wondered if that ridiculous noise you were making was a human way of expressing pleasure." His eyes dance.
You say with dignity, "I'm going to go for a swim," and dive into the water in one clean motion, your hair instantly forming a net of gold around your head, then streaming back from your face when you re-surface. You swim to Mermista with quick economical strokes, and stand in the shallow water at the bank.
"Good morning, She-Ra," she says cheerfully. You are taken aback. Mermista is always cheerful, but surely this is excessive.
"Good morning, Mermista. You're certainly in a good mood today."
"My cousin Frosta called while you were asleep," she says, not taking her eyes from you: "she wants to visit. I am going to go get her today." She is still looking at you and still smiling, so that you must smile back calmly, with simple pleasure, even as you wonder what she knows or suspects.
"But there's no need to but Enchanta to that trouble," you hear yourself say, "when Swiftwind could fly the distance so much faster. You stay here, today, Mermista. I'll go get Frosta."
Mermista strokes Enchanta's neck, and thanks her. "Alright, She-Ra," she says, "if you're sure."
"It's no trouble."
Another smile. "Then I'll see you in a few hours," she tells you.
You nod shortly and climb out of the water.
§
The wind has dried your dress and your hair by the time Swiftwind lands at Castle Chill and folds his wings. You swing a leg over his neck and slide to the ground. "Thanks, Swifty," you say, caressing the point of one ear. He snorts and steps away from you to launch himself into the air again.
You turn and start to walk with purpose towards the Castle, telling yourself to be calm. It means nothing that Frosta is visiting now, at least, nothing for certain. She would not have known that you were with Mermista. It has not been so long since you promised yourself to wait. You have gotten very good at waiting over the years, and you're well prepared to keep doing it for a long time.
The throne room is surely in just the same place, and you're concentrating on walking there quickly, so when you meet Frosta outside Castle Chill's great double doors, you are surprised, and stop. "Frosta!"
A smile spreads across her face like the smile you know must be on yours. "She-Ra," she says softly, "this is a surprise." The smile keeps spreading, and spreading, and warming. You feel as if you've come to see your best friend, perhaps, as if you've spoken to her every day--not as if you haven't seen her since the day Sweet Bee returned to her people and Frosta kissed He-Man on the cheek.
It's been almost four years.
"I heard you needed a ride," you smile.
"I haven't seen Mermista in so long--" she says, turning towards the door, but she stops and looks over her shoulder at you before she finishes, holding your gaze, "or anyone else either."
She leads the way into the throne room, which is empty, dark with shadows in the corners, the throne made of ice luminescent white. She leads you to a door behind the throne, and you pass through a close-walled cool passage and up a flight of narrow stairs carved from the ice. Then you're suddenly stepping through an arch, around a corner, and out onto what seems to be the top of a tower--the highest in Castle Chill, you can see, looking around. The rest of the castle, the field blanketed with snow, the ranks of blue and white mountains marching into the distance, are all laid out for you to see. "You can see the whole kingdom from here," you say, awed.
Frosta steps close, standing behind the crenellations at your side, her hands resting in a smooth bowl-shaped dent in the top of it. "Not quite," she says, pointing to a ridge of mountains in the distance, "we also have another valley on the other side of those mountains."
You just say, "It's beautiful, Frosta," looking around again at the endless blue and white reaching longing fingers for the horizon. The sky is even white, the sun pale and clear.
"This is my favorite place in the kingdom," she says in her husky voice, leaning against the ice on her crossed arms.
You look at her in surprise, but her profile is serene. She gazes out towards the mountains, and just flicks her eyes sideways to look at you. You exclaim, "It's pretty of course, but it's so alone,"
And she says, eyes narrowing suddenly--pain?--"Oh, I'm used to that."
You blink. You see it, but that she admits it so openly, even to herself, surprises you, and there is something in the way she is looking at you that makes it harder to breathe, like the weight of a collapsed mine on your chest. "You're not alone," you chide softly. "You're surrounded by subjects who love you."
"I know that I am," she says easily. Then her head tilts, so silky pale blue hair slides sideways and pools on the ice next to her white-gloved forearm. "Just like you're surrounded by people who worship you, She-Ra."
"I am not alone," you say, and she only watches you. And you find yourself finishing, "--but I have few friends." Her eyes are really black, a bottomless shade that repels light and doesn't even show the reflection of the sun. She is still looking at you, and you know you are going to say it.
"How long are you going to be staying with Mermista?" She asks you abruptly.
You were going to leave this afternoon. "How did you know that I was?" You ask instead.
She smiles, and a dimple appears in her cheek. "I talked to Mermista last night."
"Oh," you say, "after I was asleep," and she nods.
"How long are you going to stay, She-Ra?"
"I don't know yet," you say slowly. You look at each other without speaking. Maybe it is only your imagination that makes it tense. Frosta turns her face first, back to the distant mountains and the wide spread of white in between.
"What do you do when you get tired of it all, She-Ra?" she asks after a minute.
You look at her carefully. "I don't get tired of--"
"Yes," she says impatiently, "but I want a real answer." An expectant look, one hip cocked, the long leg stretched out in her blue leggings and white boots. Her hand fisted on her hip.
"Nothing," is what you settle on. "I can't do anything."
She is silent, then sighs. "I was afraid of that. --I don't do anything, either." She has looked away, and glances back at you sharply. "You're stronger than I," she says.
You watch her, the weary resignation, the determination, the power in every line of her perfect form. "I'm not so sure," you reply.
Frosta is leaning on the crenellation and looks down, her hair falling forward so you can barely see her face, only the delicate tip of her nose, through the blue strands. "Maybe I only hope someone is," she says.
You do not know or care who is stronger--if you were so weak you were dying, you would find the strength if you could to cradle her in your arms, smooth her brow and kiss her closed eyes.
But you feel yourself stronger already, from speaking like this with her. You do not think you have had a similar conversation in your entire life, and you know this is what part of you could see four years ago shuttered in her face. This is--almost--what you were waiting for.
You take a step forward. You don't mean to say anything, you don't think. In four years you've never gotten around to imagining this scene, or thinking of anything to say. "Frosta," you say, your voice dismayingly low and rough. You're putting out your hand; when did that happen? And her head turns a little, her eyes tracking yours, wide and soft and solemn. You can count her eyelashes.
"She-Ra?" she says uncertainly as you move yet closer, and
"Shhhhhhh," you whisper, leaning forward. Your eyes close, but you feel your hand touch her bare arm before the tips of your noses bump and brush and slide past each other, and then with a little jolt of cool soft electricity, your mouths collide, her lips still parted in surprise or protest under yours. The contact tingles at the backs of your hands, your closed eyes, sending streamers of giddy cold breath down your neck, or is that the wind and the snow? Your ribs feel odd, and your stomach--god, your stomach is heating and bubbling endlessly in one long, slow burn. Your head spins. What are you doing?
But she says "mm" into your mouth, and before you can doubt again, steps closer, though your toes are touching, until your chests crush together. Her gloved hand slides up your arm to wrap around your back under your cloak, and then, then,
Her mouth opens on blood heat and a throaty laugh of a kiss. Your mouth opens more too with a soft sound you don't recognize and your hand closes around the narrowest point of her waist, just above the hip, jerking her roughly forward. When your lips part, she gives a breathless choke of laughter, and her breath puffs on your upper lip. Your eyes open, and the closeness of her smiling eyes and her flushed cheeks turns everything upside down with vertigo. You cling to Frosta, tightening your grip and pulling her closer, for balance. Then, "sorry," you say automatically as she gasps.
But she shakes her head, smiling, and kisses the very corner of your mouth. You gasp too. Would you have thought the very corner of your lips would--? "No, I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Why?" You ask, eyes closed.
"For taking so long," she says. Her mouth is on your neck now. "I took so long to find out--I think I should have felt it the first time I saw you in my throne room at Castle Chill--I hardly know you. But I want to," she breathes against the hollow of your throat, and plants a kiss there. Then she lifts her face, and you brush your lips against her cheeks and her closed eyes.
"Don't apologize, Frosta," you say, and you have to clear your throat. Insane, the way the tilt of her head and the point of her chin make you tremble. You have never seen anything like the cascade of her blue hair behind that delicate face and her enormous eyes, or the silk of her mouth when she presses it to yours again.
Your eyelashes tangle together, your eyes closed. Both of your arms are wrapped around her now, against your will. It's all too fast. You know you didn't mean for it to be like this, but soft, gentle, the serene yes you have felt watching and waiting--but she traces the line between your lips with a pointed tongue that slips into your mouth, hot against the cold of the air. It takes you by surprise the way her voice nearly breaks on a sob as she says, "I was waiting, even if I didn't know it." And you are lost.
Blinding tenderness assaults you with the force of blazing determination or protectiveness or pity, and maybe there is something of all those things in the fragile strength and mystery of love. She bites gently at your upper lip.
You pull back, before you can drown in the scent of her. "Frosta," you warn, "I think there are too many things still to be said--"
She nods, wiping her mouth shakily on the back of her hand. This just leaves it a darker red, almost bruised-looking. "Oh, I know, She-Ra." She looks at you with a look you've seen before, almost, directed at your brother. Now it's incandescent, the smile, the dimple, the crescent of her eyelashes dipping and lifting. "We're going to say all of them." She brushes hair back from your face while you smile bemusedly at her, feeling dazed, your fingertips itching and longing to touch, your whole body alive with melting heat and tingles. "Call Swiftwind. Let's go to Crystal Falls."
now: mermista
The water is whispering and singing of wonderful things long before a dark speck in the sky turns into Swiftwind, and She-Ra and Frosta on his back. She-Ra's smile is softer than usual, and when she lifts Frosta from Swiftwind's back Frosta's hand lingers on She-Ra's arm for a moment, a smile on her face.
She tilts her chin up, as if inviting She-Ra's kiss, and She-Ra's eyes close and open as if she's tempted, or as if she's dreamed the kiss, and the thought has made her dizzy. They laugh together about something before they walk close to you and you have not seen She-Ra laugh like that for a long time. Frosta--well, Frosta's smile is something you have never particularly noticed before, and you suspect, now, that the old smiles were not quite real.
"Mermista," She-Ra calls, walking towards you, and you blink swiftly to clear water from your eyes. They're walking with the sun behind them, and it blurs and blackens their outlines. With your vision foggy enough you could imagine a cloud of rust-colored hair instead of She-Ra's golden mane, and a sweet, breathy voice instead, but you force yourself not to. When Frosta stands, hands on her hips, seeming amused at She-Ra's eagerness for another swim, you exchange a look with her that telegraphs the joy you feel for her without the need for water-magic. It is almost, almost enough to eclipse the grief. Frosta's smile shifts then, softening, her eyes sad and the set of her mouth eloquent with pity. It makes you take a deep breath, and surprisingly, you find new strength.
Sometimes you forget that she is a Queen.
You have always known that she knew, and you blink again, a few times.
"You'll be alright," Frosta whispers, when She-Ra dives and her head is beneath the water.
Somehow, that is enough; your eyes are dry, and when you look at her, you are calm, studying the new strength in the easy drape of her arms at her sides. You smile and nod your head a little. You will not speak of it.
now: frosta
There is sunlight on water, and catching in the leaves of the trees unpredictably where you think there should be dark shadows. The sun is not white, but the color of She-Ra's hair, brilliant and bright, dazzling on Swiftwind's coat, on the white of your boots lying on the bank a short distance away and on She-Ra's dress, once more sodden and wet.
She lies stretched on her stomach, her hair pushed sideways off the back of her neck, her head pillowed on her folded arms and turned sideways. You sit cross-legged and barefoot--your leggings are with your boots, and you wear only your dress, too, since she finally talked you into the water--and watch her. You could do it for hours. Amazing, the variety of colors the sun breathes to life in her hair. Captivating, the little shivers chasing down her spine when you trace the edge of her jaw with your fingertip.
"Mmmm," she murmurs, "Frosta, don't stop that." Her eyes are closed, and her mouth is open. You put a fingertip in the very center of her lower lip and trace its contours, mesmerized.
You bend forward, chuckling, until your hair falls forward and cloaks both your faces. The high arch of her eyebrow hovers just beneath your lips. "And what will you give me if I don't?" You ask, touching the very tip of her nose.
"Hmmmm," she sighs, and an eye drifts open. With no further warning, you're stumbling through the air, it seems like, a swift gliding slide across her body, rolling, the softness of her breasts crushing against you, on your back on green moss with She-Ra lying on top of you, looking amused and satisfied, with heavy eyelids and her lips ripe red and kissable.
So you kiss them, and her body tenses against you. The power of it is fascinating--you think you can feel every muscle, yet she's not heavy, and doesn't resist the caress of your fingers on the curve of her ribs and pushing under the edge of her dress, making her shiver. All at once she goes boneless, relaxing and melting on top of you, and her mouth opens over yours, easy and full and welcoming, hot and damp silk satin wet. Now it is her hair that blankets you both, but the sunlight filters through it and makes it brighter than day.
Your hands fumble for the seam of her dress, catch on it and unseal it clumsily, while her fingers are nimble and quick, stripping yours open. She peels it away from you like the skin of a fruit and lowers her body again to cover you in its place. It doesn't matter: the Whispering Woods are warm everywhere, thick and syrupy-aired with sunlight. She-Ra raises herself on her elbows to better reach you, dropping kisses and little bites on the swells of your breasts until you're aching, then taking one into her mouth to suckle it.
She is as thorough about this as you might have known she would be, if you'd ever given this the thought you could have. There is heat, and the wetness of her lips and tongue, everywhere--the inside of your elbow, your diaphragm, your breasts, your ribs, your thighs and between them, where you throb with blood and need. You arch away from the ground sobbing, and later, when she's stretched out like a feast before you, her mouth open under yours and her legs clutching tight around your hand, you remember your abandon and determine to make her so completely yours that she can't remember to whisper, in this painful husky moan that stabs into the base of your skull and claws at the center of your back, "Frosta."
"Sh," you whisper afterwards, and bury your face in her hair. It is what she said to you, and it seems fitting. Her arms tighten around you, and she says,
"You seem to have created a problem for me--I don't know how I'm ever going to let you go."
It's meant jokingly, but you can't resist. "Then don't." And you turn your face a little, and lift your head, to look into her eyes. Something about the look in them--not serene as you expected at all, but wide and vulnerable--makes you add impulsively, "She-Ra, how long are you going to stay with Mermista?"
Then she smiles, and lifts her hands to push her fingers through your hair, and frame your face. "As long as you do." You brush a kiss against her cheek again and settle into the curve of her body on the ground and wonder whether you could have had this that day when you faced her across a star burst in your throne room.
You do not know.
You have followed a winding path to come to this point, and you cannot spare regret for the twists and turns of it, not even for all your desolation on the cold turret. Now the sun and She-Ra's sun-colored hair enfold you. She presses a kiss against the top of your head and you close your eyes.
It feels like coming home.
End