Watchful Eye

Watchful Eye
Kesuk / Frost

“Again.”

Kesuk never knew a lot about her grandfather Frost.

The elders liked to tell stories about him sometimes. Out of all their immensely respected leaders, they said, you probably wouldn’t find one so sheerly devoted to the community as he was. Stoic as he could be, there wouldn’t be a soul who went without if the village were under his eye.

She heard how he fought so many battles against beasts trying to tear apart their home, day and night. How he stood sentinel amidst Tundra-cursed storms to ensure the village survived. How he hunted with such fervor that he didn’t sleep for a week so the village would avoid famine.

If anyone in the village took issue back then, her grandfather was always there to mediate. If the village were ever in any kind of danger, he would be the first to sacrifice his hide to save it. A true South Novan warrior, strong of heart and mind who lived and died by his people.

Most people, they sighed, didn’t remember Frost’s legacy anymore. They were too young to know the kind of Chief he had been, and it was a great shame. His sacrifice and strength were what laid the foundation for their great Chief Glaciene to become a warrior without compare, and Chief Wulfric was no different.

Kesuk was lucky to be able to learn under her grandfather! That’s what they said.

“Again.”

Her dad didn’t really talk about him. If she asked, he usually just said something about how devoted to the village her grandfather was and changed the topic. He didn’t seem to like him much, though she didn’t really get why, so she’d stopped asking.

He did talk about her mother though. A fearless woman who would never hesitate to lay her life down for those she loved, she was as inspiring as she could be foolhardy, he’d groused fondly. The fight she’d with her father for the right to marry was practically legendary.

Kes knew the story. It was a big, crazy fight to the death, and winning meant her mom got to be Chief and get married. Kes thought it was really cool!

Her father had been terrified. Her mother could’ve lost - she almost had.

How ruthless Frost was, he’d muttered to himself once. All power and pure stubborn will with the emotional capacity of a rock. His own daughter…?

Grandfather Frost just hummed when she asked about it. Said her mother put up a good fight. Kesuk was shaping to be a lot like her.

“Again.”

Ruthless… Mean? She didn’t know a lot about him, but he never seemed mean to her. The grandfather she knew was sort of quiet, and a little boring most of the time. He’d been teaching her since she was really young since she was going to be Chief when she grew up, and most of it was boring book work, or things like learning how to carve hilts from bone. Stuff like that.

He could even be fun sometimes! It wasn’t in her studies much, but occasionally she got to spar with him - even if it was just learning how to punch or kick. Why didn’t they do more of that, she’d asked? Anything’s better than just sitting all day!

Your mother had been a restless sort too, he’d chuckled. In time.

“Again.”

Meta said training was fun. Out there, on the outside, he, his friends, and his teachers all trained by playing games. What kinds? All kinds. Catch. Kick the ball. Flying through hoops. Always a game or activity his Teacher came up with, and he always got to have a treat at the end.

If that was what training was like, Kes wished her grandfather would hurry up already. What was he even waiting for? Grandfather Frost was strong. He knew everything about ice, blizzards, weapons, and fighting. They could do so many fun things with that!

She didn’t want to wait. She wanted to run, jump, and see her grandfather do something cool so she could do it better. She wanted to show her friends! She wanted to have fun!

Kes had been so excited when he’d finally, finally said they were going to start.

“Again.”

Over a month later, she wants to kick Meta in the shins for being such a rotten liar.

Kes’ bow lands on the floor with a cold, brittle snap, sending ice shards flying everywhere and threatening to hit her in the legs. Her arrow - whatever she had managed to make of it - falls along with it, nothing but itty bitty pieces of ice and snowy powder. Her arms shake from the effort it takes, had taken, to hold everything together, and she gratefully lets them fall limp at her sides like big dead weights with the strain now gone.

It won’t be like that for long. As her gaze stares down at the grip of her bow, carved of bone, the only thing still whole in the whole icy mess, her grandfather’s voice comes from behind her. “Again.”

Again. Again. Again he says, like he’d been saying all day. She wants to scream at him that she is, she’s trying! What about that doesn’t he see? What doesn’t he get! She can’t do it!

Not even a veteran hunter can make arrows completely out of ice. Just because her grandfather can, that doesn’t mean she can!

But her grandfather wanted her to learn. He’d woken her up early this morning way before the sun came up just to bring her to the shooting range for it. He’d handed her a bow, pointed at three targets already set up way on the other side, and said: You will make three arrows out of ice today and you will shoot all of them at the targets at the same time.

Grandfather Frost was awful with his training. He made her get up early and do all sorts of exercises, and he yelled and barked at her if she didn’t do them right. The past month had been just that, day in and out: fighting, ice, fighting, running, hurting everything in her body, and no time at all to see her friends or even eat or sleep.

This, though? This was crazy. Even for him. And he wasn’t gonna let her leave until she’d done it. He never did.

She’s gonna kick Meta in the shins so hard next time she sees him.

Kes picks her bow up with reluctance pasted all over her. It’s not the first time the thing has broken - Kes sort of stopped counting after the tenth - but it hasn’t gotten any easier to fix.

Again, she squeezes her hand and focuses on the cold inside of her, the gift of Tundra that every Leo in her village has. Again, the cold responds slowly, like trying to push a boulder, and she pushes at it until the ice on her bow crackles as it starts to reform.

Frozen Leos were people who could control ice like it was a third arm. Her dad said it was something intrinsic, meaning anyone could do it as easy as breathing. They were ice.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

By the time her bow is fixed, Kes’ head feels like it’s swimming. She glares blearily at her bow, trembling in her numb grip, as if it were somehow responsible for all of South Nova’s problems.

She doesn’t want to move. She thinks if she moves, lifts a foot, she’s going to do something like fall over. She’s sore. She’s tired. She can’t feel her hands. She’s hungry. Everything in her, her whole entire body, feels like–like–

Kes doesn’t wanna do this anymore.

Her eyes trail across the shooting range, at all of her poor arrows all over the ground. There are shards of ice everywhere, from Kes’ feet to the foot of the targets across the training arena. She’s lost track of how many arrows she’s broken.

At the far end of the range, her three targets sit without anything on them. Despite all of that work, all of those hours and hours. Nothing at all.

Kes doesn’t wanna do this anymore.

“Kesuk. Again.” Her grandfather says behind her. Her face burns cold.

She stares down at her free hand before slowly turning it to face upward. The skin in the middle has started to discolor, from blue to an achy frostbitten purple like a bruise. It hurts when she flexes it.

Kes bites her lip.

She focuses.

Of all the weapons the village hunters knew and used, the bow and arrow was usually said to be the hardest to master. The bow itself wasn’t the problem; it was that the arrows were made of ice, and making one was extraordinarily hard.

Slowly, ice starts to form in the palm of her hand. It gleams, a pretty smooth patch right on top of her skin. No jagged edges.

You gotta make each arrow perfectly. If the ice comes out too thick, it won’t fly right. If it’s too thin, it’ll snap before it’s done forming. And you had to make it all at once.

When making an arrow, the head always went first. You could make lots of different kinds of arrow heads depending on how you hunted or what you wanted, and Kes was most familiar with the field point.

Her palm flexes. The ice changes shape as it extends up and out, slowly flaring into the distinct, too-familiar shape of a broadhead. Those were used by active hunters and very effective at hunting big game.

For the arrow, a hunter had to be aware that every part of the instrument functioned as one big, cohesive unit. The head of the arrow could kill, but it was the shaft, the fletching, and the nock that helped guide that point to the target. When making an arrow, you had to know exactly how to put it all together perfectly.

One small flaw? The whole thing fell apart.

Slowly, the ice on her hand starts to stretch - like an icicle, growing right out of her hand. She stares so hard at it that her eyesight gets blurry at the edges.

The shaft is the hardest part to get right. It holds everything together. The ice on the shaft is hard because it’s supposed to be thin, but not too thin. Thick enough to handle the pressure of the wind and the impact of hitting a target without losing momentum. She’s broken a lot of arrows from faulty shafts because she can’t ever seem to get the hang of it.

The ice grows, bit by bit. It’s very uniform and perfectly smooth, like a pretty, thin flute. If she looks close, maybe she can even see her reflection.

Her arm shakes. Kes reaches out her free hand to keep it steady. She feels like she can’t breathe and focuses on taking slow, very deliberate breaths. Her eyesight is so blurry, but she doesn’t blink.

She can’t stop - if she stops now, if she loses balance even a little bit, if she does anything at all, it’s going to fall apart. Again.

She holds her breath and pulls at the cold inside her.

The arrow gleams as it reaches its way out into the cold, frosty world before it. Several inches long, with a deadly sharp tip, every bit of it the image of perfection. The fletching emerges from her palm as three perfect faux-feathers of pure ice, smooth and sharp.

Her palm flexes, ever so slightly. The nock forms, painfully.

Kes lets go.

With what feels like a big, quiet snap in her chest, the burning tension inside her sags, cold and hot and tired. When she looks down, there is a nice, perfect, pretty arrow in the palm of her hand.

The world sways. She only notices she’s falling when she’s already halfway to the ground, and Kes squawks with a flail of her limbs, a mass of pale wild hair frantically trying to keep her arrow from hitting anything. She only barely manages to land down on one knee and stay there; her hands hold her bow and arrow like her fists are frozen solid.

She can’t drop anything. If she drops them, they’ll break. If they break, she’ll have to make them again.

She already has to make her arrow again. Two more times.

Kes stares ahead at the vague, funny shapes of the targets in the distance, eyes foggy and unseeing against a pale blue worn little face that looks like it hasn’t slept in days.

She can’t make another arrow. She knows she can’t. Her body is so heavy she can’t feel it. Her head hurts. Her stomach hurts. She’s tired. She’s tired. She hates how she sounds like a baby but she’s tired! Some veterans couldn’t even make an ice bow, but she did. And she made a perfect arrow too. All in one day.

Her friends would be so jealous. She couldn’t wait to show them. But her grandfather didn’t care.

“Kesuk.”

Surrounded by the ice of all of her failed attempts, the girl twitches with a minute shift of her hair. Her hands tighten and her fuzzy sight drags down to the weapon that she holds.

The arrow she made…that’s the most perfect one she’s made all day. She wonders, if she shoots it at the target all the way over there, would it land? Would it take the pressure and the wind and actually hit the target? It had to be almost impossible.

Would he leave her alone if he saw? Saw that she’d done it? Even if with just one?

Would he be proud?

With what feels like the biggest, greatest heave of all her strength she can muster, Kes lifts herself back up onto both her feet. Her knees wobble, but the girl keeps her stance steady as she raises her bow and nocks her arrow to the gleaming string of pure frost.

As blurry as her eyesight is and as much as it burns to stare like this, Kes still knows how to properly aim. She sticks her tongue out, squinting as she concentrates.

Aim with the dominant eye. Use the tip of the arrow as a reference. Kes pulls the arrow back, straining at the weight on her numb, dead arm that threatens to let go - but she cinches it tight and refuses.

She focuses on the trajectory, and then moves her arrow up, just above the bullseye, and a bit to the right. Stares, past the dead weight and the strain on shaking muscles and the way her vision shudders. All of that.

Kes lets go and the arrow sings as it flies.

When she was a little younger, once she’d gotten to see a comet fly across South Nova. The trail it left had made her think someone, something, had gone and torn open a tiny slice of space with their dagger. A cut that travelled as deadly and sharp as any warrior's sword.

Watching her arrow, it feels a lot like that. It soars and leaves a trail of what can only be frost behind it, whistling a flutey tune as it aims for a killing blow. It gleams as it travels, and Kes knows this only actually lasts half a second, but to her it feels like forever, watching and waiting to see where it lands. If it lands.

And– it does. Her arrow, pretty and perfect, lands with the sound of a bell chime, embedding itself firmly into the center of the target and vibrating with the force of impact.

She holds her breath. Waits. It could still break. It could still fall apart, at any second.

…It doesn’t. It stays there, long after the moment’s passed, as whole as when she just made it. A perfect bullseye.

“Yes!!”

Kes hollers. She can’t help it; her arms shoot into the air and she jumps, her grin so wide it could split her face. “Yes! Yes! I did it grandfather! Look!”

How many hunters could say they had made a bow, a perfect arrow, and gotten a bullseye all in one day? How many! Kes laughs, the sound bubbling up inside of her chest loud and infectious, sprinting over to the target just so she can look at it better, who cares about the ice on the ground?

“It’s right in the middle! And there’s no cracks!” She squeals, pointing at each little bit. “The shaft is perfect! And did you hear it? It sounded so pretty! I didn’t know they could do that!”

She can’t stop moving. It’s like all the tiredness and everything just left, and she feels– she feels like she could do anything.

She did it! After all this time, she did it! She finally did it!

“Grandfather! Did you see it? Grandfather?”

Kes whips her head around.

Across the shooting range, in exactly the same place as he had been standing all day, her grandfather Frost hasn’t moved. His back is still turned; he’s got his hands behind him, his hair obscuring his whole body so that Kes can’t see what he’s doing or how he’s reacting.

When he does move, it’s a slow, sluggish shift that has Kes holding her breath. She watches as, from over his shoulder, she sees the first hint of his face, and then an eye peering evenly at her.

He stares.

“Again.”

…

What?

“What?”

“Again.” He says. “Three, Kesuk. You know this.”

“But–” Kes stutters. She can feel something starting to squeeze her throat; her voice comes out with a crack. “Grandfather Frost, that’s not– I– I can’t, grandfather! I can’t do it!”

Frozen Leos are cold and ice. They live in Tundra and they’re one with Tundra. Despite that, Kes feels so, so cold. Not the ice kind, not the wind kind. She can’t explain it. It hurts her chest, and her belly. Her face burns, her eyes burn. Her throat hurts and she feels her lower lip start to wobble the longer she stares at the man standing so far away from her.

“You will.”

Why?

…Why?

Kes reaches up and rubs her face. It doesn’t help. She rubs harder, and harder, until she’s practically scratching at her own eyeballs. She makes a noise, ugly and croaky in her throat, and that hurts too.

Why! She wants to scream! Why! What does he want! Why does she have to keep doing this! He wasn’t like this before! What happened! What did she do wrong! Why!

“Kesuk–”

“I AM!!”

With a shriek, she raises her arm and throws her stupid bow at her grandfather as hard as she can.

It’s not pretty like her arrow. The bow goes flying and it whistles as it tumbles through the air, twisting and turning on itself over and over like a rock rolling down a hill. The weapon arcs unevenly across the entire shooting range and Kes watches, transfixed, full of fury and righteousness and shaking from head to toe, as it gets closer and closer to the one who’s made her whole life miserable for this whole entire month.

Everything goes so slow.

The bow lands and shatters on the ground two feet from where Grandfather Frost stands.

Kes pants. Her arm hurts. She shakes and stares and grandfather Frost looks back at her.

His gaze trails down to where the bow lays in front of him, his expression unreadable. He turns, and Kes stiffens, tight as a ball.

The silence hangs.

Frost kicks her bow in one smooth movement. It slides, right back in her direction, and stops miserably at her feet. Nothing but bone and jagged, itty bits of ice.

“Again.”

…

She wants to go home.

She wants her dad and she wants to go home.

But grandfather won’t let her leave until she’s done.

A heavy, cold, shaky arm reaches down for her bow. A discolored, bruised hand squeezes. Ice feebly starts to grow back where it needs to.

She thinks, as she sluggishly walks back to her spot and turns herself around to face the targets, that if her mom hadn’t died none of this would be happening. That if her dad hadn’t left her with her grandfather, none of this would be happening.

Her hand stretches out, palm up. She focuses hazily on the arrow she needs to make, past all the fuzzy, staticky sensations that she can’t really feel anymore. It doesn’t matter.

Grandfather won’t let her leave. He won’t let her leave until he has his three stupid arrows.

The first arrow pops out. Her whole body shakes.

Stupid.

The second arrow, slowly, comes out after the other. More sluggish, slightly less pretty. Kes can’t feel it. She just stares and breathes wetly through her mouth, thinking about how stupid it is, and how much she hates him.

Second arrow, in her hand.

She hates him.

Third. Third…coming out of her palm. It looks red. Her hand looks red. She doesn’t know why, doesn’t care.

She doesn’t wanna be here.

The third arrow lands in her palm trailing a rivulet of bloody stains that freeze the moment it touches the cold, open air. In a child’s palm dulled black to the point of frostbite, three gleaming frosty arrows sit perfectly side by side, each one more stained than the last.

Kes’ head rings. Kes does not know where she is, or what she’s doing. Kes is not thinking. One arm simply raises itself - and then the other, stiff and disjointed, to hold her bow.

It’s not the right angle. The arrows don’t sit right against it.

Her arm starts to pull.

Something

shatters.

Kes thinks very, very strangely that ice looks very pretty when it goes flying everywhere. Bits and pieces that hit the light very nice, and when you move, it’s like they dance. Everything flies out of her hands and into the air and down to the floor, and she follows it so she can see it all up close.

She can’t feel anything. She thinks she hears something, but she kind of doesn’t care.

She just lays there and thinks, wow.

And then, she isn’t thinking at all.

..

…

…

…

“Frost!”

…

Kes groans.

She regrets it immediately. The vibration of the noise rattles her brain around in her skull and the pain makes her ears ring; her stomach does a mean flip, and her throat gets all scrunched the way it does when she’s about to throw up.

Kes stays super, super still and takes long, deep, steady breaths. She doesn’t know how long she’s like that; but as she waits, it gives her time to register her surroundings.

The first thing is - warm. She’s warm.

The second thing is, when she tries to move her arms, they move really stiffly. Her hands twist and curl and she only barely manages to drag one arm downwards. Something drags against her palm when she does, and it feels really, really familiar–

–Fur. It’s fur.

Her dad’s pelt. Rough, coarse, thick. That’s the warmth, she figures out - her dad’s pelt is wrapped around her.

Why is that? He hasn’t wrapped her up since she was little. Where is she, even? The last thing she remembers is…

…

Kes cracks her eyes open.

Her room is exactly the same as she’d left it when she woke up this morning. She spends her time just staring blearily at what she can see of it in the dark, partly because she has a hard time believing she’s even there. The walls, the furniture… She’s in her bed, and across from her is her door.

It feels like she’s dreaming. Is she supposed to be here? She doesn’t think she should be here.

How? Did she get here? She’s…supposed to be…

Kes sits up with a wince. The action draws a shock of pain from basically everywhere in her body, but her arm screams with it, and she looks down at it to see that there’s a bandage wrapped around her palm all the way to her elbow.

She wonders how? But then she hears something and her eyes move to instead look over at her door.

“Until then, you will not go anywhere near my daughter. Is that understood.”

“Wulfric–”

“To Tundra’s maw with you, that is a direct order, Frost!”

The room practically shakes around her. Kes winces and curls back into her father’s pelt.

It’s quiet for a second.

“...I understand you are upset, Wulfric. I care for her as much as you do. That is why I do this. What would have happened had those outsiders meant harm to our village? Kesuk would not have been able to defend herself. You see how much she’s learned already in such a short amount of time? She requires my guidance.”

“Guidance?” Her father’s voice sounds rotten. She doesn’t like it. “You yell and push her as though you were an outsider yourself. You make her hands bleed. That is not guidance - that is cruelty. She is a child.”

“A child who will be Chief one day, Wulfric. Kesuk is not like her peers who have the luxury of time - she needs this training to be just as much a Chief as her mother was, and I am the only one suitable enough to teach her.”

Her father says nothing. Kes shifts uncomfortably.

“If she is not taught now, she may never get the opportunity to learn. I refuse to let Glaciene’s daughter die by a beast or an outsider's hand because she didn't have any proper training.”

“She is ten years old, Frost. You expect her to train as a veteran would? Yes, she has learned something only a fraction of our hunters know, but she is a child.”

“Glaciene learned just the same at Kesuk’s age. Kesuk can do just as well as her mother did.”

“Is that necessary? When we have trained fighters and guards ready to protect her without a second’s hesitation? You speak fear without rationality, Frost.”

“Do not speak to me of fear when the lack of it cost me my daughter’s life. I refuse to lose Glaciene’s legacy to the same fate. Do you want to lose her too? She’s all we have left of her.”

When Frost speaks next, he’s so quiet that Kesuk has to strain herself to hear him.

“I only do this because I care for her. You know that. If Tundra were to take us both, at least we would have the comfort in knowing that Kesuk can care for herself in our absence.

“The training is harsh, yes. But she needs this. And one day she will be just as strong as Glaciene and you both. That is what we both want in the end, is it not? Please.”

The silence is so loud that Kes feels like she can’t breathe through it.

She doesn’t want it, she wants to shout. She doesn’t want to train anymore! Not with her grandfather. She wants to train like the rest of her friends in the beginner’s group. She doesn’t want anything special. She doesn’t want to be special. Not if it means getting yelled at. Not if it means hurting and crying all the time.

If that’s what she has to do to be Chief, then she doesn’t want it. She hates it.

She doesn’t want it.

“...We’ll see.”

Kes’ eyes burn. This time, when the tears come, she doesn’t stop them.

They stop talking eventually. She hears their footsteps grow quiet as they leave. Eventually, it’s just her sitting in her dark room, and left to herself the noises she’d been keeping inside all day come out ugly and quiet.

She cries because it isn’t fair. She cries because they hate her as much as they say they don’t. She cries because– because–

Kes just cries.

…

She doesn’t see it at first.

It’s really faint. Through all the tears and the everything going on, Kes doesn’t see anything until she's calmed just enough to wipe her sore hands on her face and stare down at them miserably. Only then does she notice something odd.

Her brow furrows.

“...Purple?”

Light. A purple light. A purple glow, at first just visible against her hands, but it gets brighter as if on cue and then it’s like her whole bed is being illuminated in the softest violet ever.

She looks down at herself, and then around at her bed. She looks behind her, towards her pillow, and that’s where the glow is brightest, right underneath it. Kes reaches out.

Meta’s Warp Star pulses in her hands with a reassuring warmth that Kes finds herself eternally mesmerized by. Out in the open, it illuminates the whole room with a pretty purple glow, casting her walls, furniture, even herself in a faint lilac light, and stares down at it with awe painted ever-present on her slack little face.

She still remembers when he gave it to her, just before he and his Teacher had to leave. For a Star Warrior like him, he said, the Warp Star was practically everything - part of his soul, even! Why give it to her if it was so important? She’d wondered.

So they’d always be close by even if they weren’t physically around to see each other, he’d told her. She had to take care of it, okay? And Tundra’s wrath if Kes hadn’t; she’d guard it with her life if she had to.

Kes squeezes it experimentally, just a bit, and basks in the warmth against her hands. Frozen Leos were better for cold, but this warmth was a different kind. It was fuzzy, like a hug. Like not being alone.

She wished Meta were here. Maybe if he were, things wouldn’t be so bad.

“I miss you a lot, Meta,” Kes mumbles. Her arms wrap the Warp Star close and she basks in the sensation that it gives her even if she can’t explain what it is. “It sucks here. I wish I could see you…”

At least she doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

As she hugs it close and lets her eyes flutter shut, content to just sort of sit there and doze off, slowly she becomes aware of…something. It’s hard to explain, the longer she holds the Warp Star, the harder it seems to be to hold. Her arms hold it tight, but it gets harder and harder to keep them that way because it feels something is–pushing them–

Kes’ brow furrows. She looks down, perplexed.

The Warp Star moves and Kes immediately lets go.

Kes watches, transfixed, as in the middle of her room, a few feet above her floor, the Warp Star turns itself to lay flat in the air and grows. It gets bigger, bigger than her pillow, bigger than her, and Kes abruptly worries that it’s going to knock something over if it keeps going like it is.

It doesn’t, fortunately. It stops at about half the size of her bed, maybe a bit larger, and then hovers there quietly without a single movement.

Wide, bewildered eyes stare at it. It looks so mystical and crazy and out of place in the middle of her room that she wants to giggle at how silly it is, so she does. Very quietly.

What’s it doing, she wonders? Kes tries to think. Meta hadn’t said a whole lot about it. Did she accidentally trigger something? How was she going to make it go back down? She chews her lip as she stares at it.

Meta had said something about Warp Stars. Because every Star Warrior had a Warp Star and because it was part of them, they had the ability to summon it, if they wanted.

“You can even ride it sometimes wherever you gotta go!” He’d chirped. “You just need to tell it where! Get it? Warp Star! Cool, huh?”

She had thought it was cool. The coolest thing ever. And now, staring at his Warp Star, she thinks…

(that she doesn’t have to stay here doesn’t have to train under her grandfather doesn’t have to do any of this anymore she could be as far away from here as possible she could stay with Meta)

…That it looks big enough to sit on.

“Be right back,” Kes says quickly, dodging around the Warp Star with energy that makes her limbs creak but she doesn’t care. She throws her closet open with all the excitement of a child at a feast, barely thinking, just doing. “Where is it, where– Aha!”

She yanks out her satchel, takes only the briefest second to peek at its contents - dried fruit, cured meat, water - before throwing it over her shoulder.

Kes scampers to her window. She reaches out, grabs, and throws it open. A cold bite of air brushes against her face and goes ignored.

She doesn’t want to be Chief. She doesn’t want to train under her grandfather, who’s as mean and ruthless as they come. She doesn’t want to stay here. She can’t.

Kes doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to. And she won’t.

“Take me to Meta,” She tells the Warps Star, running around it to wave her hands and usher it towards the window. It floats obediently without a complaint, coming to hover at the threshold to the icy world outside, and awkwardly Kes clamors to sit on its surface. The added weight doesn’t make it move a bit - it’s like sitting right on a bench.

“Take me to his village, please,” She tells it - begs it. Her hands rest on its warm surface. “I– I want to go outside. I want to see him again.

“Please.”

A second passes.

And then, the Warp Star begins to move.

Meta’s never described what flying on a Warp Star is like. When she’d heard they could, she hadn’t asked much about how it worked.

It’s…very weird. When the Warp Star moves, it’s slow at first - but it doesn’t stay that way. It speeds up, more and more, and as it does it starts to angle itself further and further until it and Kes are both pointed upwards and still going. She grips her satchel tight with one hand and the edge of the Star with the other, her heart pounding in her little chest.

Kes fully expects to get knocked off. She can see the shift of the world as she and Star make a steady incline and she can hear the wind howling in her ears – but she doesn’t fall. She doesn’t even feel anything. No wind, no pull of gravity. It’s like she’s glued to the inside of an invincible bubble.

She sits up experimentally. When nothing happens, Kes moves to stand, and it’s no different from standing in her room. Warp Stars are funny, she decides. She’s going to ride them more often.

As the Warp Star begins to carry her off into the vastness of the stars beyond, Kes’ eyes trail across the expanse of what she can see of South Nova far below. It takes her breath away, seeing it all - she doesn’t think anyone in her village has ever seen South Nova like this before. All whites and pretty blues, from great snow fields to the jagged peaks of Heaven’s Spine. If she told the Warp Star to circle around all of South Nova, what else would she see, she wonders?

Her gaze turns downwards.

At this angle, at this height, her village seems so small. There are the houses, scattered all over like little dots. There’s the shooting range way over there, the walls surrounding her village keeping it safe from the beasts outside, and if she looks around close enough she can even see her friends’ homes if she squints. And if she looks just over there…

Kes’ gaze moves to land on her house. Just another little speck among a bunch of other little specks, this far out.

Kes hesitates. The Warp Star slows, and eventually it comes to a stop.

…

She might never see them again.

Her dad. Her friends and all of the snowball fights they’ve ever had, her favorite foods and her favorite spots to stargaze, every single villager she’s ever met who ever smiled at her and said hello. Everything and everyone down there that made her happy.

She doesn’t want to leave them. Really, she doesn’t. It’s home. She loves her home so much and everyone and everything in it.

But…

Grandfather Frost glares at her in her mind. She still hears the barb of his words and the anger in his shouts. She still feels the pain of his lessons in her body. Blood, sweat, and so many tears, and none of it that he ever, ever cared about.

Her grandfather’s conversation with her dad echoes in her ears.

…

Kes looks away.

Without a sound, the Warp Star rockets away into the glittering cosmos. She doesn’t look back.

-End-

Artist Comment:

November, 12 2025

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MORE FROST ART!!!

So!! This story takes place between two important events in Kes' life.

It takes place before the story "Outside Town of Kalmari" but after "An Icy Friendship" and "Friends don't Forget"

Several weeks After the recent visit from the outsiders (AKA- Bate and Meta), Frost shifted gears in kes’ training.

Up until this point, his lectures weren’t as physically demanding. Running, very light sparring. But mostly, her days were filled with books and reading; the history of South Nova, carving hilts for various weapons, learning basic village protocol, migration patterns of all native wildlife, learning how to properly utilize each carcass for their bones, meat and pelt, etc. Basically, Lots of reading, memorizing and hands on projects.

But ever since the arrival and departure of Meta and Bate, that’s when her physical training started. She noticed a huge shift in his behavior- stricter, meaner, showed less empathy. She was excited at first. When Meta told her that he also trains, she learned all the fun he had with his comrades and teachers. All the fun games they had, and treats given as rewards for working so hard. She assumed it’ll be just like that.

She was dead wrong.

Waking up early, training until night. Shouting, orders, commands. No treats, no rewards, no praise. Aching joints and body. She began to hate being around her grandpa, but it fell upon deaf ears anytime she complained to him. And today was no different.

She is to learn a weaker (but still VERY difficult) bow and arrow technique. Frost is able to form over 50 arrows at a time, but for her training, she is to form 3 ice arrows, and shoot 3 different targets scattered across the room simultaneously. Being able to form a single arrow takes A LOT concentration. (Even veterans struggle to form even one!) The arrow can’t be too thin or it’ll break, it can’t be too thick or it won’t fly correctly. It can’t be too short or too long, the measurement is extremely precise. Simply put, using the bow and arrow is one of the hardest weapon to use. And Kes is to make 3 perfect arrows. Being that it’s one of frosts special moves that likely took him years to master, Kes is struggling a lot.

Poor Kes was so happy she was able to form one, and hit a target dead in the center. Frost didn't even congratulate or praise her hard work for such an amazing achievement. Nova knows if Meta did something correct in his training, Bate would encourage the little warrior for training so hard! Kes absolutely HATES it, and after overhearing the conversation Frost and Wulfric had, she decides to run away and heads to Meta's home in Kalmari Town.

Knowing how Frost treats Kes, I can only imagine how he treated his own Daughter, Glacine. D:,

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The AMAZING literature written for this illustration was commissioned by my good friend, Dogblog. (dA- Shadowrealmprincess) ^v^ Thank you so much for all your hard work!