She walks down the dirt track at a brisk pace. She must not be late. The world glitters and has a white sheen as the frost is visible in the bright morning light. No snow, not yet. Just frost, cold and glittering as if a blanket of impending death has come to the life along the beaten path.

The girl stops in the middle of the track and looks around her with disapproval. Her strong shoulders are thrown back and her head held high. For a moment the world shimmers and a flash of what’s real to her is shown.

Real…real is the trees, white or black. Spindly and reaching, leafless. The grass different shades of dry, showing the ending of the summer season. The air is dry in both worlds both the warmth is slowly leeching from the real one while in the other it tries feebly to stay through the sun’s rays. Snow is almost nonexistent in the real world, it appears only rarely, but frost covers the land. This cold and unforgiving landscape only reigns for a few months f the year, the other belonging to the summer, a bright, warm, and growing time. Everything the winter is not.

Though in the other world, the one that has grown strong enough to dominate this girl’s real world is different. It is loud. It is full of life. It is moving. Continually striving for more. It is partially beautiful in its own destruction but with its ruination comes destruction for all.

The disapproval in her gaze continued as she started moving again down the dirt track, her feet crunching across the gravel and sand. Her head swiveled slowly, scrutinizing both sides of the frost bitten path. Reaching the end before a corner, a small smile is slowly appearing and growing across her face unbidden and she lets out a soft chuckle.

“You have done well, my daughter Frost,” She declared. Her voice rang in the quiet air, “Well indeed. But…you can do better. It is only the beginning and this sight pleases me. Hopefully you have succeeded in more areas.”

Looking up with a squint into the sun, currently cresting over the trees, she frowned and looked back to the white covering, “What a beautiful sight to be ruined but such a ruthless energy.”

“Farewell my daughter. Until we work again.” Her hand darted out and plucked a dying flower bud from a bush. With a chilling laugh she opened her hand. Her eyes followed the bud as it spiraled up into the sky. As the small bud moved skyward, it shriveled and crumbled to dust, the touch of the winter queen Atheasea upon it, sending it to its last death. Looking down from above at the flakes raining down, one would notice that the girl queen has already disappeared, all signs erased and gone as though never there, the quiet of impending winter settling in again.