Frostwatch’s Call
“Distance is only the shape love takes when it must learn to see itself.” — Onyx Iskra
That same aurora burned pale above the pines.
Moosewood was quieter without Lynx. The days were never empty. Bear healed slowly; scars replaced the burns, but not the ache.
Stag did what he could—struggling but steady as stone, he carried wood, fixed tools—but his silence was a heavy blanket, and Bear could feel the weight of what went unsaid.
Lynx’s absence was everywhere: by the door where her boots once sat, in the unfinished songbooks, and in the way Auriel sometimes padded to the door at night and waited, ears pricked, as though listening for her return.
Bear told herself Lynx was busy, that silence was simply the forest’s way of teaching patience. But each dawn stretched thinner until even the hearth’s hum felt hollow.
Deep down, beneath the steady rhythm of her hands, she knew—the distance was not a passing season. It was a conscious severance.
At dawn, a messenger crow arrived, wings black against the snow. Its caw cracked the hush like breaking ice as it dropped a sealed letter onto the front steps of the Moosewood cabin.
Bear found the letter later that morning, its seal unbroken, its edges glittering faintly with frost. She recognized Lynx’s script at once. A rush of hope, sharp and painful, surged in her chest. Perhaps Lynx was reaching back; perhaps she had remembered.
She sat by the hearth, the fire still low from the night’s keeping, and let the seal’s image press into her palm—the spiral flame within a snowflake. For a heartbeat, she almost didn’t open it. The frost glittered on the seal like the frozen edge of a promise. Outside, the wind was rising.
Bear traced the spiral mark with her thumb, recognizing the weight behind it—not merely duty, but choice. The kind of choice that asked something more than obedience. The kind that whispered of crossing thresholds.
This was not Lynx’s hand delivering a message of return. Instead, it bore the cold, official seal of the Frostwatch command, which notified Lynx of her acceptance to the prestigious academy at the far northern ridge.
Bear understood at once: Lynx was truly on her way, far from Moosewood, and she would not come back—at least, not for a long while. The ache she’d felt in her paw now burned through her chest; Lynx’s leaving was not a wound of distance, but of destiny.
The words were clipped, formal, distant. Every line sounded like goodbye written in frost. They explained that due to the demands of training, Lynx would not be able to communicate with Moosewood—the rules forbade it, and the Frostguard Wardens strictly enforced it. The letter offered no celebration, no shared joy. That was all.
Bear’s paws trembled around the paper. The rule was real, yes, but the cold tone was Lynx’s own, sharpened to cut.
Stag read the letter once, set it down carefully, and said nothing. His jaw tightened, his shoulders stiff, but he did not speak. The firelight carved antler shadows up the wall behind him. Bear only nodded, though her throat ached with all she could not say.
That night, the hearth fire burned steadily, but to Bear it felt colder than ever.
When the last ember dimmed, she bowed her head, and the tears hissed as they fell upon the coals.
Outside, the wind carried a faint sound through the pines—something between a sigh and a song, as if the forest itself mourned and blessed the parting.
Above the forest, a green light shimmered—distant, answering.
“Even when the fire sleeps, its warmth remembers you.” — Whisper of Onyx Iskra
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