Snow and ice were not a new thing. Of course they weren't. Roka, even subterranean as so many of its cities might be, had experienced full surface-seasons much as many other worlds; certainly Alexis had half-blurred memories, even so far back as childhood, of tearing across deep-frozen sea-ice at nigh-uncontrollable speeds. And regardless of Roka itself, they'd known winters on so many different worlds, so many different ways, that Earth was almost banal in this aspect. It froze over, it snowed, the rain chilled one to the bone: these are not unique or special.

It was still a relief from the pale imitation of seasons Roka had fallen into at some point during that long, agonizing millennium, where every year some other deep and integral part of how they had once experienced the world seemed to die while they weren't looking - and, eventually, even if they were. What was a winter, then? What did it matter? What of it was notable at all? Colder water - but it was already cold. Less food - but there was barely anything left. Winds that might strip the flesh from their bones in places wind had not once reached so harshly - but those preserved and left no room for rot.

Back in those winters, Alexis had made choices they did not - would not - could not - regret. None of it mattered now. Drawing their own thoughts to the idea of returning home was a foreign, terrifying thing; they could only circle it as if the very idea was a whirlpool, dragging them under, drowning them. When they thought about it, it pushed the air from their lungs.

Had their world rotted without them there to try and hold it in triage, through their existence alone? Their magic was irregular, unsteady, bucking their control, but it still came each and every time they called, and so did Roka's mantle. They were weak, now, but that power had all fallen away over those long years; that was not a new change. Surely Roka couldn't be more dead than it had been, though it was almost entirely there, still bleeding out slowly; surely it had seemed to have a vested interest in their survival, given how it had saved them when they walked into the sea and intended it to be the final time.

Certainly it was still dying. But it was not dead, and until that seemed to be changing, Alexis had no intent of returning. They would ply their trade on these stranger shores for as long as they could, and with as many trades as amused them to do so.

And this was no moment to retrospect, in any case, even if the glint of the light across the ice had made them think for a moment. Retrospection was best left for when they were too intoxicated to think straight; that was an action that had teeth and claws, and they were too prone to self-castigation when it came to their prior actions. Gods, but they had been so blindly stupid.

Well. They had been young, Alexis supposed. Not that it made things much better. Certainly they were no longer young now, even if their body might have ceased to change of its own volition in the normal ways; even for long-lived races, a thousand was a terribly long time.

Sometimes they felt every inch of it. And sometimes they felt twenty-four or twenty-six, filled with reckless, violent energy, something they had just barely trained out of themself -- those movements gave their position away, and they had needed every advantage they could get, when hunted by monsters and alone.

[wc: 603]