It was cold, that much she knew as she trudged through the piles of snow that had conquered everything as of late. Her paws were cold, her ears were cold, her nose was cold, all of that permeated the fog of her mind, but little else really registered. She was on the hunt, after all, for flowers, herbs, anything green! It was whiteness, white as far as her vibrant eyes could see with not a single pop of floral color or sprig of green leaf to be seen. Despite the cold she had to find these flowers, something in the back of her mind kept reminding her. Flowers for a funeral, she thought vaguely, though the one who died had done so quite some time ago. Still, she needed to get him flowers, needed to heal, needed to bless…

And so she wandered, one delicate cream colored paw after the other across the open fields, scanning the horizon for any sign of flora. At least it wasn’t snowing presently, the sun was actually shining though its warmth could not fend off the chill that seeped into her body and turned her skin to goose flesh beneath her silken coat. It was the shine that caught her attention first, a prismatic burst of color on a hill not too far away and it caused her to pause, her gemlike eyes narrowing to try and discern what it was. With the sun in her eyes she couldn’t tell, but it was color and for her color meant flowers! With a high pitched whine followed by an excited yip she turned toward the flashing brilliance. Her dainty figure veritably flowed across the snowy landscape, her chocolate color standing in stark relief to the winter world around her. She moved like water over rocks, though there was perhaps something slightly off about her gait she embodied grace as she unknowingly stepped from snow covered grass to the ice-covered lake at the heart of Moladion.

Her pace does not change, her course does not alter as she naively begins to trek across the frozen waters, for the color she chased was merely the blinding reflection of sun on the snow of the island within the lake. It was the fragile ice cracking beneath her rather meager weight that first pierced the shroud that clung around her mind, instincts screaming that something here was not right, was not safe. She paused, for the first time her eyes clearing to realize the situation she was in. The fissures spread like a reaching hand in every direction growing as her weight shifted nervously while she fought for the ability to do something, anything.

Fear is paralyzing, and the full realization of her fear turned her feet to lead in those moments. She sidestepped mindlessly, hoping to move from the patch of thin ice only to watch the area she had been split just as she moved revealing the dark, frigid waters beneath. She might have made it, might have been able to maintain her focus long enough to escape this predicament were it not for the water. Realizing that she was in danger of falling into those fathomless depths shredded any sense of sanity she was clinging to in those moments. With a piercing scream she attempted to back pedal, her weight shifting too hard and too fast for the ice to sustain in and the glass like floor upon which she stood crumbled.

With the blink of an eye she vanished from the lakes surface, paws flailing her instincts attempting to remind her how to swim, something she had not done in years. The subzero water felt like the teeth of a million wolves raking across her skin as she struggled, somehow managing to break the surface of the water once more. Her small paws raked at the edge of the ice, struggling and grasping for purchase only to have it crumble beneath them. As she struggled her mind saw only memories, and as she fell back beneath the surface of the water once more she watched the very same thing happen to her father so many moons ago.

She had been small then, about to go into her first year and she had been out with her father and uncle playing on the ice. It had been a blissful day up until the ice beneath her father had given way. Adelia had rushed forward to save him even as he called out for his brother’s help. His brother, her uncles, had stopped her, tossing her small form back toward the banks so she landed in a pile of snow barely covering a large rock. It had knocked her out cold though she came to moments later with her ears ringing. Frantically she had stood, her small form swaying from what would have been called a concussion, though her eyes searched only for her father. Her vision had been blurry but she had finally seen him, still struggling on the lip of the ice while her uncle merely watched, an odd gleam in his eyes.

Her small voice tried to call out to no avail, black spots appearing before her eyes as she watched her uncle let her father succumb to the icy waters before she passed out once more. An accident he had told her family, an accident they had called it, a sight which had ever haunted her and driven her from her home, a sight which broke something in the small girl that day. As the freezing water permeated the chocolate girl making it harder and harder to struggle for the surface she found surprising clarity. It was only right that she meet her own end this way too, her atonement for not being able to save him that day she thought as black clouded her vision once more.