Return of Snowlight

***Return of Snowlight*** is the twelfth and final chapter of *Winter's Tales*.

## Synopsis

Reality strikes Winter in the heart, and after being torn open, exposed, shamed, and stabbed, she faces a tantalizing decision: run away from everything she's known all over again, or face the ghosts of her past, resonate, and be the beautiful young girl she always aspired to be.

## Warnings

### Content Warning

*This chapter contains heavy blood and violence, as well as allusions to abuse which aren't meant for young audiences.*

### Disclaimer

*Some scenes and events from Season 1 are condensed due to time purposes.*

## Transcript

*"What is fate revealing? Will I survive... or will I fall?"*

*Heroism.*

*Perhaps the most coveted and revered aspect of human life, I've saved this for the last chapter - congrats, you've made it - for a very specific reason.*

*No hero is born, created by God. No, this isn't Hercules. A hero is also not created, or made, by scratch, by hand, by design. Heroes are only made by fate and what they choose to be, and that alone sets them apart from the ordinary and evil that pillages the world in a frenzy.*

*What makes a hero? Is it strengths, the power to prevent whole buildings from crumbling and crushing innocent civilians? The power to heal, cure a nation riddled with disease? The power to end a world war, a nuclear war, through smart talk and quick intervention? It is just as simple as saving a cat stuck in a tree?*

*To me, those are unrealistic expectations to set for a hero, and, very frankly, cliché. I'm tired of that heroic norm; it's old, and I believe it's time society starts following among the lines of subverting expectations.*

*Being a hero means relying on yourself to do what is morally right. To trust fall and let your instincts lead you ahead of the pack. To have faith in the others that support you and love you. It isn't painted in black and white, let alone treated as destiny. To be a hero means that you have to decide your actions, your plans, and go through with them, letting everything else slide away from there.*

*There is moral grayness in being a hero, and what you can do may end up being the wrong thing. Every hero makes mistakes. You're not immortal to that, and none of us are. You can only brag about being invincible until you're not, and you're sinking in the wastes of the lies, eating you alive while you question if this is the consequence of your own shortcomings.*

*But heroism is overcoming the hump of shortcomings and failure. To never back down when the world is ending, burned and flooded and reduced to rubble. To stand through the stampede and storms, refusing to cave and give the enemy what it wants.*

*Being a hero is sacrificing your soul for the public, to protect those you love, to give hope, and justice, and peace for all of mankind. To be willing to lay everything down and let oneself bleed for community, prosperty, and a chance to live again.*

*It can be done through any means, not just good versus evil or through positive deeds. Becoming a hero is through choice and willingness to face the impossible. The cataclysms of impossible.*

*Where there are Goliaths, there will be Davids, and only one will survive the test of time. Who would win: heroism or turpitude?*

*Looking back on myself, I never deemed myself a "hero." How was I a hero when all I'd done was defy the death knell, battled enemies vicariously in my imagination, and only made friends after allowing my heart to open its gates to trust?*

*I was just an average kid seeking to live my life in my own special, isolated, dreamy way. I didn't seek heroism, but the thrill and high of a spectrum of waking dreams.*

*However, the people who antagonized me before had a new ally, culmulating in the biggest threat of my entire life.*

*Reality was getting jaded with me. I had lived in denial for too long... and it craved repentance, a price paid for in blood and autonomy...*

*All over again, my world was destroyed, burned at the stake in front of me and a crowd, eyes consuming the porous holes cuting through my body. All over again, my secrets were out, and I was nothing.*

*I'd lost everything I'd ever loved, and retreating to the shadows, the darkest place, the rockiest of bottoms... I believed I was a nobody, and only a fool who's name proved to be the infamy she had neglected to face...*

*I thought I was never to return... but then, in the grace of an angel, the stars returned to the night sky. Constellations compelled me to look up to the moon.*

*An angel visited me, and told me that there was darkness... darkness that light alone could banish.*

*A world couldn't exist without dark and light, and dark had overpowered.*

*I had to fix this atrocity. I was the only one who could.*

*Like Laura Brehm once sang, would I survive, or would I fall?*

Overhead, the stars were still twinkling, melodic with memories of the past and new, brightened by the appeal of not one ingenius mind, but two.

Mya had left not long ago, taking the journey back to her abode, and I had skipped back to mine, enlightened by my friends above and cloaked by the neighboring trees around me.

The night was *tranquil*, tasting of spring air with a hint of *summer*. Holy crap, summer was *coming*.

*So distant, but getting closer... there's something I can mark on my calendar,* I noted, trotting up the cabin steps and closing the door behind me. Partial light filtered into the cabin, the moon half of itself, and I fell back into it, onto my blankets, curling up to sleep away the wonder and majesty of the night.

It took just *minutes* for me to be incapacitated, and I was off to dream myself amongst the stars, a placid smile on my face...

I had no idea how much time had passed when I was awoken by a *creak*. An *intrusive* creak that I knew wasn't made by me.

*Trouble*!

I sat up, blinking my ice-blue eyes open and rubbing the crust out. "Huh..." Second blink.

In front of me was something *dark*. A *silhouette*, shrewd, imposing. An *intruder*, who had convienently left the door to my cabin *wide open*.

*Someone was invading my cabin*.

With a start and assent that this was a clear-as-day (night?) *threat*, I ascended to my feet, planted firm, drawing the knife out from a small pocket in my shorts. *Click*, and the blade, silver and deadly, was out.

"Who *are* you?" I demanded, trying to pinpoint any damning features of this stranger, but they had tricked the shadows into masking their appearance. They were *one* with the night. I grew more fraidy, but held my knife in a firm lock, stature even and structured to *attack*.

"This is *not your* property. You've *trespassed*. *Get out*."

I was gifted no response, and the intruder's lips didn't part. Not one to speak, but one to give me chills digging their fingernails into my vertebrae.

This was *not* how I wanted the night to be *disrupted*, and I felt the familiar itch of my hackles *rising*. Oh *hell* no, on a night as *mythical* as this, I wasn't going to grant mercy to this Shadow. They had missed their opportunity to earn it.

"Let me *repeat myself*. You've trespassed on *private property*. Leave now - I have a pocket knife on me. *Don't* make me attack you," I warned tersely, stiffening with building rage. This stranger was going to be a *challenge*.

The air was fetid with quandary, but even with the tenseness, the Shadow remained in place. *Eerily* in place, calculating, making deductions that I inferred would lead to a *disaster*. These bases had to be *shored*.

Letting loose a thick, low growl, I showed my teeth and stomped my foot in defiance. *This* was *dominance*, and it was time that Shadow started running for the mountains.

I failed to see that elated smile spread across their shadowy face.

"*Last chance*, buddy!" I warned, readying my body for a well-timed *strike*. A blow that would inflict *pain*. I was not a person of violence, as aforementioned in the prior chapter, but this stranger was *asking for it*. Asking for that blade to sink into their skin.

The air was *suffocating*. My heart was *beating*, it being the only noise other than my constrained, light breathing.

There was a *threat*, something *awful* looming in the air. I had to be prepared. I had to be *cautious*. There was no room for *faltering*.

The Shadow didn't lift a foot, nor did it move. They only stared, eyes hidden by the darkness. My knife blade was out. Had they seen it? Why had they been so apathetic toward my messaging? I was *aggressive*.

Turns out, they had acknowledged it, for they took a step *forward*.

One, single step to call me into *action*, to set off a line of *fire*.

A gap erased, danger imminent. My instinct took ahold, and with it, *rage*.

Screeching, I sprang out and *tore* through the Shadow's arm flesh, hearing a satisfying *slice*. I stepped back, believing my deed to have been done and for the Shadow to flee, now having learned through an unfortunate, gaping wound that *trespassers* weren't *welcome* in the neck of the woods. *My* woods.

I was *wrong*. A common fatality at the hands of an impressionable youth.

The Shadow stared at the oozing blood on their wrist, watching it softly drip onto the hardwood. Not *running*, but *curious*. Almost *pleasured* seeing the reflection of their own suffering. Sinful, *sinful* enjoyment of the confrontation they had caused.

I stepped backwards, tasting the bitterness of *disgust* on my tongue. "*What the*... what the hell?"

Why was this Shadow *staying here*? They didn't belong, and I had attacked, yet they *still* weren't fazed?

The anger in me receded, instead being substituted for *fear*. *Forboding*. Knowing something ominious was going to *happen*.

I'd slipped off my high ground - and that was the final nail in the coffin.

The Shadow, out of *nowhere*, then lunged at me, their weight pinning me to the floor of the cabin, and a cold repose of pain shook the back of my head, beating me black and blue. The Shadow flickered in and out, their form strong and muscular. Who was this? Was I... *dreaming*?

I blinked, but no, I was feeling *pain*. This *wasn't* a dream.

The Shadow's body was seemingly composed of endless blackness. A silent oath, for they had never opened their mouth. Verbal fights weren't their preferred type of fight.

What they preferred was *ambush*. I should have realized it then, and I should have fought more, using my panic to my advantage...

...but upon looking into *those eyes*, I was *paralyzed*, the rest of my strength pooled out onto the floorboards.

Those *eyes*, the only source of *light*, a *dark* light, were *amber*.

Amber. *Orange-amber*. *Murderous orange-amber*.

The claws of terror scratched my body, and I tried to muster a scream. My vocal chords died on me.

"Sorry, Winter. But it's too little too late to cry now."

The last thing I remembered of that night was being punched on the side of my neck, where my funny bone was, and my consciousness ebbed out. After that, there was nothing a black sky split by *silence*.

Time lapsed into the sky, a broken hourglass dunking sands on me. I had no idea what time it was when I woke up, trying to move to rub the delirium out of my eyes, only to find I *couldn't*.

*Fibers* scratched my skin. It felt like... *rope*.

My delirium *snapped*.

Frantically, I squinted in the darkness, shifting my entire body. My head scraped wood, the skin of my arm scraping fibers of rope. I tried to get up, but my body didn't *lift*. I didn't move *forward*, or back, and each time I felt *wood* or *fiber*.

I was *trapped*... and from the musty odor and darkness, *this wasn't my cabin*.

My throat was sore, and the room cold, shivers abundant in my legs and lower body. What had happened last night, and why was I tied to a support beam here?

I tried to scream out, gain a sense of direction... but I felt *fabric*.

One that tasted of *kitchen sink*.

I was *gagged* as well as *bound*. *Someone* had *kidnapped me*!

Panic froze my veins, and my heart returned to its horrified, desperate kicks. I *had* to escape! I didn't know *who* was holding me, *why* I was being held, whether it was for ransom of something more, but this was *peril*. *Danger*. Red flags upon red flags.

Through the hot breaths that bounced back at me through the dishrag, I thought back against the lashing, agitated tides making up my scattered thoughts. What had *happened* leading up *this*?

I needn't think - *my answer was right at the doorstep*.

A passageway opened, and early morning light, beginning to arise and bat back the darkness of the night, came inside. My face naturally yawed toward the light, the gateway to *freedom*.

The freedom the *amber-eyed hellhound* had *stolen* from me.

The light I saw was *false*. The salvation I had for a *second* was now ash in Daniela's hands.

"*Top* of the *morning* to ya, *Snowblind*!" she sneered, slapping her knees and laughing. "Oh, how I wish you could have seen yourself get *lugged* across streets and bushes in the dead of the night... but that would dismantle my plan. And when you *don't* get your way, you have no fun, don't ya?"

What I intended to say to her was something questioning what the *hell* had prevailed in her to *kidnap me in the middle of the night*, had the dishrag not hampered my attempt at speech. It was *muffles*, just *screaming*, like I was a baby at mealtime. A *big* baby.

Daniela snorted, her fingers curled *cutely* under her chin. "What's the matter, sweet Winterlyn? The stained dishrag giving you an *infectious* taste on your tongue? All too pleasing for *me*... you know? I gotta give you some *credit*, you pathetic walking-stick excuse of a *Neanderthal*. You were the *perfect* little *fodder*, letting me hogtie you and gag you so I wouldn't hear your *incessant whining* for the next day or two..."

*Next day or two? What??* Why did Daniela *want me* for the next day or two? I had to eat, drink, go to school... *holy crap*.

Since Daniela had no intentions on freeing me... and since no one knew where I was...

*My entire facade at school was going to be knocked down*.

I fidgeted with panic, pleading, *begging* for liberty, wanting to grab my autonomy and take off with it. I was *supposed to be in school right now*. I *wasn't*. I was kidnapped, in my pajamas, restrained, and unable to remotely utter *a single word*.

Daniela was sucking the blood out of my waking dream, licking it off her hands, off her chops like a cat would.

Worst of all, there was *nothing* I could do to prevent her from *gloating* about her *triumph*. My hands? Literally tied. My mouth? Literally gagged.

"You might be asking me through that rag, 'Oh, Daniela, what are you to do now?' Heh. This is only the *first* part of my scheme, Winter. You're the *bait*."

*Bait?! Bait for what??*

I stared at her, any shred of hope I had leaping off my body in a calvacade and snaking up Daniela's body in an instant.

"Give me those eyes, and you might as well have me enlighten you. I can't *refuse* such a *pretty* girl adjuring for some *breakfast*..." Daniela teased, developing a shy demeanor and flicking a bisexual hand at me. So Daniela suddenly remembered her preference in women as well as men...

The musty air in the room became colder and damper. Thunder rolled in my mind. Honey, there was a big storm coming...

I was David against a *multitude* of *Goliaths*.

Daniela pranced up to me, kneeling down with that - *ugh*, I don't want to say this anymore - *overly smug*, cocky grin and gripping my chin, stroking it with her fingers. I gagged on my gag.

"As I *noted*... you're a *decoy*. Our position? School grounds, near the outdoor trails huts. No need to fret, Winter - I wanted you in an area where you'd feel *safe*. Loosen those forested shoulders now, would you kindly?"

This wasn't protection, and Daniela's words were a mockery of the safety I had clung to in the Piney Woods. I didn't obey her, frozen in fear, eyes watering from having to stare back at those haunting amber ones...

The flames were stoked in them, fed more. Daniela was a succubus for misery, and I was open prey for her to nurish on.

"Bleh. You wouldn't obey anyways. Damn game hen. Anyways, where was I? Right. You're a decoy, because *oh* do I have *things* I'm going to *do* to you. What things? Spoilers. Can't ruin the *entertainment* in the circus of runaway *strays* now, can I?"

"Sputiout!" I muttered through the gag, and shockingly, Daniela interpreted it correctly.

"Spit it out? Snowblind, you're boring and have no comprehension of what *fun* is. I thought *Heartley* would badger you about that. To each their own. But long story cut short: the games *begin* as soon as *your friends* join the party."

*As soon as your friends join the party.*

I gulped. Twice. Thrice. Four more times after that.

I was a *jig* for *Evie and Mya*. They had no clue where I was, had no idea *my ex was holding me hostage*, and I was *powerless* to prevent them from being led to a *gaping trap*.

A fate I'd stepped into so many times and had still failed to be indifferent to.

I'd failed once again, and now I would be *taking my friends* down with me. What Daniela wanted with them, I had no idea, but from the way her hands rubbed deviously, the way she sneered and smirked and laughed, and from the way she was relishing in buttery agony, I *knew* she was craving *more* than blood.

I pushed against my ropes, trying to lift my arms out, but it was fruitless. Daniela had tied them in *hard*. She hadn't lied by claiming she hogtied me.

"Go ahead, Winterlyn. Amuse me with your vain efforts to become a Houdini. Magic doesn't exist in the world, and as to how you deluded yourself into believing *child's play*... pah, why do I bother. Your ideologies are a *shameful sham*. Hmmph. I need you presentable for later, so I'm going to buzz and get you some stuff. Have fun *rotting*!"

For this day and most of the next, it was *like this* between me and Daniela. I'd strain, and push, and heave, and claw, but the ropes wouldn't budge from their knotted hold, the wood supporting the hideout didn't budge, and the gag around my mouth was hampering my ability to properly speak, eat, drink, or even *inhale* or *exhale* (let's be thankful we all have noses).

Panic rose. I'd quiet, seeing Daniela wasn't around. Daniela came back, took off my gag to force me to eat and drink (the only sort of standard she ever had), then put it back on, taunted me, hinted at her plans, then left.

I was still hungry and still thirsty. What she gave wasn't filling enough, and my body was hating me for it. She also watched me shiver in the cold mustiness of the room, and then grabbed the saltshaker and poured it over me, bragging about how she had blankets from PotteryBarn that were the peak *royalties* of house living.

She just had to remind me I didn't have a normal home. Then came the silent breakdowns and shutdowns.

A day passed. Nothing changed. Most of the second day had passed.

It would have been any normal day, had I not spent it knowing that it would be the day Evie and Mya would find me. They were clever, resourceful, and had more allies. They'd likely gather leads, pick up on the evidence at the cabin, and get knowledge on Rex about Daniela that would point them to me.

I'm no person from the future, but I knew I was going to be right.

The minute Evie and Mya opened the door and prepared to rescue me, I knew that for the three of us, it would be the *last time* at least one of us would be free.

I watched Daniela knock the life out of their faces with chilling force. She tied Mya to my pole and Evie to another. Dividing up the strength and feeding off of it. Her intelligence was staring into the eyes of all forms of *hell*.

She left not long after to grab her pièce de résistance, winking cynically at me - and to give the girls a chance to wake up as *hostages*. If only I was capable of vomiting.

Ten minutes later, there was a *crisis* in the *hideout*.

"What the?"

"I hate everything. Every. Damn. Thing!"

Evie and Mya's situation was just as in vain as my own; even for Evie's experience in martial arts, she couldn't bust herself out, and Mya was tied just as tight, her comedic wit deserted. No hope, not a chance to delay what was imminent.

Great, just *great*... we were all going to be hung up on the slaughter rack. My friends were going down with me, the jester who'd fished them on a hook and hauled them on her back to a death trap.

Too many death traps. What else could I-

"We're not going to toss our hope away!"

I realized with an irritated throb of my heart that when it came to Mya, she was an animal that could *never* be euthanized - she had *burning* leaf-green eyes, gleaming bright, restoring just the faintest hints of *hope* I owned. Evie was catching on.

"Winter, it may seem bleak... but I'm not stopping until we find a way out. You're going to be *okay*."

She was *resolute*. Standing tall with a puffed-out chest and a heart of *emerald*. *Unstoppable*.

I could have smiled in that moment, could have taken that moment to admire my soul sister, to escape fate...

"Oh, do you really think so? It isn't *that* simple, you glorified deep-fried *simpleton*. You aren't going to be escaping your ropes at any point soon - in fact, **NEITHER** of you three will!"

In that moment, I was crushed into a can and kicked down a sooty street.

Daniela was back, and she had to sew the final stitches in. After, we'd fall like dominos.

Prey. Quarry. We were going to *die*.

My friends and I were then drawn to something Daniela had clutched in her hand, tracing its red petals with a black fingernail, studying it with a fervent intensity, and I recoiled.

Daniela brought a *rose*. A *rose*, a *beautiful* rose, ones that symbolized and were commonly involved with *love*.

Her fingernails were *sharp*. Fingers poised to *deflower* the pretty thing and kill it.

Kill it the way our love died. The way Daniela thought *I* destroyed our love.

Slowly, and surely, and in the fashion she always preferred above all other methods, Daniela began her siege on all of us. A petal would fall, dance in front of our eyes, and fall. Each time one dropped, she had a scathing remark to give to me.

In her words, I abandoned her, but she knew the lines and the lies, and she wanted me to *repent* for it.

When the fourth petal fell, if I am recalling this specific part correctly, she dropped to her knees and met *me* face-to-face.

*Fire* on *melted ice*. Scorch marks scored the flesh on my cheeks, a shake of my head.

Daniela wanted to up the ante, and in a move that purely *astounded me*, she granted me my right to speech and removed the gag.

I could speak, and verbalize, and *express* again - but there was a catch to it underneath the dusty floorboards.

I breathed in, hacking for that precious, *precious* fresh air, and *sobbed*. Speaking wasn't even a reward; it was *punishment*. Only a minor part of the torture and sins that would be committed in this hut later. A precursor. An *entrée* before the *full course meal*.

"*Better*. Now, Winter, *tell them* of my plans. **Tell them everything**! Fill them in! They've been left hanging..." Daniela prompted, rubbing her hands with electrified anticipation. Evie and Mya's gazes were drilling holes into my mangled something of a soul, and I couldn't bear meeting their fear-stricken faces.

*How* could they *know* Daniela wanted me *dead*? *How* could I explain *this*? Daniela desired to do something *awful* to us here. The stench of death flooded my *nostrils*.

*Death*. I realized it.

*Daniela was going to kill me here*.

"You... you c-can't m-make m-m-me!" I fired back, refusing to lend my friends my unthinkable fate and add on to the blocks of pain they were in now, but if there was any *fight* left in me, there was nothing there to *maintain* it. Daniela had no challenge; she was *king* and would do *whatever she wanted to us*.

I couldn't stop this. I was a failure.

But even if I couldn't end up saving my hide... I *had* to try saving Evie and Mya's. They had a whole world ahead of them, and I didn't... they had normal lives, and I didn't... they had loving family and friends, and I barely had any semblance of a real family...

They deserved more than me.

"Let Evie and Mya go! They have nothing to do with *this*!"

Obligatory Daniela eyeroll.

"Psh, why should I? They're just as important in *this* plan no matter how much I *hate* them."

More confrontation, more blistering insults directed at Evie and Mya, more snorts, more ambition. *More* arrogance and twisted, bloody pride.

"Just spare Evie and Mya! *Please*!"

Why did I keep trying knowing I was winning a *losing game*?

Daniela would ignore me, steadfast on her plans. She was getting closer and closer to the *bombshell*. The destructive one that would have my world imploding, my secrets free and gliding in the wind, and me six feet under the soil, dead, rotting, and infested with fleshy maggots.

Evie and Mya were going to be sent down there with me.

Daniela went on *endlessly*, causing me to wallow in more of my shame the more she revealed the structure of her plan. Baiting Evie and Mya to the cabin deliberately so they'd follow the trail to here. Revealing that the blood in the cabin *wasn't* mine, but *hers*. Loving to pick apart how mistakes all led to the same thing.

Mya was stark-raving *pissed*, demanding what the *hell* this plan was, akin to me earlier yesterday. Her leaf-green eyes were *burning*. I had *never* seen Mya this crude, yet well-oiled with *rage* before... she looked *alarming*. A bullet ready to be loaded into the barrel of a pistol.

Daniela didn't take too well to her makings and dropped *close* to her. *Low*. I recalled Mya's breakdowns from Daniela's sadistic torture of her, all of the bullying that had left her defenseless, feeling weak, and *humiliated*. *No*! She *couldn't* hurt Mya or Evie!

*Daniela, just hurt me instead! Not my sister figure... not them!*

"Dani! Just stay away from her!"

*I can't... can't let Dani... hurt her...*

A hardened, psychopathic, *motivated* amber gaze had devoured me.

I had unleashed *hell* in my flimsy haste.

"How many times do I have to **tell you**, McCormick? **STOP CALLING ME DANI**! You *lost the right* to use that *dumb name* when you **ruined MY LIFE**!"

Evie and Mya gasped, and I was sent reeling back into the post, sobbing, drifting apart, cracked every which way, unable to feel or touch.

Left empty as Daniela continued her tyrade, plucking the final petal and stomping on the rose, the deadest love of all. She believed I ruined our entire relationship and everything we ever had.

I couldn't deflect it any longer. I didn't want to come here, but I had.

Daniela was a *monster*.

Accusing me of being the arsonist to our love, she tried to suffocate me, demand a response I couldn't *share* or *give*, demand something that wouldn't suffice for her infinite appetite. The life was ebbing out of me, and I wasn't fighting it...

I was *dying*. Dying in front of my *friends*. As a low-life and nothing individual. The black-and-blue raised a fist...

Then Daniela dropped me, rubbing saliva off her cheek and hissing at Mya for her slimy, unconventional idea of self-defense. I breathed, but the peace was banished, and what she had to say next turned the room to *black ice*.

"...none of you know that I've been waiting for this moment for *forever*. *Days*. All the planning, the effort I put in, the *savory execution*... **today** is ***the day***. The day I get my ***REVENGE***!"

*NO!*

Now the world wasn't just black ice; it was *spinning*, spinning so fast I could only see a shattered rose, a bleeding love, smoke and ashes rising, and black streaks that looked like *claws*. *Killer* claws.

I only heard Evie question *what* revenge, but my mind was looking for *escape*, *freedom*. Where my *waking dream* could be and where I could hold *onto* it. I *couldn't* be here!

I had been the catalyst to the most *grisly* crimes Daniela had formulated in her head. What could I say to Evie and Mya? They would soon know the full truth... and demand my answer...

*I... I can't explain myself! This isn't a dream!*

Daniela stared at me, sized me up, studied me and my worth, value, position. She yearned for *revenge*, but yearned for something I had neglected to inform Evie and Mya of.

She thought it was time they knew the truth, and hearing me whimper from the distress, she tucked a black fingernail on my throat.

One slice across it to emphasize the tax I had owed her for over a year.

"It'll be a *beautiful* sight once your *pretty throat* is *slashed*!"

I screamed, Evie screamed, and Mya screamed.

*The entire truth had smashed into us like a wrecking ball*. The house of cards had fallen. Daniela had her *intent* loud and clear, and she wasn't going to stop at just torture and injury. She would only stop at *death*.

Murder that a child was *capable* of *committing*. She had been denied and doubted, kid-gloved and looked down upon. The negative limelight had solidified her fury. Deepened her hatred of me and everyone else in her life. She wanted me *hunted*.

I was a heaving, sobbing mess in front of Mya, and through the agony and rotting tissue in my body, I felt her well with sympathy.

But that wasn't the *last* of Daniela's plot, and she swatted a dismissive hand at Evie. I *dreaded* what would come out of her mouth next.

"You're having your throats slit as well. Why, you think I'm going to exhibit *mercy* to you *entitled extras*?"

It was a perfectly controlled *implosion* of *everything* I had built. The towers and connections I had with Evie and Mya, *severed*. Crumbling, falling from the sky and to the ground.

Reduced to mere dust and rubble.

Every space of my body was overrun with internal *bleeding*.

Evie gasped, her dark green eyes shrunken and mortified, and Mya shut her eyes, biting her tongue and keeping shut. None of them wanted to believe what they heard was true. *I* didn't even think Daniela would go this far, drive all the way over the shark and be so *certain*.

*Certain* that *homicide* was the *answer*. *Revenge* was *sweet*.

Evie and Mya hadn't expected *their own demise*... and I hadn't either.

We were all too caught up in the crossfire to solve the puzzle.

I should have prevented this. I should have been the hero, stopping Daniela, reliving the Talking of the Axes, and going berserker on her... but I wasn't.

I was *ashamed*. Washed with regret.

We were all going to die, and all of the blame was going to fall on me.

I didn't dare speak again, didn't dare to meet those beautiful, innocent eyes that were going to lose their light and their world... we had *minutes* to say *goodbyes*. And I didn't think I would be able to muster *any* goodbye to the two that I had devoted so much to. I didn't want to say goodbye to *anyone* or *anything* I loved ever again...

Daniela absconded, and all we were met with was *unsettling*, musty quiet.

Not a squeak, not a flicker of movement. Quiet.

Leaf-green eyes rested on my complacent body.

"Winter... when you first told us Daniela was your ex-girlfriend, you didn't say she wanted to *kill you*. Has... has this been another secret you kept from us?" Mya asked with the most *feathery* prompting, the *softest* she had ever spoken. Treading the water carefully to reach out to me, to bring me to life...

I wished I could have seen her and told her I was sorry. Only I could just see the dark and the ground erasing under my feet, hands ready to drag me down to hell. I couldn't atone for this.

I couldn't *be* what the girls *wanted* me to be. Tears fell, staining my cheeks with unsaid blood.

I was supposed to be the only one murdered - but now I'd gotten my two friends a death sentence. They'd *die*. Scarlet was on my hands.

*If I die... Evie and Mya will die as well.*

The only thing I could give the girls was the wail of a dying animal and a descent into the worst anxiety attack I had *ever* felt. Spending my last minutes uncontrollably breathing, screeching at the wall, hating myself for being a letdown and loser. For being the bait to all of this.

I deserved to be catatonic and laid to rest in an unmarked grave. Die someone with no name.

*I keep making mistakes... this is why I have no one. Maybe Daniela's right... I am nobody...*

The words came rushing out before I could stop myself from adding to the suffering and trepidation in the room.

"*I'm sorry*! I *lied* to you... *again*... I couldn't tell you Daniela has been planning this since shortly after Aiden. I... I had too much fear that I... was gonna lose you two... and then she'd find out, and I... I..."

I could hear cracks, the fractures in the earth I'd known and loved for all thirteen years, the rumbling of consequences. All the things that should have happened to me yet didn't because I scraped by on the luckiest circumstances for a freaking living.

Yet the rumbling then stopped, obeying a small, but persistent light that even when doused with water, kept on *burning*. A light that kept on *dreaming*.

The sweetest, reassuring tone of an angel held the room together and brought me clarity. A smile and compassion from the sister I dreamed to have was the tonic I needed to bring me to *calm*.

A *happier* reality. A reality I could live in.

I could see clearly, and taking a look at the girls through my right eye, I observed no *grudges*. No *slander*. No walls between us, but mutual cooperation and understanding.

They didn't *hate me*. We were in this *together*. I calmed down and sorted my layers so they aligned evenly again.

The inner turmoil was over - *now we had to hatch an escape plan*.

See, this would have been a piece of cake had Daniela not bound my arms so tightly that I couldn't reach my pocket knife. Another issue? Evie was a strategist (which I will *never* complain about), and in case of a fisticuffs riot with Daniela, she had to conserve her strength. So there was *also* no busting out on this end.

Sometimes I wish the world was full of *actual* magic, not just imagination and dreams composing of something spurious and wacky. Dreams wouldn't save us when we were on the *chopping block*, and just hoping for a miracle alone would also fail to stall Daniela from succeeding with *murder*.

We needed *magic*. This was the real world, where magic didn't *exist*.

But when you're in the same room with Mya Heartley, you can tell the real world to *kiss your ass*.

To this day, I still don't know *how* she executed this manuever, but I saw her strain intensely against her ropes, wiggling her arms, pushing, testing the limits of her body's dexterity. I thought she would pull her muscles trying to do whatever *this* tomfoolery was.

We didn't need to worry about Mya, however. She's Mya, practically *indestructable* to literally *anything*. Like a rabbit, she sprung out of her ropes and tossed off her jacket.

*Hope* had blighted the plague-like darkness in the hideout. We had *one shot* at escaping, and we couldn't let it blow.

Time was running out the hourglass, and bestowing Mya with the most sacred possession on me, I let her use my knife to cut me free. She was skilled, doing it in three seconds, and it took another five seconds to cut Evie free as well.

Seems like I also didn't need to elaborate the extent of my relationship with Rex to them either. I didn't mind that secret being free, for once.

The exit was *right there*. We had *hope*. *Life*. Say sayonara, Daniela, 'cause we just proved your thesis that a child can excel at homicide *wrong*.

The grass was greener outside, and the sun was brighter...

...behind an inpenetrable fortress of a blue sweater and orange-amber eyes that had been taken hostage by *neon wildfire*.

All of the hope we had, all of the escape we had, was *pointless*.

Daniela had us *trapped*, and she was going to succeed this time.

She was *livid*. Yelling at the top of her lungs, her form *intimidating*. The *largest* I'd ever seen her. Not methodical, but *recklessly deadly*. When Daniela was reckless, the damage inflicted was going to be *lethal.*

She didn't need a firearm to kill. She didn't need fists to kill. She just needed a *motive*.

That motive was a stick of dynamite in my stomach.

She wanted that time bomb for *herself*, and so she lunged at me, and I ducked.

Clockwork was my ally; Mya blew a raspberry and goaded Daniela into a duel she couldn't *bear* missing out on, just for the moment. Stalling for time. We needed a Plan B.

Evie stuck with me, shielding me, and we watched Mya work her magic, saying absolutely bizarre Mya statements and dancing around Daniela, not giving a single *damn* that this was life-or-death.

Daniela was growing more infuriated at this nonsense... *and dangerously impatient*.

A roar shook the dusty floorboards, and Mya went flying *uncomfortably* into a wall, sinking in pain, clutching herself. Much as she was erudite, she was also *fragile* and *sensitive* - both emotionally and physically.

Now it was Evie's turn to leap into the melee, and she and Daniela locked on, two rivals keen on eliminating the other - though one fought with nobility and dignity, not with revenge in mind.

I had a shot of winning this. Evie was formidable and a *trained* opposition to Daniela, the only one who *could* fight her for more than ten minutes and come out on top.

I let myself smile.

Oh, Winter, *please* stop with the premature celebration. You should've learned by now that this *always* backfires in the most gut-wrenching ways.

Daniela *hooked* Evie out of midair, and it made me *sick*. Evie didn't predict *that*. What she also didn't predict was how *hard* Daniela could *toss* a *human*.

She threw her *violently* into the wall, and with a sickening thud, I saw her sink to the ground the exact same way Mya did. Her hip had impacted the hardest.

You couldn't fight with a screaming, aching, *throbbing* hip.

Evie was down, and Mya was down... Daniela didn't face me, only staring at the ground, panting. A single eye *gleaming* with the desire to burn *one person* to *ashes*.

She had no competition, but one more foe to *set on fire*.

She saw me, defenseless, meek, and shivering. She was *reinvorgated*. The resurrection of the dagger.

*Literally*.

She charged at me with a *hungry*, full-teeth grin, her teeth looking more like *fangs* of a *vampire*. I *screamed*, my heart overinflated and exploding in my chest, my blood going cold, my body back against the wall. I had *nowhere left to run*.

Evie and Mya were the ones who were helpless this time. I was going to *die*.

No mortal being was unable to alter fate. Not even heroes could be invincible and alter their fate. What was I even trying to accomplish anyway?

I was going to die. Lose everything. Evie and Mya didn't need to see something so graphic... they had to *live*. Couldn't Daniela have *empathy*?

I tried to grovel with her, tried to make her *see* a triple homicide wasn't worth it... where *was Dani*? The Dani I knew and loved and wanted back? The one who vowed to love me and was the apple to my eye?

I reminisced on all we did, mentioning it to her, insisting that murder and vengeance would solve *nothing*. She was answering for *nothing*. If she could just take me seriously, we wouldn't be here right now, and we could reconcile and make things right... there'd be atonement and a ton of debriefing, but she had to *listen*.

She could kill me but leave my friends. Or get help for herself. There had to be *remorse* there... *right*?

Well, I should have assumed earlier that giving an enemy hellbent on *death* and *blood* and *revenge* a pep talk and heroic speech would do *nothing*. Daniela voided my words, and we were back in the last few seconds of my existence.

That *Dani* was *gone*. There was only *Daniela*, angered that a cute, child's declaration was used in an attempt to rid her of evil. And she had *horrifying* things on the tips of her boots, which she kicked up and swatted at me like an arbitrary badminton game.

"Guess what? Your **psycho knife-obsessed father** attacked me too. **Beat me**. He sent me home **traumatized**! And it's **your fault**!"

"*What*? Father... no, you're *lying*!"

"Why lie? I could *never* tell a white lie in addition to abide by falsehoods," Daniela stated, and my blood went *freezing cold*. She spoke with the sharpened point of a stone *arrow*.

"Just like someone *else* I once knew."

The ground eroded under my feet, and I fell into an endless hole of clocks, memories, trauma, and *howling* wind.

I remembered Father's barrage on me. The sinister way he accused me of being a witch and sinner. The way he used his weapon to inflict *trauma* in my blood and bones.

There was another part of the story I had missed - *he went after Daniela*.

The two of us fully lost our innocence that night. Only one didn't stray down the broken, bloody path of detestation.

Daniela was all the way at the *end*. She found her purpose - and with her purpose, she was going to *destroy* the very thing who used to bring her so much joy in the whole wide world.

She'd never forgive me, the traitor. Spitting it with sheer revulsion in my face, and reaching towards her back pocket, a parallel that could have asphyxiated me then and there.

A snicker, and arising from that snicker, a *steak knife*, sinful and elegant, pointed to her liking.

My body was pinned against the wall. I wanted to disappear. I *needed* the stars, *needed* someone. I needed *something*.

This was a reality I'd declined to face. I couldn't imagine the last minute, bleeding from the throat, gasping for air, whimpering as Daniela put her boot down on my throat in ascendancy.

*My life... this is how it's going to end... Evie, Mya... I'm sorry.*

*I should have been a better friend from the start...*

*I'll die as Snowblind, the worthless, pathetic kid...*

This was it. Goodbye, Evie and Mya...

"You made me be the *bad guy*, sweet Winterlyn. A shame it'll end like this... we had so much potential, but you burned it. Say goodbye and taste what ***REVENGE REALLY FEELS LIKE***!" Daniela proclaimed.

Time spun in circles. The world was in slow-motion, movements thicker. No haste in death.

Daniela was falling on me with a raised blade, directly aimed at my throat. It'd impact in seconds. My jugular vein would be ripped, and I'd be fading on the ground, a thousand goodbyes unsaid between me, Evie, and Mya.

I shut my eyes, knowing it would be better to avoid the carnage than see it play out in real time.

Time sped back up.

"***GO TO HELL***!"

I flinched, hearing a *slice*, but not a wound opening on my body. Not even pain, or an ache, or the iron taste of blood on my tongue. A gasping, a step back. Scurried steps flying into the wall. A groaning.

*Evie screaming Mya's name*. More footsteps.

*Mya* had done *something* - and blinking open my eyes, I saw *her* in *front of me*.

*Mya...?*

Was I in heaven? Was I dreaming? Was this just the light playing dastardly tricks on me?

Mya grew *brighter*, rose to her feet, stood *planted* in front of me. I saw the auburn hair, trickles of blood leaking from that shoulder. The auburn crackled with *flame*.

*Phoenix* flame.

*Mya had intercepted the blow and saved my life*.

She brought the sledgehammer *down* on Daniela, speaking with an *incredible* fire in her voice that I felt my heart waver to the person that, weeks ago, I would have *never* considered my sister figure. Someone I'd *adore*.

Even more so when Mya remarked, with a calculated snipe, "Winter is like *my sister*!"

*My sister*. She'd reciprocated the same feelings I felt for her, and she didn't know it yet... but...

Mya *had* my heart, and she just saved *mine*. She was a *true* hero. Evie was marveling at her from where she was on her knees, and I couldn't help but smile, too, once she finished Daniela off and stared at her mopped body on the floor.

*Mya deflected Daniela's killing blow to save me... she likes me like a sister...*

*She values me... she's my hero...*

A happy little sniffle to add to the moment.

Daniela was *struck dumb to the ground*, astonished that her doormat had ascended to stand five steps ahead of her. *Stronger* than her. Even humiliating her.

Stopping her efforts to murder. The *only* wrench in her plan, and an unexpected detour from what she aspired.

She *did* respect Mya. There *was* a scrap of heart in that darkness...

...darkness that would *always* outweigh the light.

Just like that, the hideout was back in pandemonium; Daniela tossed Mya aside, more violently this time and making sure to dig the wound in her stabbed shoulder further. Evie was still resting, and once again, the killing floor was looking more *bloody*.

"Daniela, don't..." I pleaded in a rasp, shoulders raised. Mya wasn't going to save me this time. No one would. Panic set in, the edges of my vision blurred and black.

"Mya may have been your saving grace, *Snowblind*, but no angel is going to get in *my path* now. Time for the lights to ***GO OUT***!"

Funny she said that when there was hardly light in this hideout, and instead of the lights turning out, they turned *on*.

Remember what I said about Evie and Mya getting in contact with Rex? Well, *she happened to be that light in the doorway*.

Mother Bear was *not* thrilled that her daughter had *almost* come on the cusp of being a criminal, and she roared at her, pinning her against a pole, slapping her on the cheek.

A broken mother-daughter relationship that was too many callbacks to Father and I, all in one. It did not last, and Rex dragged a kicking and screaming demon out. Daniela swore revenge, but from the way Rex had been a *tornado* storming in and demolishing her daughter's defenses, I knew we *triumphed*. We'd *won*.

Daniela had *failed* to get away with murder - she never would ever again.

Evie fretted over Mya adorably, checking her shoulder and helping her patch up the bleeding, and then they embraced, dug in deep, meeting gazes, sharing a love that I used to know. I didn't even feel melancholy for them... just *happy*.

*They deserve the whole world and a glimmering future. More than I even do...*

Then came their turn to embrace me. I stepped up to them, specifically to Mya, to verify what she had said in her *very* lopsided boxing match with Daniela.

"Mya... is it true you see me like a sister?"

She nodded, and her hands slid over to mine, enclosing my wrists softly. A touch to send me up with the butterflies.

"Indeed. Winter, I'd leap in front of you to save you more times if I have to. You're very special to me, in a different way than Evie is, but still *special*. I'm... I'm just so *glad* we met each other, 'cause I, for one, wouldn't change a thing."

"I don't wanna change a thing either," I whispered back, grinning, and a pulse of conviction in my restored heartbeat led me to put a hand on my sister figure's shoulder, to take what we had and make it something *more* than a friendship. "Because I see you like a sister too."

The rabbit-hat Heartley, mad with joy and taking her turn to sob uncontrollably, burrowed into me in the fiercest, most bone-breaking hug (you watching, Grandma Anny?), and I didn't shove her away. I wanted her to *stay* with me. Just for today...

*I don't want to let her go.*

"Hey! Let me in!" whined Evie in protest. Oops, someone was a *bit* jealous she wasn't in on the action. I amended this, and Evie hugged me as well. What a softie.

We were a *trio*, made of metal and never to be torn apart. Me, Mya, and Evie, *tres caballeros*.

Peace had returned - and *boy did I need to eat two meals or something*.

I broke away, thanking the girls for their heroism, loyalty, perseverance, and strength when I was lacking in it, and preparing to head home to go eat a full box of cereal and religiously slurp some small packaged milk.

One foot before the doorway, and a familiar hand snatched my wrist.

*Mya?*

"Wha-"

"Winter, you're *starving*! You don't have much food at your cabin that could fill your belly after going two days hungry. I *think* you should come over to *my place* and have dinner *with me*!"

My mouth popped wide in *disbelief*.

Mya had just invited me to *her house* for dinner. I wasn't even familiar with her parents! Or that house! I hadn't even been in a house for nearly *two years*!

In a *house*. With *people*. Who had known me solely by name for a matter of *weeks*.

Mya quelled my doubts by reminding me that my stomach was *hissing* at me to eat and drink... and that I needed to put my regular clothing on before I became a block of ice.

Evie backed her up, and with Mya heeding my request to change, we both headed off in the direction of the cabin.

Returning to my *home* made me swell with familiarity and *love*. Once inside, I changed, held everything dear, breathed in the air several times, then scrubbed the blood out of the floor.

*There*. Some normalcy in this earth that never made any comprehendible sense.

Side-by-side, hand-in-hand, Mya and I marched on to her place in the sunset, the striking pinks and purples giving way to a starry black sky. My friends were back, proud of my triumph and my confidantes. Proud of how I'd *grown*. *Transformed*.

How many times will I say that rules are meant to be broken?

I hesitated outside Mya's front doorstep, surveying her beautiful, flower-laden yard... the last time I was in a house, I nearly died at Father's hand, under the watchful eyes off a traitorous love...

Mya insisted I was fine, and I trusted her more than anything, so I followed.

This is where I met Mya's parents in person for the first time - I'll be brief here, but they're important for something *very special* near the end of my story, so please stay tuned. We're hardly finished.

Mya's mother was Nitalia, also known as Nita, Marigold (pretty choice), or Mrs. Heartley. She partly resembled Mya and had fluffy darker auburn hair rimming her backside. Her father was Patrick, also known as Mr. Heartley. He had *long* dark brown hair and blue eyes, a very sharp contrasting image to his daughter. They hugged her, and her mother hurried her off to get her re-dressed and tended to.

I had my own devices, and so I studied the house, its beachy, orange-light toning and picture-framed walls, its high roof and wide-windows, to the widescreen TV with Best Buy-quality HD.

I observed many picture frames had Mya with Evie, who was being the dorky and sweetheart person she was when with her.

*They're meant for each other...*

The sofa was wide and curled around, decorated with so many pillows and blankets, and I almost flopped down on it when I stopped.

*Wait, I'm in no man's land. Am I... allowed to sit?*

"You can sit, y'know," Mya's father commented from behind me, and with his blessing, I sat down. He joined me.

All in all, Patrick is a very pleasant guy to be around. He *clearly* gave Mya her wittiness and creativity, and he helped me acclimate to this strange, familiar environment easily.

The oven chimed, and he rushed off to the kitchen while Mya barreled out into the living room in... *cat jammies*.

*Cat jammies*.

"You look so cute in that," I found myself murmuring, surprised at how willing I was to admit Mya was cute now.

"Evie says that all the time," Mya remarked in turn. "So, Dad, what's on the menu tonight?"

"Something I bet you two would enjoy."

Two plates of pizza landed on the table. *Pizza*, a rich man's pursuit of *food*.

*Pizza*, something I hadn't had for nearly two years.

It was delicious, and Mya, gobbling it down like the Last Supper, proceeded to make my heart flutter with her *adorableness*.

Once pizza was over, Mya fell back with a lovable *thump*, recalling the events of the day. I wondered how I could *ever* repay her and Evie for what they did, fighting for me and sacrificing their limbs for me...

But I didn't have to repay anything. Friends that were loyal to you didn't request anything from you in turn but affection, patience, understanding, and humor to wedge the gaps in between.

Mya merely wanted snuggles. Weeks ago, she would have been folded into a cubicle suggesting *that*, but the new me couldn't say no to laying next to her, teasing her for being dorky, and her teasing me in turn for the same thing.

The night could've gone on forever, of me and Mya snuggling and teasing, flicking each other's noses and talking about all of the silly things no one talks about in public. I wanted to *stay* here with her, *be* her sister...

...but alas, I wasn't a second daughter of the Heartley family, and I had to return to my solitary life in the cabin. I'd gotten a taste of what *family* was like, but it was something I couldn't have again for important reasons. Mya understood that, and let me go.

In my sleep, I felt myself longing for her touch, wishing that life was something more than living alone...

*Jesus*, I'd grown into a *sycamore tree* in the span of a year. Who would have told me I'd have ended up with a best friend and a sister figure who saw *me* as her sister? And I didn't have to fight to have friends? I had friends who *saved my life*.

You know, adapting to change and letting yourself embrace the wild life wasn't as dreadful as I thought it would be.

Very few days had passed after the botched murder attempt(s) at Daniela's hideout, and already, the upshots to Daniela's plot were *severe*.

Rex summoned me to her office, revealing that for the rest of the year, Daniela would be pulled from *all* of her classes - yes, *all*, and effective immediately, she was to complete intensive schoolwork in a secluded office corner under supervision from staff. *Around the clock* supervision, one she couldn't wiggle away from even if she tried. Any weapons she had on her were confiscated, and even her backpack was taken away from her.

She had *nothing*.

"Better safe than *damn* sorry," Rex would mutter to me. "I used to have hope for her that she'd *learn*. That she'd offer *repentance* and be *chivalrous* and *endearing*. But that girl in the blue sweater *isn't* my daughter. She is teetering on the edge of losing that right entirely, Winter. And if she lays a *freaking finger on you again*, the reverberations are something she will find *devastating* for her school history *and scores*. All her patchwork will be *collectively undone*."

Rex was fed up and had a scowl on her face, though it was for Daniela and not me. I agreed with her and valued her for taking heavy corrective action when there was still time.

"Is PMS safe now?" I asked.

"Scrubbed *clean* of Daniela's influence. We will recover from this. Winter, it's all yours. Go out and be the kid you deserved to be from day one, honey. You'll find there are some thrilling things on the calendar soon."

Rex had the pleasure of me *gaping*, letting out something like an *awooooh* before *bouncing* around the room, a pinball going off the walls and off the rails (just without Vans). Forget the educational institution, hello *clouds*.

I was *one* with the clouds, walking atop the fluffy marshmallows with my eyes closed. I'd never wanted to be a *daredevil* more in my *life*.

Stunting like the old me.

I wasn't the *old* me... *old me* had youthful innocence and an ass crack worth of *naivety* that had almost deprived me of noticing the constant dangers and adversaries rising up against me. *Old me* was not a me to go back to.

I was going to cherish the *new me* - and let the new me shine *above* the stars, a chin held high. Suck it, Daniela, because the Winterlyn you *hated* was going to become *even more happily insufferable*.

Carry this over for a few days, and I sat in the gym with Evie and Mya, the noise of just around a hundred students and staff *thundering* and *reverberating* (unpleasantly) in our ears. Drummers drummed, trumpets trumpeted, and the *not*-swan song of the PMS battlecry or whatever it was called around here was played with devout passion.

Pep rallies were *never* my thing; they were mainly an excuse to shelter in the swamp of the bleachers and hide - out of sight and out of mind, like always. Pep rallies were when *crowds* noticed you, prowled on your every move... and worse case scenario was when you were called up for a silly, but embarrassing carnival game.

This pep rally was *different*. I was *confident*, radiating clear and *outgoing*. With Evie and Mya by my side, I had *no fear* of *anything*, not of being seen, of being called Snowblind, and *especially* no fear of Daniela, restrained in Mother Bear's death grip.

Sitting on top of the world had never been so *glorious* and *emancipating*.

Rex's promise of "thrilling" things on the calendar was one she held true to. Mr. Ackers, our *onomatopoeia* of an announcer, declared that, as a reward for our *successes* (mainly the honor roll students slugging the weight behind the slackers), we were allowed to attend a *party* in celebration - and transition into the springtime from there.

The only conditions of a grand party? You had to be an honor roll student and had to have the high grades.

Criteria that I *checked* all of the boxes for, and likewise, Evie and Mya as well.

A *party* for the *dream trio*! I couldn't believe my ears. Finally, a *party*! A real, authentic party with my best friends for *life*!

I thought back on my twelfth birthday party, the last legit one, where Dani had gifted me the *sweater*... a sweater I hadn't worn since, hadn't *felt*, and had only used as a lackluster blanket in the dark ages before principal intervention.

Now? Now I could wear it *again*! And even at the party too! The sadness of the past party dissipated, and in came the *elation*, the sweet taste of *victory* and *all night partying*.

No worries, Mya. I would avoid getting hungover on the punch... can't imagine even drinking alcohol anyway. I'm not even gonna bother remembering that family reunion.

A day later, and I woke up *early*. No one was pounding on the door, threatening me at knifepoint, or hauling me to a destination unknown at three in the morning. I didn't arouse from a startling nightmare or from a noise.

It was dark out, but I saw the *tip* of the sun through the window, and *knew* today was going to be a *good day*.

Consuming an early breakfast, I got dressed - trading out my trademark shirt for the sweater. It now fit me *perfectly*, wrapping around my waistline... maybe Dani did *one* thing right after all. Just *one*.

Time was still to spare, and I headed out early, daring myself to climb up to the roof of the cabin and gaze out across my *home*.

Home was *guarded*. A *haven*, the *safest* haven in all of Pineshadow. Daniela wasn't welcome here, and if she overstayed her welcome again, she would have to reimburse with *wounds*. That was unlikely, however. A smile spread across my face.

I checked my phone time, and now that enough time had elapsed, I set off on the daily journey to PMS.

Evie and Mya were ahead of me, holding hands, and Evie had her head turned, beautifully admiring her best friend... she couldn't even try to hide it, could she?

I met up with them, and from there, we got on the Boat of Smooth Sailing and traveled the seas of painful education for two hours until the bell for *lunch* rang.

Holy hour had arrived. We took our places. I started to dwell upon my party outfit, thinking about my sweater and the outfit I was currently wearing...

*It's snug, cozy, and brings back joy and melancholy...*

It was seemingly the perfect choice... but then I thought *more*, expanding the chamber of thoughts down to the bottom.

*Hey, I haven't worn my jacket for a while... what if I wore my throwback to the party?*

My jacket wasn't necessary ever since Evie and Mya descended down from the spider web, resting in the forgotten dust on the shelf where all of my other clothing was. So many weeks had passed since I last worn it, felt its familiar brindled sleeves, messed with the strings, dawned the hoodie over my head...

I wasn't going *back* to the old me... but *honoring* the me that had gotten today's *me* here would be an *important* closure to the most hectic, bloody, and trepid periods of my young life.

I made my choice, and out with the sweater, in for the jacket and regular outfit.

After some childish, mischievous banter over oblivious crushes, fancy outfits, and short-circuiting the usually precise Evie, a microphone tap beckoned us to the stage. The chatter and food munching in the cafeteria whirled to deafening quiet.

Rex was at the center with the party invites in her hand. She was going to *announce our names*!

In the corner of the stage, her back turned to us, was Daniela, *literal mountains* of paperwork by her hand. She was *infuriated*, glaring at Rex with fervid *resentment*, orange-amber eyes felt through the wood of the table.

It didn't *bother* me, though. I stood in the face of *hate* and *blocked it out*.

Deflecting it like a boss, and listening in as Rex announced a *slurry* of names that had received formal invitations to the party.

Mundane name, mundane name, several more mundane names, Aiden, and just more names later...

"Evie Ly. Mya Heartley. And Winterlyn McCormick!"

Three rockets shot up from the bottom table and cheered, spinning each other around and around; some looked at me like I never existed until now, and some side-eyed me, uttering that godforsaken Snowblind name.

Sorry, boys, gals, and non-binary pals, but I only gave a *damn* about *partying*.

Everyone eyed me oddly, a unique girl among the classics, but I only gave a *damn* about *partying*.

Daniela was *fuming* at her lack of an invite - it was nasty karma for what she did to me mere days ago. It didn't feel like *days*, but an *eternity*. I was putting it all behind me.

I hoped rejection would keep her gagged the way she gagged me.

All of the memories I had lost because of her, the memories I had unearthed in dried, rusted blood, recalled with every fragment of pain driven in my heart, was *inconceivable*. Once I had lost everything, and now I was on top of the world.

She couldn't *stop me*. I'd *won*!

There was no denying it. Daniela was defeated, in the confines of the T-Rex, and me, Evie, and Mya were going to spend a party night *raving* and *dancing* and *screaming* and swinging punch glasses into each other's, chattering the night away in ecstasy.

You'd think from this description that the book detailing my story ends here, and this is the last chapter where I'd sign off and let you go. That, simple as a one punch knockout, was my happy ending, and I'd fly off into the sunset a stronger hero, skipping and humming to *Aether and Light* like I did throughout that whole day.

But you know this isn't the end of my story. Far from it, even though I only really have two more parts left combined with my last epilogue (how many hours has it been??). Chapters are so deceiving, I know.

Not every hero's story will have a happy ending. Well, I still got mine! Just... *not here*.

And as I learn that same day of my "triumph," *the final boss was rolling in*.

I'd just walked out of PMS and observed that Evie and Mya had strangely disappeared. That made me raise a brow; the two were almost always with me, but I dismissed it as potential Office Aide duties.

A few minutes passed, and they came out looking bedraggled and terrified, like wet cats thrown in a shower. I had no idea what the *hell* had happened to make these two appear like they just saw Satan doing some... *things* in hell, but they denied anything wrong, and we headed onward to my cabin.

I was off in Winter Land, dreaming of Varien at the party and adherence to my musical taste (if the school's religion was Varien, then we could get along on better terms). There wasn't a single speck of drama or Daniela in my way, and the air hadn't tasted so crisper.

Until the tension on my rear end smacked the *daylights* out of my system.

"Hey, Winter? There's something we... have to tell you," Evie admitted timidly, her green eyes boring down on her feet. Her tone was *anxious*.

There went my fun. Something was *wrong*, and if Evie and Mya were giving the bad news bears, then *god* something was *wrong*.

"Oh? What's wrong?" I demanded, trotting on light feet and tensing my shoulders.

*Are they okay? They were like this earlier. We're in the woods and aren't around people...*

"About us getting held back... that wasn't the truth. We... we saw *Rex* in her full T-Rex form in the office... and she was facing *Daniela*."

I was then promptly smacked with an *anvil* square in the *nose*.

*Rex*, *enraged*, confronting *Daniela*. Had this worried them? Did they forget that Rex would still win no matter *what* Daniela kicked and screeched for in her wildest of bloodlusting dreams? She'd lose. She couldn't topple her own mother, and we had seen *living proof* of that.

The hairs on my neck stood up. Evie and Mya were *worried*. The tension was mounting.

"*What* exactly are you telling me?"

Mya stepped up to face me, and her pupils had gone wide as *frisbees*, no emotion but *fear*.

The brevity of this struck me in the middle of the heart.

"Winter, Daniela *blackmailed* Rex! She threatened to *expose your relationship* with her to the **whole school**! And Rex **backed down**! She had to let Daniela *go to the party* so she wouldn't lose her *job*! If you go to the party... **Daniela is going to kill you**!"

The brevity had impaled and torn a gash through the *entirety* of my heart.

Daniela had *used blackmail*??? Rex *quitting*? The party turning from a young girl's biggest dream to an unfolding, venomous *nightmare*?

*How could this have happened in a span of a day*?

It was *implausible*. Too *unrealistic* and *hellish* to be true! The girls *had* to be seeing things!

"**WHAT**?" I demanded, searching for a reason to believe two of the *few people in my life* could feed me to a shark like *this*.

Rex would *never* do such a thing! She promised to *protect me*. Before Evie and Mya, she was the only one I ever *had*. All of that time she devoted to me? Was it all nothing now? Nullified, because she sold me out to appease an outlandish game of Daniela's?

That wasn't *right*, my perturbed heart said, puffing with defensive tact in mind. I felt something *breaking* out of my heart, something *raw* and *gripping*. I slid to my thoughts, a hornet's nest poked too many times with the stick.

*Rex promised that she would NEVER let me go to foster care. She promised to keep me SAFE! And now the girls are trying to claim that she gave in to Daniela? That I'm in danger?*

*That's utter NONSENSE! Rex owns Daniela each time she gets in trouble. I have FELT that anger. Did... are the girls betraying me?*

As soon as I thought it, I scrapped the idea. No, I'd been over this. Evie and Mya *wouldn't* betray me, and they were speaking from their experience. However, they *never* knew Daniela and Rex the way I knew them.

The clash of normal lives versus a life made in *hell* and fought with *grit* and *blood*.

From there, we went back and forth on our views. I was in *hard* denial Rex would abandon me now to save her own flesh and bones. She *wouldn't*. I was *dead* sure of it. She vowed to never break a promise and had showcased *unthinkable* strength and commitment to the job she had always been exhausted doing.

She always won against Daniela. She was *Mother Bear*. I began to think Evie and Mya had wanted to ditch me... another ridiculous thought I snapped the wick to.

Then came an agonizing pain down the other half my body, the one *not* ridden with denial and *hearing* Evie and Mya. It didn't seem like I was agreeing with them, and half of me *didn't*. I believed they had misunderstood a fight or had seen wrong. They weren't liars, but didn't speak from the same experience branch I stood upon.

Why would they have any reason to lie to me now? What would they even *gain* from wrecking me? Nothing, and these two were *far* too compassionate to stoop lower than Daniela herself. They *weren't* lying... and Rex *wouldn't* lie either.

I was caught between two different types of denial - and both were splitting jagged down the *centerline*.

Evie and Mya didn't *realize* that they were activating a horrible brute from within me, that, when at its limit, would emerge and hurt them in ways I couldn't *bear* to imagine.

I remained firm that Rex would keep me safe, but Evie and Mya were just as certain that the party was *doomed* to *fail*, and that I'd fall onto Daniela's lap and be decapitated.

I was hurting them with every counter, every hurt accusation, every ounce of anger dripping me and feeding the being in me, making it less tame and more uncontrollable. It was cracking my heart saying this to them, knowing I couldn't take it all back.

Rex *wouldn't* let me down. She wouldn't *ditch* me. Evie and Mya weren't the monsters. Daniela was. Daniela was *under control*, roped down with work and a punishment that *isolated her*. She had *no power*.

Evie and Mya weren't liars. Rex wasn't a liar.

*I didn't know which one was telling the truth*.

Anger was possessing me, and my words turned more cruel and accusatory. Mya was petrified, and Evie shocked, yet fortified in the wake of the battleground.

They had to stop pressing me. I didn't know what was right and what was wrong anymore. If they pushed me to the brink of questioning my sanity, I would do something I'd *regret* for as long as I *lived*.

I was on that edge, being backed off the ravine. The rocks crumbled away.

Evie and Mya had pushed me here. I didn't want to snap, I didn't want to do it, and I didn't want to hurt them. I just didn't know *who was lying*. What was the lie? Was I in danger? *I didn't know anything*.

I just *didn't know*, didn't *think*. I was *insecure*.

And Evie broke my back with the final straw.

"Winter! We got *trapped* in a closet and Rex got **tricked** by Daniela into thinking we were dumbasses! She thought *we* locked ourselves in! Daniela could have gotten away with manipulating her own mother then and she just **got away with it** for real! We're not the ones lying to you - you're the one that's lying to yourself!"

*I'm lying to myself...*

*I'M LYING TO MYSELF??*

What on *earth*? I *wasn't* lying to myself! I *knew* I was right about Rex! She *wouldn't* abandon me to cover Daniela's bases. She *hated* Daniela just as much as *I did*!

Evie and Mya had matched that with *sickening amounts of merit*. I didn't want to believe one over the other. I didn't want to believe *both*.

I didn't want to *believe anything*, and I finally fell off the cliff and into the ravine.

A sea of *rage* drowned me *alive*.

"***JUST SHUT THE HELL UP, WON'T YOU***?"

A *shockwave* of silence raptured in the Piney Woods, and everything *froze*. Time stopped. Birds stopped singing. The trees stopped rustling.

A minute of seeing static passed, and then I saw *reality*.

Evie and Mya, huddling in fear of me, what I could *do* to them. Thinking I'd *assault* them and leave them bloody corpses on the pine needles. Staring at me, demanding *why*.

A why I couldn't *explain*. I finally saw the extent of what I had done.

Embarrassment and shame crashed over me, bending my back. Out of all of the things to ruin my day and my friends' day, I was *awful* to them. I had treated them like *garbage*.

This was inexplicable. I had *nothing* to say to take accountability for this.

I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to question. I had to *run*.

"I... I'm *sorry*!"

That apology was *terrible* and *rushed*, and I had left Evie and Mya with hardly any condolences. I was a *stupid idiot*.

But what else could I do? Take an elixir and hope its liquid existence urged me to apologize properly? Down my sorrows in memories and ignore a potential *threat*?

I had more pertinent matters, ones I had to force myself to dwell on: *who was right*?

Had Rex held true to her word, and was Daniela blocked seven ways to Sunday from entering that party? Or were Evie and Mya correct about seeing Daniela use *blackmail* to get what she had bitterly desired?

*Was my life in danger once again*?

I had just wished to spend this day being *happy*. Letting *go*. Enjoying a *party*.

Now I didn't want to address my own friends, own up, and decide which pinnacle ally was the liar.

I couldn't fathom why my fate always ended up like this.

So the days went on, days I spent alone, with my phone, ignoring Evie and Mya's messages and visits and slamming the door in their faces.

I didn't want to acknowledge that I messed up. I didn't *want* to believe Rex had been kicked in the shins with ignominy and had surrendered to Daniela's party campaign. I didn't want to believe Evie and Mya were liars.

I didn't *know*. The party *had* to be *untouched*. It had to be *pure*.

It had to be *safe*. It was a *party*. Daniela was *powerless*. She had surveillance. She couldn't *do anything to me*.

Evie and Mya had to be wrong... it had to be a mistake, a misunderstanding... but every time I tried to think about what happened, I only felt myself scraping the woodchips of a smashed barrel bottom.

Eventually, the party night came. I knew I'd get in just fine solo; Rex would cover for me, and it wasn't like anybody could launch an ambush when there were *multiple* pairs of eyes in every public area of the cafeteria. The path was *clear*.

I donned my jacket, combed out my hair, and dusted off my face. I had to man up for this and not let the past few days claw their way up my back. I was trying to let go of my baggage.

Rex hadn't let me down. Every step I took toward the school, I was convinced she had Daniela locked at home, in her bedroom, *away* from me.

The sun was rapidly setting, and I walked through the glass doors of PMS, standing under the dome, shining in the purplish-orange light. Breathing the moment *in*.

I was *here*. At the *highest* peak of life, at the *biggest* party of all.

I shuffled over to the cafeteria entrance, where Rex stood, her hands wrung by her waistline. She became more attentive the second she saw me, rubbing down her fluffy latte hair.

"Winter! Welcome to the party, darling," she stated, her eyes cast off in the direction of the stage.

"Thanks, Rex! This night's gonna be a *blast*!"

"Yep, certainly..."

I saw her lip tremble, her fingers curling by her waistline. A foot shuffle on the ground. Was Rex... okay?

*Almost as if- no! Not tonight. Stop thinking about it. You're right... just embrace the party.*

I let myself calm, and Rex motioned me ahead shakily. The party atmosphere was *heaven's oasis of a paradise*.

Live music, played by a DJ - and to my shock, the song that was playing *was* a Varien song! It was *Morphine* - one of my favorites from him. It was in the second drop, and I took to jumping around, scanning the colorfully-lit surroundings.

Tinted lights flashed from the ceiling, controlled at all angles. Food and drink vendors were nearby, providing pizza and grape punch, and I quickly got the punch and took a swig. Mmm, *delicious*.

Licking the punch off my lips, I scanned the crowd, trickling in excitedly and getting their food and drinks, chatting to each other, staring at the phones (boo party poopers), and tapdancing to *Varien* (I'M NOT ALONE HERE ANYMORE). I felt perfectly in place in this new universe.

It was just for one night, and I had already yearned for it to last *forever*.

Still... something didn't feel *right*, and a pang in my heart scolded me for denying the obvious from the very beginning.

There should have been two outlines of young girls next to me. They weren't here.

I *missed* Evie and Mya, and I *still* regretted ripping into them and storming off on them without much of an apology. They *were* my friends, and I valued them... the party wasn't going to hit as much without them here.

*Morphine* ended, and in came another song, not industrial, but a rare genre I heard a boy and girl trilling about quite excitedly.

"Eee! Melbourne bounce has landed at the party!"

"I'm glad *Children of the Night* is getting some recognition. What it lacks in lyrics is made up for by the *catchiest* of beats!"

*Children of the Night*. Not a Varien song... and not really my concern.

Night had fully fallen by now, the windows dark, yet the party atmosphere was as bright as the cosmos, more lights added to the dazzling canvas of colors. The cafeteria was jam-packed with young partygoers, from sixth to eigth grade, tussling, slurping punch, and leaving pizza crumbs all over the floor that the janitors were rolling their eyes at irritably. Their job never got easier.

Where were Evie and Mya in this flock of human bodies? I couldn't see them, trying to peer up at the second and third levels. Did they not attend the party because of *me*?

*No! That's ridiculous. Yet they're wrong about Daniela. She's not anywhere, and I'm having a great time!*

That much was true, and so I lost myself more, blissfully unaware of the fact that *Children of the Night* had ended and that a bitter song - which would later come to bite me in the ass - started playing.

Savoring this moment, is this our last goodbye?

The music tuned out, and I was off in my world, on the bottom level, enjoying the *chatter*. The *thrill*, the *adrenaline* rush of interacting and meeting with other likeminded minds my age. There was no malicious intent, no bad motives, and not a *reason* the party could explode.

What fatality was there, asides from the eaten pizza and spilled punch?

I thought we loved each other, I guess one of us lied

The music tuned back into my ears, and my body swayed along to it; my chin bopped up and down, my jacket tied around my waistline (I'd taken it off earlier because it was surprisingly warm in the PMS building).

This party was *rocking*. The greatest party I had ever known, and finally, a high I could get off on that wasn't just a dream I concocted in my head.

So please, just pull away, I can't look you in the face

*Evie and Mya were dumb to think I'd get ambushed here. I did overreact, and I regret that... but I've been having the time of my life!*

The affirmation was set in stone... and then kicked into the nearest lake by a female partygoer.

"Soooo... *enjoying* the party, hmm?"

Her voice wasn't recognizable, and her body blended in with the herd of students, and it sounded deep... and *friendly*. I'd learned to warm up to having friends, due credit to Evie and Mya, of course. What was wrong with making another at a party?

"Ooh yeah." Another swig of grape punch down my throat.

I don't wanna have to lie, I wanted this love to survive

"You seem alone. Where are your friends?" she asked, and I shrugged.

*Spending their time away from me.* Evie and Mya were unfavorably late... they were chickening out on all of the action. I hoped I wasn't at fault for that.

"Somewhere else. They didn't want to hang out with me."

"Unfortunate. Parties are *always* better with *friends*," the sweet-tongued stranger said, beckoning to me with a charm in her voice, "C'mon, let's head to the middle of the floor."

She didn't reveal herself, presumably heading to the middle floor on her own. *This right here should have been the biggest red flag*.

The party euphoria had blinded me to reality. *Elusive, like I am. I might be making a new friend tonight!*

Now when I look in your heart

I obeyed, and she got closer to me - though I *still* couldn't discern her from the crowd. "Having fun?"

I didn't hear the music become stifling, playing in favor of her.

"The *most* fun! It's like I've gotten a year of my life back... tonight's gonna be a *real* good night. I gotta feeling."

That was the *last* time that "good night" was *ever* a good night.

The stranger finally let her theatric mask *fall*.

"Really? It'd be a *shame* if it went so *wrong*..."

*Every muscle in my body froze into solid stone*. My fingertips were *frostbitten*.

That... that *voice*. That *tone*. *That deception*.

No. It couldn't. It could *not* be her. I had to be *right*!

Yet...

*That... that voice...*

I searched the students left and right. She couldn't be here. She wouldn't blend in. She wouldn't have gotten this far.

*Something was really wrong*.

*Went... wrong?*

My body *nosedived* into *panic*. The air was *rank* with *smoke*. I couldn't *breathe*. Sirens were *drilling* my ears.

I only had the strength for a question. A question she wouldn't even let me *finish*.

"What...? What do you me-"

And then, an amber-eyed *sociopath* barreled toward me with speed rivaling a *cheetah*, catching me square in the headlights. Her hand wrapped violently around my throat. Those *fiery amber* eyes melting the ice in mine.

I feel paralyzed

I was *wrong*. Evie and Mya were *right*.

Overcome by guilt, sodden with horror, and choked by shock, I *screamed* enough to crack the night sky, banish the stars, silence hundreds, and turn the party atmosphere from a *terrific*, *lively* night to a waking *nightmare* that filled the cafeteria with neverending *fear*.

The party was over in *five seconds*.

Like always, Evie and Mya have already told you what they saw from their POV, and I see they've covered the devastation, brutality, and depressing scale of it all. For that, as well as the fact that Daniela *loved* to prolong her fights until her enemy has nothing left but hollow organs, this one included, I will be condensing what played out. You'll still hear plenty about how I was feeling in those moments, though.

Are you ready for the final battle of this story? Then let's begin - seatbelts, everyone!

Daniela was snickering. She was already believing she'd *conquered* me, demonstrating her fleshy, squirming vermin of a prize in me to the cafeteria, raising me up Rafiki-style for the *bewildered*, *horrified* crowd to see. Meanwhile, nuclear reactors had gone off in me, wildfires raging and licking at me. Eyes staring at me, demanding *what*, *why*, *when*, *how*.

This *had* to be a dream. This *wasn't* real. I'd wake up and return to the *actual* party, right? There was a *party without Daniela*, right? *Right*?

For every blink, I would return to Daniela's seething, satisfied glare, an enticed smile wide on her face, hundreds of bodies with ghostly eyes pelting my body with what felt like *rocks*.

What should have been *the greatest night of my life* was now *burnt to ashes*. Daniela had gotten access to the *matches*, and now, she was going to capitalize on every inch of me she wanted *burned*.

Fingers dug into my throat, constricting me, cutting my air supply off. Every inch of me was squirming *helplessly*. Impulsively looking for the exit, for *anything* out of this. Where was the *help*? Rex? *Someone*? Everyone was too paralyzed with agony to *move*.

My throat was getting more raw, empty. I was going to be suffocated if Daniela didn't let go. I begged again.

She agreed... only to *slam me into the tile flooring*. *Hard*. The skies blurred, and I thought I saw rain - ashy rain, petal-y rain, falling from the sky and onto me.

Was I in heaven?

A heavy, murderous, crafted body pinned me to the ground then, and instead of heaven, the dizzying environment switched to the *infernos* of *hell*.

Daniela enjoyed the pleasuring whimpers and groans she elicited from me. Forever entertaining the circus of misery, *feeding* off all suffering and pain like the succubus she was. She was *gluttonous*.

Everyone in the crowd whispered about *us*. About Daniela, about *me*. Many people in the crowd didn't know who I was, or me and Daniela's history, but some *knew* me, and rumors were *flying*.

My heartbeat was thrumming wildly. For all I knew, *this was fight or flight*. My secrets and entire image were in *danger* of being *tarnished*. Daniela *had* to be stopped! I had to do *something*!

When there was silence, Daniela utilized it as her sharpest weapon - molding it into a serrated switchblade, she made the first cut into me, exposing the filling underneath to appease the partygoers.

As soon as the first blow was struck, my waking dream began to die and wither in my hands. It was the slow *beginning* of the *end*.

"You see this *drowned*, *puny rat* in my clutches? She *constantly* flees me, finds any confrontation *with me* moot. *Depressing*. **She** believes she lives the **perfect life** - but she's *wrong*. I know her like I know *every inch* on my *hand* because **I remember** what she did that ***one November night***!"

Horror struck me in the temple and lacerated the top of my *skull*. *The breakup*.

Daniela was going to twist the *truth* to her *advantage* and *villify me*. *This was what she yearned to do all along*.

This wasn't a dream. There was no special power I had to persuade the public otherwise - would an inferior be able to turn tables the way Daniela did?

One last vie, but Daniela didn't remotely *care* about feelings when she had an *exposé* to conduct, a vivisection of autonomy to perform, and a *mauling* and *shaming* of her most prized possession to *do*. She wouldn't give up and *never would*.

I listened and watched with insurmountable terror as she retold the morbid story, shooting it in the heart and stitching it together with the wrong ideas, wrong concepts, and defamatory patches. *Lies*. The crowd was confused, keeping on their intense, brooding staring.

Daniela claimed I never came back for her. That was *far* from the truth.

My brain cleared enough, and my temper, hot and calculated, burning with the coals of fear and tears outlining my eyelids, made me rise to counter. Daniela was off of me in a second, and I was up to my feet. Room between us. I spoke swiftly, sharing the *truth* and nothing but the *harsh* truth, garlic to the vampiric Daniela. The party guests now were apprised with a *second* point of view, one bringing clarity yet being just as violent, blood-soaked, and traumatic as Daniela's. Just which one of us, to them, was the one which adorned the halo?

Daniela certainly wasn't bothered with my testimony, going right back to antagonizing me, trying to earn the brownie points for sympathy by worming her way into me, provoking me, belittling me until I furled and became a shriveled shell of myself. She had an easy way of getting those brownie points: *revealing my ties to her own mother*.

Rex had showed up at last, and I saw her peering over the wall, petrified. She *wasn't* Mother Bear or the T-Rex. She was *frightened*. She didn't *know* how to stop *this*.

Daniela rejected her attempt at dissuading her, and at this point, I wasn't even shocked, only filling with fear, funneled through my mouth and out of my ears. The air was smoky, and I tasted *blood*. This. Was. *Bad*.

My ex saw the crowd and wanted to light up the battlegrounds *more*. There wasn't *enough* drama, the fire she *needed* to win everyone on her side and not mine. She needed a *solid faction* and returned to wielding her dagger of quiet, cutting into my heart and holding up another sopping chunk of my inner self.

*I was an orphan who ran away from home, lived in a cabin, and forged her report cards to survive the depths of school*.

Daniela had surpassed the amount of evidence she required to *overwhelmingly* frame me. She had painted a picture in the colors of *hell*, and she was amassing a collective of followers from her speech alone. People were questioning if they doubted her *the whole time*, and I was degraded to the status of a *peasant*. I was *sick*.

While she was distracted basking in the red limelight, I thought back to earlier, through the soaking of sweat and tears into my skin. How I'd thought Evie and Mya had made an error in deducing Daniela's usage of blackmail. Me lathering myself up with denial, believing it was fine, missing them.

Evie and Mya *still weren't here*. I couldn't *see them*. And they were right about *goddamn everything*. If I had *just* listened to them, *this wouldn't have happened to me*.

The sky split again, and roaring *hounded* my brain, signals set apart and ceasing to exist.

The only reason this was happening to me *right now*... was *me*.

What kind of fool ignored her closest friends and walked *into the most deadly death trap in all of history*? I *played myself*.

I saw Rex on the second floor. Melted ice met sorrowful, somber blue.

Rex knew it was partly her fault this had happened. I felt so much sympathy for her, but had no time or will to even express it.

Daniela went on, tearing the emotion to *shreds* with her black fingernails and then cutting another decently sized hunk out of my body, spilling the blood and staining the floor *red*. I *saw* the *red*.

Now everybody knew I had only forged my father's signature on report cards *because I did everything in my power to avoid being shipped off to foster care*.

I did something *illegal*. Something I should have been in *juvie* for. I'd worked effortlessly and tirelessly to cover it up, but Daniela had undone that facade - *and she was going to undo it completely until it was deceased*.

The partygoers turned to each other, igniting the whispers once more, doubtful, skeptical of *me*. This was *exactly* what Daniela wanted. Gaslighting had its advantages... and it would strip me down to *bare bone*.

Me and Rex begged her to stop her onslaught. *This* had gone *too far*. She didn't *have* to do this. She *shouldn't* have been able to do this. I was losing everything, losing everyone around me, *losing my world*. My body was *aching*, *torn open*, exposed and stepped on with *muck*.

Was this was *dying* felt like?

Daniela took much gratification in the fact that I was *dying* and went *on*, dragging my heritage through the muck she had casted on me. My strength was ebbing out of me, and dizzy, I stumbled on my feet. Evie and Mya also have likely told you that there was *no spirit* in my eyes. There was just no spirit in my body in general.

Daniela ranted about how I made everyone *suffer*. *Poisoned* everyone around me based on lies and breaking the law to sustain myself outside of the care of *anyone*. I didn't *trust*. The rant became darker, demented, and full of *hatred*, and then and there, Daniela stunned the crowd with a *soul-crushing* sentence:

"***YOU DON'T DESERVE TO LIVE***!"

The air was *vacuumed* out of my soul, and with that vacuum, my *heart*. My *guts*. My last traces of *vigor*. I wasn't rigid, but made of *slime* and bound to *break*.

I shrieked, flinching and falling back. The wound Daniela had scored on me was a *critical* hit.

The eyes of the crowd were gluing me to the floor, paralyzing me in panic. I couldn't *run* or *fight*, not when the pain was this *severe*. I was barely able to comprehend that the chunks Daniela had ripped and severed, raised out of me, were my *secrets*. My *layers*. My *elaborate* work of art that *shielded me* from *reality*.

My waking dream, once so *wondrous* and *spellbinding* and *galatic*, was stained with *blood*, *dark* and *dreary*. The gap between me and Daniela was *erased*.

She had spilled nearly everything about me to a crowd. I had *everything* undone.

I was *exposed* and *couldn't hide* anymore. This was a fight I desperately needed to achieve... but I had conceded before the real brawn had a chance to show. Daniela was *rolling* in the mess she had *created*. The night would go on *forever*.

She screamed at me that I lied to everyone. I screamed her old name, her old, beautiful name, Dani, as a slip-up, which I always did with her when my emotional stability had shattered and was deposited roughly outside my boundaries. My face was *soaked* with salty, salty tears, and I felt myself drifting like a feather in a storm, *destroyed*.

I was *destroyed* and ever the more in the belief that this damage would *never* be repaired.

Daniela was very displeased at the eerie quiet - a struggle for my shutdown brain to process - and went on, grabbing a saltshaker out of thin air and dunking the brackish substance into the flesh wounds she had inflicted on my body.

Another hunk set on *fire* and *ripped off* - *I was Rex's precious wannabe daughter*.

Something to *truly* blaze the partygoers into *questioning everything the school was built upon*. Rex was awash with sheer dread and shame, shaking in her very shoes and eyes darting across everyone, either staring at me or staring at *her*.

She denied having relations with me, but her voice was *weak* and *cracked*. She *convinced* no one, and then, the crowd started to murmur about *scandal*. Me and her being *harbingers* of *utter chaos*.

Boy, was Daniela living for her moment, and twirling in all of the attention, she admitted *everything* she knew about Rex's relationship with me. How she *sacrificed* and *upturned* so much to protect me. Her lies to authorities that I was with relatives. How she treated me more like a *daughter* than *she treated Daniela like her own daughter*.

We both denied, but Daniela wasn't going to play pinky keen with *denial* anymore. She hated many things about life, my existence, her mother, school, defiance... but denial was in her *top ten*.

More berating over me and my waking dream and Rex giving me everything. Rex faltered and then sunk to the floor, cracked into fragments that made *me* splinter into fragments that oddly stuck out and reformed. I wasn't *who* I used to be, and she wasn't who she used to be.

The storm intensified around me, winds howling and crying, thunder booming, sirens wailing with the ever-lasting promise of war, hailstones and ash-rain falling from the sky and onto me. Cracking me. I was *alone* in this *war*. *Alone*, with no morality, no autonomy, and no waking dream. *Nothing*.

Daniela was getting close to the *grand finale*, but she had more *mutiliation* to get to first. Accusations of me tormenting her and killing her inside flew, joined by the insistence that I was a *filthy liar*, even though it was vice versa. My counters? *Squeaks*. My voice was *hollow* and *dead*. I was *weak*, *tired*, and *traumatized*. Never enough for my former flame.

There was a brief echo of silence where Daniela was disarmed, and I took it to compose myself. I had to at least do something that would deter her and give me room to wiggle out and escape in tatters, salvage what could be salvaged. Why couldn't Daniela *just let go*?

If she just let go and moved on, if she would just accept there was nothing changing each of our fates, we wouldn't be here in a battle of life versus death. I shared my sentiment with her, but it acted like I spat *venom* in her eyes, and she declared that she would stop at nothing to make me atone for my crimes. Peace wouldn't tame a bloodthirsty murder apologist.

I didn't have much to say. Daniela was getting tired of testing me - she wanted to taste the *real meat* of me, let go of the *last secret*. One that the school was more likely to *be aware of*, but still be the *killing blow* to my waking dream. It couldn't *die on me*! *It was the only other home I had*.

Evie and Mya had to be here somewhere... if Daniela succeeded with this plan, *I'd die*. *I'd DIE*. My waking dream, *then me* in one *sitting*. Panic in my body fed my fear, fanning its flames. I thought of *everything*. The crowd, demanding I answer questions I couldn't answer. Knowing my identity, lies, and facade, knocked down and decaying in Daniela's hands. Evie and Mya *were* here. *Somewhere*. I had to *believe*. As long as I could *believe*, I could *impede* Daniela.

I did it the only way I knew how to. And so I recalled all of the things me and Daniela did when Daniela was *Dani*. The golden ages of our relationship, when she had loved me, promised our first kiss, ran around doing the things stupid young lovers did. The cafeteria became *fully quiet*.

The silence was too much, and so a witch's cackle fragmented it. Daniela was back for more, and this time, would do away with letting me play petty childhood games with her. She claimed to hold records of my *sins*, *baskets* of it, and even asked the audience to judge me themselves. She had requested a *kangaroo court* of *inexperienced fearful people* to *judge me*.

Some took the middle. Some believed Daniela. Some didn't even say anything. Another moment of silence.

The last one. Daniela was *sick* of going back and forth and breaks. She was slick with hatred, seeping off her tongue. She was getting impatient - and *impatience was a deadly weapon of warcraft*.

The final chunk of me was *hers* for the *taking*. She lapped it up like pie, and then spat out the seeds of where it all began.

"The scars you inflicted. The pain you gave. Don't you realize it, *Winter*? **Don't you see**? There is a **REASON** why you're ridiculed. There is a **REASON** why nobody *likes you*. There is a **REASON** why **EVERYBODY** calls you ***SNOWBLIND***!"

*Acid*, *liquid nitrogen*, was *poured* all over my body, serving as cold, frozen kerosene to *every fire* Daniela had lit that night. I was *gutted* of *everything*.

They knew of the cabin, me running away, having no proper family. Living a lie based on an *Alice in Wonderland*-like dream. Forging report cards. Having illegal assistance. Breaking the law.

And now... I was *ridiculed* by *most* at this school with the *humiliating* nickname of *Snowblind*. People recognized me for who I was - *a fraud*.

Voices were shouting, hollering, *pointing fingers and mouthing at me*. *Jeering* at me, siding with Daniela. *No*! *No*, *no*, *no*! Daniela was on the *cusp* of her *cigar*. Her *finest moment*.

I had to pay one final tax to her: *it would be with my blood*.

She wouldn't be halted from killing me. She would slaughter me in front of my friends, wherever they were. She had unveiled me, cut me open, left me to bleed, salted the wound, and made a *mockery* of my entire name and image. The only human being I was seen as now was a traumatized, *fraudulent* young girl, unloved by the whole world, outcasted from society, and bound to a dumb dream with superglue.

I retreated. Daniela chanted my name like it was a *battlecry*. *War*. The sirens *blared* in my ears. Do or *die*.

She was advancing. Predator cornering prey. When prey was cornered, it would *die*. I. Could. Not. *Die*.

I felt myself reaching for my pocket knife. I shouldn't have brought it here, but I was hopeless without it.

I warned her, but she got *closer*. My personal turf violated, high ground *fading*. There was *screeching*, a *murder*, more *sirens*. Drums of *war*. A *raging storm*. Hail. Petals. Sirens. Rain. Ash.

My hand was *gripping* wood. I could barely see anything in front of me but *fire* spitting embers in my *eyes*.

"Won't even face me. Won't even face the crowd. *Typical*. You *always* want to *retreat* from the fight like the *fraidy girl* you are. Blind to your *misgivings*. Blind to *reality*. You are ***SNOWBLIND***-"

Everything around me became too much, corrupting me and giving control to *instinct*. Instinct called for *defense*. There was *war*.

This was *do* or very much *die*.

Without warning, and acting on blind instinct alone, I pulled the knife, drew its blade, and *charged*. Daniela had left me no choice, and it was her turn to feel a *magnitude* of pain.

But what happened was the polar *opposite* of revenge.

Daniela, snarling, socked me in the stomach with her heeled boot. Instead of flying at her and toppling the Goliath she was, I toppled *backwards* in *agonizing pain*, *slamming* into the cafeteria wall. The world was a smoky smidge, and my head was being bashed in on the sides from vertigo.

*Thunk*. An object skidded on the tile, right up to Daniela's boots. The sudden terror hit me, and I searched my pockets, my hands. *No*.

I gasped.

Daniela knelt down, picking up the object, brown-handled with a shining silver blade, the initials of *EM* on the very bottom.

*She was holding my pocket knife in her hands*.

I had inadvertently given Daniela a *murder weapon*. An *actual* weapon she could *kill me with*.

She was *alight* with the *possibilities*, a thousand ways to skin and demolish my *carcass* and *win*. I was reduced to a defenseless, sobbing, screaming heap of flesh and bones pinned up against the wall.

I'd *lost* the *only thing* keeping me *safe*. I had *no defense*.

It was *over*.

Daniela approached me, playfully stroking the knife and reminiscing on what had led to this point, close to ending it all. In just a few minutes, I'd be no more than a dying memory in a puddle of blood on the floor.

This should have been a party. This should have been *awesome*.

There wasn't a party. This was *carnage*. Carnage that was *all my fault*.

I wasn't going to escape with a waking dream, or fight, or challenge, or scream defiance, bleed it, or refuse to conform to standards. I was fully *gutted* of *everything* - and Daniela was ready to remove the last thing I had within me: life.

I begged for her not to do this, exhausted, sniffling, giving up. I couldn't battle her... she had *my weapon*. She'd exposed me and taken my safe blankets, my security, my *livelihood*, and *murdered it*.

She professed her desires to end my legacy after all of her previous failures.

For the last time ever, I blinked away the tears and *pleaded*. *Pleaded*, with a broken, traumatic, glass heart, that if she just listened to me and let her hatred go, we wouldn't have to duke it out with each other and ruin the party. We could have gone on, normally, and healed.

However, it was too late for any of that. Too late to say goodbye. Too late to reflect. Too late to regret my life choices. Too late to prevent my own death.

I *failed*. Daniela only saw me as a blind curse. Her enemy. The root of evil. A disgrace, a scourge, a *sycophant*.

The clock had struck *midnight*.

"I guess that's how you'll **die**, then. Caught in the past, caught in a lie. You **should've known**, *Winter*! There is **ALWAYS** a ***reason*** why we ***LOSE***!!"

I gasped. Nothing else was said, and Daniela plunged the knife at the soft, wide-open flesh of my throat.

Time froze, moving at a snail's pace. Time was always like this, making you process things before the inevitable happens and you're stripped of the ability to be alive.

In my case, it was all too much of a callback to the breakup. My very life *flashed* before my *eyes*.

My birth, *Snowlight*. Choosing paths. Transformations. Coping with death, love, and loss. Meeting my soulmate, then losing her in a vicious betrayal of blood. Living among a waking dream and millions of lies. The Talking of the Axes.

Foxes and hounds. Fighting Snowblindness with memories. Evie and Mya... and now, *my demise*.

My life wasn't worth it. I'd only lived to *die*. My only purpose was to *die*. Die a disgrace to everyone around me.

Die in front of Evie and Mya, who had only known me for so little time, yet had been so fond and accepting of me. My only friends.

*I'm so sorry, Evie and Mya... I failed you...*

It was the last thought crossing my mind before it clouded with *acceptance*. Of death, of fate. Daniela had won. I was *nothing*...

"***WINTER***!!!"

All of a sudden, the darkness in my eyes became awash with *light*. I blinked open. That was a *noise*. Two familiar *shouts* twined into *one*, coming from my left.

I turned, moving my shoulder and my body enough, to see *my best friends*. A stab of guilt and confusion injected in my bloodstream.

*Evie and Mya...?*

*Thwap*!

It was as if someone had *severed my entire arm off from the shoulder*. I *screamed*, curdling the blood of everyone and every living thing in the room, and I collapsed, writhing. My shoulder was *blazing*. It was *cut*. It was *on fire*. I tried to get up, but the pain pushed me down to the cold tile every time.

I was *alive*. Evie and Mya distracting me had *spared me* of the killing stab to the neck. But what was worth it in being alive, bleeding out from the shoulder? There was no worth tied to it.

Daniela was disappointed she hadn't nicked my jugular, but was pleased by the gaping shoulder wound that was gushing blood onto the floor and limiting my movements, sucking the life out of me slowly and surely, a perfect comparison to her style of executing pain.

She paced, continuing to toy with my knife, treating it as her own child. I just bled out, defeated, hopeless, defenseless, tormented. There was nothing I could do to turn back the clock or prove my innocence to the crowd, who hadn't moved or spoken since the stabbing.

Daniela had *won*. She'd *won everything*. I'd *lost everything*. My home, my cabin, my solitude, my history, my allies. I'd never stop being haunted by ghosts. I was a shell of me. I wasn't *Winter*.

Who even *was* I now? A *worthless fool*. A *fool*. Someone ideally stupid.

Daniela was *inhaling* the euphoria of getting away with an attempted murder. She tasted sweet, refreshing cherries, and I tasted *salt*, the *blood* of a broken heart. A *broken*, *mangled* creature.

The pool of blood on the ground was now the size of a *plate*. My shoulder couldn't be repaired. My shirt was wet and plastered to me by the blood I'd bled. The price I paid for my cowardice.

Daniela, turning to face me, glared at me with utmost scorn and disgust. I was *finished*, and she had to put the *final* stake in the heart. One to establish my true position, true belonging, and *true* namesake.

"You are a **TRAITOR** to this school. A traitor to **PINESHADOW**! *Self-destructive*! *Impulsive*! A handicap and *liability* no one **wanted**. You had the roses and a love, but destroyed it when you didn't *stand up* to the one you claimed was your flame. Your *flame* that made you *complete*. *Sinful* and *disgraceful*. I should've known *better* than to fall in love. Luckily, I *knew* better than to live in your ways. I *hung up* on you and didn't *wallow* in my sorrows."

"D-D-Da-ni..." I rasped, too feeble to elevate a single hand or muscle. I didn't want to get up, stand up, or even *face her*. Yet her eyes compelled me to meet her, and I regretted the gross amount of power she had weaponized since the day she first discovered me *thriving*.

"**Vengeance** is heaven. Now you've learned what it **feels** like when you fall victim to the *web* you weave... I've **finished** this cat and mouse game and **finished** you... you're *nothing*! I am **everything** you lost. ***EVERYTHING*** you ***NEVER HAD***!!"

*This* was the *fate* I had *chosen*. *Complacency*.

*This* was *my fault*. I *lied* to myself. *Deluded* myself. Always ran away from *reality*, believing something like this was *nigh-impossible*. Why did I think I'd live alone forever and succeed? Why did I think everyone could be deceived as easy as one, two, three?

It hit me so brutally that I just didn't have the will to respond to Daniela anymore. I didn't want to move.

Moving was *pointless* when the point of your *existence* was *all for nothing*.

Daniela was *right* about me in *every facet*. She had *power*. She had *fame*. She had a *normal life*. An *actual* family. Spoiled herself rotten. She was *everything*, sans personality, that I could never personally have.

She had *humiliated me*. She had killed off everything that made me special.

I wasn't special. I was *fool's gold*, never meant to be taken seriously. Pyrite would never be as valuable as gold. So what was I worth?

Blood leaked out of my shoulder, and my right arm was going numb. My body was shutting down, not from blood loss, but from *frozenness*. A *bitter* cold that wasn't *frostbite*, but a forced *cease and desist*.

Daniela had one more noose to tie around my neck. She wrapped it around and *pulled* with nauseating strength.

"You're a **poison**. A vile concoction *born* in *hate* and *complacency*. You're *drizzled* in *snake oil* and peddle lies, the *charlatan* you are. Your bones are *driven* with *freakish wanderlust* that went straight to your pea-sized brain - you're already living in a world of one hundred *thousand lies*, and the line between the real world and the fiction world is *so blurred* you can't tell the freaking **difference**. Ugh. **Awful**. For **SHAME**!"

I agreed with her in embarrassing dejection. I deserved the jester hat, but I wasn't even a jester. I was *nobody*. *No one important*. Purely *nothing*.

"You are ***SNOWBLIND***! A **blind fool** *stolid* to *reality*, *everything* around you, **every motive people have**. Insecure, weightless, meaningless, **selfish**. Only someone **like you** could be so *heartless* and *insensitive* to ***DESERVE*** a fate, not as *ugly* as *death*, but still a fate you're worthy of **having**..."

No. I was *wrong*. I was *one thing*. One thing that *defined* me for months, a me that I'd neglected. A *me* that now, I had *fully* become, eclipsing any other person I thought I was.

Snowblind.

*I was Snowblind*.

All along, I was *Snowblind*. The dumb, alienated, phlegmatic, *self-centered animal* that thought of herself and ran away when life turned ugly. *Snowblind*, who couldn't apologize for her own misgivings and failures. *Snowblind*, who was a track-record liar and the *cream of the crop* of all liars.

Everyone in Pineshadow *hated me*. The partygoers *hated me*. Daniela *hated me*. *Everyone did*.

*I didn't belong here anymore*. Pineshadow *wasn't* my home. I wasn't going to be *safe* anywhere I stood.

No one would call me anything full of love in Pineshadow - why should they, when I contributed *nothing* and instead *ruined* the lives of hundreds tonight? They had every *right* to call me *Snowblind*. I *deserved* to be Snowblind. I *was* Snowblind.

A black boot *stomped* up to my chin. I didn't look up. I didn't want to do *anything*.

But Daniela had an *order*. Her last command to dish to her bloody ragdoll, the most *appropriate* punishment to grant a vagrant who, for a year, had *distorted* her perception of *reality* to compliment nothing but a passive *idyll*.

"**Run away**," she commanded, her tone brusque and laden with fatal amounts of arsenic. "**Run away** from **this school** and **Pineshadow** altogether. **NEVER** show your face here *again*. You are **NOT welcome here**. Your secrets are **out**. If you stay, you will *disgrace* yourself further. You have been **cemented** as **Snowblind**, will be known as **Snowblind**, and will **die** as *Snowblind*, a *traitor* and *lying viper* who perished a *victim* of her *deception* and *greed*!"

*Running away*. What I was *accustomed* to doing since I first fled from home. I was a *master* of it, doing it without turning back and letting the doom catch up with me.

I did it once, and now, I'd be doing it again - fleeing to somewhere *not* Pineshadow. My secrets were out, *everyone* despised me, and I was *permanently Snowblind*. An infinite legacy of failure and shame that would stain the clean reputation of Pineshadow Middle School.

Shrined by the most hated student on school grounds.

I didn't want to leave the ground. I just wanted to *give up*. Die here and waste away. Waste away to *nothing*. In front of my friends, Rex, and a thousand nameless imps that stared at me with indiscernable emotions.

Stared at. Mocked. Scorned. Jeered. Once Snowblind, *always* Snowblind. I didn't want to be *watched*. I wanted to die *alone*. Die miserable and *alone* without being a circus animal performing in chains.

I turned away and *sobbed*. Wanting death to come quicker, aid me in escaping the world that had played a factor in *destroying me*. Wanting to be devoured whole by the pain and forget this life even was available to me.

Daniela didn't believe her dirty work and a waste of breathable oxygen deserved to die so gruesomely on her *ground zero*. Her work was *done*. She had other matters to tend to.

She stabbed me in the chin with her boot heel, driving my pain nerves into gear. "I said **RUN AWAY**! **RUN** like the **COWARD YOU ARE**, *Snowblind*!"

She *meant it*. Full serve. My pain nerves gave me just *enough* to stand on wobbling legs; my shoulder was catatonic, stuck in a loop of pain. A giant smear of blood was on the ground, enough to make anyone want to vomit and wish they didn't have eyes.

I was standing on the grounds of a party, turned a murder conspiracy, a showoff to strength, an exhibition of barbaric means, a scandal of destructive proportions. I was the *forefront* of that scandal.

A scandalous disgrace named *Snowblind*. A fool. An idiot. A waking dreamer that dreamed her way out of reality, believing she could bend it and *escape* it. Dream a bigger dream? What good did that do? *It almost killed me*.

Who even was *I*? Was I even a *human*? What was my *purpose*? I had *nothing*.

I didn't know what *made* me. Lies did. Delusions did. A foolhardy imagination did.

What was even the point in being alive? There was nothing in the world for me. The world *loathed* me.

I would just be known as Pineshadow as *Snowblind* from now on. Everything I tried to hide was *free* for the taking. It would be printed in newspapers, shown on tabloids, reported across Washington. Lars and Daniela were right - *my name would go down in infamy*.

There was nothing *here* for me. Time to find the next town around and start with *nothing*... if I even stayed alive by that point.

I blinked once. Sniffed once.

And then I broke from the scene of the crime, limping and running out the doors, into the night of no stars.

A night of no *color*. A landscape of *grays*, *blacks*, and *whites*.

I'd lost *everything* for *good*.

The outside world was just as *unforgiving* as the inside of the school. It felt cold, stinging cold, like the dead of wintertime, even though it was nearing spring and should have been warm. I didn't deserve the warmth of early spring, much less the color stolen from me. Tears cascaded away, left behind with the shame.

My body was fragile, limping, legs dragging on the concrete. I had a distance to *run*. Get *out* before the pitchforks and demons found me, ravaged me for lying and being the heartbreaker of all reputations. Being the poster child of an orphaned runaway.

I had to run before *they* found me, locked me away, and imprisoned me in foster care *for all eternity*.

Yet my body was not equipped for running; overhead, there were no stars. The stars *hated* me for failing to hold their prophecy in one piece. What did they expect me to do, be a deity? I was an *imbecile* who thought she had all of the powers and mystical prowess of a *deity*. I was delusional. Daniela had only spit out the truth about me.

It was *dark*, the back corners of the school hardly lit. I didn't know *where* I was *going* or where the *exit* to Pineshadow was. I was bearing the weight of *trauma* on my back. Pressure, immense hatred. Knowing I was *doomed*. People were *out* for me, wanting my *blood*. I'd *never* escape *what brought me here*.

Never escape infamy. Never escaping being *Snowblind*. Oh, what was the point of questions? *I was Snowblind*. All I was... was that *stupid name*.

My shoulder blade was *smoking hot*, ripped to absolute, unsalvable pieces, still leaking faint traces of blood onto the ground. I felt myself untying my jacket from my waistline and throwing it over me as some form of *blanket*. Whatever it was. It had no meaning to me anymore.

Life had no meaning to me anymore. You only lived life to suffer and die. That was it. There was nothing else in the world that could ever matter but fulfilling some damn life cycle that was only pining for *torture*.

Every step I was taking *was that torture*. There was pain. No love, *pain*. *Agony*. Forces I couldn't withstand. The more steps I took, the more I was *yelping*, unable to hide *anything* anymore. Not even the pain.

I had to *run away from Pineshadow*. Run away from the only town I knew, tonight. Just for tonight. Abandon everything I built here, abandon my *friends*, just *go*. I was *unwelcome* here. A burden hanging on some wanted poster. A ragdoll with a smashed amygdala belonging in foster care.

Somewhere else had to be my home. No man's land, wandering around like a monster with no name. I needed to *find* that land... what if Daniela chose to *stalk me* until Pineshadow's borders were long behind me?

I kept on, the outer edges of my vision gray, tarnished with the ashes of Daniela's fire. My shoulder was *screaming* at me to stop and *rest*. My body didn't want to take another *step*. My body was *failing me*.

A walk became a sinking in quicksand, battered by hot desert winds and a starless night where I couldn't *see* anything in front of me. Pain overcame power and blind desire. My legs were on fire, stripped of flesh, the bone eroded to the thin length of toothpicks. My shoulder could have detached at any moment from my body. My heart could have busted. My brain could have cleaved.

I just *couldn't do it*. I collapsed and hit the concrete besides the dumpsters. I couldn't run away, couldn't *move*. Couldn't *anything*.

I sat there, crouched against the wall, panting. There was no world in front of me, no comfort, no sky, no color, no stars. Nothing I could hold. Nothing I could fly with. My wings clipped. I never had wings. That was feverish imagination.

The only thing I had was this jacket, this *clothing*, that I just threw over me to hide myself with. No one deserved to see me. I deserved to *die*. I deserved to be *condemned*, *hated*, *scorned*.

I just wanted to *disappear*, out of sight and out of mind, *permanently*. I wanted no one around me. I failed everyone I met. I treated what should have been beautiful as too good for me. I held everything in contempt. I dreamed my way out of unrealistic scenarios, and they came back to remind me that *no one can escape their reality*.

*Reality* had never left me. No matter how hard I ran... I was always bound to meet my *end*. Bound to learn the same things again.

Who said that things like money could solve your problems? Liquor? Drugs? *Running away*? Having a superiority complex? Dodging the problem? They *didn't*. None of those things erased problems. It only *added* to the problems.

I was *empty*. Existing with *nothing*. Nothing holding me, nothing telling me it was okay, nothing patching the wound, nothing in me to tell me that I was some *hero*. A hero? Pfft, a *hero*? Heroes weren't real. Dreamers weren't real. Nothing in the world was real.

I was *nothing*. Born of *nothing*, risen from *nothing*, made to do *nothing*, dreaming for *nothing*. I existed as *Snowblind*, for that reason only. I existed to remind people why they should never lie to themselves, lie about reality. Lies always come undone. Liars deserved horrible fates.

Liars didn't deserve anyone.

I weeped to myself, blackness enclosing over me, and when I opened my eyes, I was in a black void. A black void of nothingness. My friends weren't here, Mom wasn't here, *nothing I had was here*.

I knew I deserved nothing. Everyone I came into contact with was someone I was bound by an *unspoken clause* to fail. I failed Mom, who promised me a wonderland of dreams that would alleviate my suffering. I failed Father, who had wanted a perfect daughter, and I had turned out to be the opposite of that. I failed Daniela, who had wanted a *loyal girlfriend*, not a coward who ran away when things were golden and summery.

I failed my entire family. I failed Rex. *I failed Evie and Mya*.

I was in purgatory. I should have been locked up here, the key thrown to the void. I would stay here until I died. There was no world for me, no light to be seen, and no amount of any natural force could compensate for all I had lost. I wouldn't heal. I wouldn't live.

I was *nobody*.

Nobody, until a voice echoed through the dark, muffled, unclear. Calling to me, trying to pull me. I didn't obey, didn't hear. There was no point.

No point, until the blackness was *lifted* off of me, and I was back in the *real world*. My jacket was *pulled off me*.

My eyes darted to meet leaf-green ones, a saccharine sweetheart in a party vest, heels, and a flower crown. Staring at me with *concern*, *not apathy*.

The state of shock I was in *snapped*. Holy *crap*, *Mya* had *found me*.

"*Mya*???!" I demanded in astonishment, slipping up my words. "W-W-What a-are y-you d-doing???"

"I'm saving you," she responded, instantly driving a hand toward my shoulder. I flinched away from her. She couldn't touch it... it'd just bring *pain*.

Mya wasn't that easy to deter, and reluctantly, I allowed her to examine it and treat it through the pain. There was no refusing her when she had carried a full first-aid kit and was willing to become a *doctor* to mend the damage. The treatment was *agonizing*. There was pain, on top of *more pain*, *throbbing* pain, *fresh* pain. I thought she'd hurt me more, but she treated the wound as delicately as she could, and soon, it was wrapped in bandage.

On the path of *healing*.

Good. Now I could *actually* get out of here before the foster care scouts upturned every leaf to find me. I stared at the sky, surprised to find that the stars were back. Had the pain just bogged my senses down?

Would they show me a new home? Get me out of Pineshadow in time?

Escaping Pineshadow was *not* on Mya's agenda, and she grabbed my wrist, drawing me to her.

"Winter, we have to get back to the school! Time's running out to stop Daniela!"

Excuse me, *what*? *WHAT*? Go *back*? Go back and *die*? Go back and showcase that I was more of a *dummy* and *blind* than everyone already *thought* I was?

How could Mya propose something so *diabolical*? I stepped away, my body stiffened and hackles bristled, on alert.

"Winter, we need to-" Mya began to insist.

"I can't go back there!" I retorted, cutting her off. School was *death*. School felt like *dying*. And with Daniela running the show? She *had my knife*. I could strut back in there and she'd slice my jugular vein *over and over again*.

"Winter, we need *you*! You *must* stop Daniela!"

Why couldn't she and Evie just do it themselves? I proved to be *useless* back there, and my only form of defense was now *my ex's property*. Mya and Evie were the dynamic duo. They had power, were beloved by everyone, and *always* won. What had I achieved in their stead? *Nothing*. I *wasn't* going back. That life was *a chapter closed*.

"Mya, you *heard* what she told me! I'm *useless*! I *don't* have my *weapon*. I *don't* have physical strength. My *shoulder* is *impaired*! I can't *fight back*, I'll just be **killed**! I'm the definition of the **weakling** everyone says I am..."

"No you're not! Daniela is wrong-" What wasn't Mya *understanding*? Daniela *bulldozed me*. She'd *won* that argument by *miles*.

"*You're* the one who's wrong! She's right about me, Mya. She always *has been*!"

I walked away, holding my jacket like a stuffed teddy, but it brought me no solace. I wasn't going to return. I wasn't going to live in a ghost town, with all of the ghosts reminding me of the past I could *never* escape, a past I had to *relive* constantly. The world was unfair and cruel. I'd rather die elsewhere, *not* Pineshadow. I was a lonely soul here.

Mya snatched my hand, attempting to lure me into coming with her. "That's not true! You-"

Oh, Mya, *why didn't you see your plan was flawed from sunup to sundown*?

"**IT IS TRUE**!" I countered vehemently, snatching my hand right out of Mya's. She needed to get the point. Relying on me was a *losing gain*. People gained nothing from my service. I was a *dead man walking*. She had Evie to care about, not me.

"I was **foolish** for believing I *had* any worth! I *cannot* fight *Daniela* with the *midget bones* I have. I *have* no weapon, no form of *defense*... and are you **forgetting** that **my ex** ***EXPOSED ME*** to the whole **school**!? All they see in me is a *fraud*! Everything I hid, my world, my *escape*... it's **dead**! People are going to **hunt me down** because of my past! *My past* is up in the *air*! It's *free*! I'm *never* going to go back... there *is* no going back..."

Finally, Mya had shut up, only exclaiming the softest of gasps. I whirled away, sinking to the concrete, jacket resting across my knees. I didn't face her, didn't want to face *anything* but my own *demise*. What hell entailed. What hell *desired* of me. What fate wanted for me from the very start: nothing.

Traitors deserved nothing.

Victims deserved nothing.

Daniela was right about me.

I was a victim of my undoing. A victim of my own blindness. A victim of denying reality. I caved myself in alive. I was the leopard that ate my own face.

I was what Daniela made me out to be.

"I'm **worthless**. I'm **useless**... Daniela is *right*. I'm *Snowblind*! Just **Snowblind**! A stupid, kid haunted by her past, blind and *stupid*... forget it, Mya. There's nothing left for me in Pineshadow... I'm just *Snowblind*! I'm a *stupid* kid who made her fantasies her home... just a *stupid* kid."

My name was *Snowblind*, saddled with the burdens of the past she couldn't leave, of a past she was tortured by. Everyone knew about me now and wouldn't let me live it down. I'd choke on the infamy and abasement.

Kids couldn't change the world. Kids weren't heroes. Kids were *dumb*. Thoughtless, disillusioned. Kids couldn't grasp just how *screwed up* the world *was*.

A lesson I learned too late.

"I'm just Snowblind..."

Blackness returned to me, and I let it take me. Mya had Evie, someone who *loved her*. She had a family. She had everything. Daniela had everything. Everyone else had everything. And I had *nothing*.

I should have wasted away. I should have just ended it all and finished what Daniela had started. But I didn't want to. I just wanted to sit here, alone, and fade out of existence. I deserved to be *forgotten*, forgotten with no family, no home, no love, no *anything*. Hope? Dead to me. Everything else? Dead to me.

I couldn't care. I proved nothing. I changed nothing. I wouldn't stop my past from dragging me through my worst nightmares, pointing out to me *directly* that this was all brought onto myself by *me*.

I hated myself for the monster I had become. I ruined everything for myself. Who's to say I wouldn't ruin it again? I guess I'd find out when I ran out of Pineshadow and moved to the countryside. Or just lived on a road. Somewhere. Forgotten.

I couldn't even say sorry to all I failed. I just cried. And cried. And cried, bearing no mind to the fact that Mya *hadn't* ditched me. She was present, standing tall with *pride* and a whole *universe* rolled into her. She had a *new* plan.

That plan was to connect a million *dreams* to a million *lights*. Ignite the *light* to combat the *dark*.

"Winter. Look *me* dead in the *eyes*," she ordered, a bit more gruff than her usual plush sound. I didn't bat an eye at her. She dipped to my level, gripped my face, and before I could even react:

*Slap*!

Pain knocked me out of my morphine-like state. "*Mya*??? What the hell was that-"

"**GET IT TOGETHER**!" she barked in reply, and a single second, she had forced my depressed eyes to meet her *fire*.

A *different* fire, a *green one*. A fire of *amnesty*, to bring *healing* to the battered soul. *Desire*.

A *river* of desire. An *ocean* of desire crashing into me, their waves making me *stare back*. Share an *emotion*.

Mya *had me in her heart*.

"Winter, if you don't *go back* and fight *Daniela*, Evie is going to *die*! She's buying *us time* and *sacrificing* herself for us! And one's she's **finished**, Daniela is going to have **free reign** over the school. She's going to root out **traitors** like you! Traitors like *us*! She won't stop *killing*! She's going to make people *suffer* until *no one* is left! She *will inflict* a legacy of *agony* and *scandal* on the school if *you don't stop her*!"

*Not this again*. Why did I have to reiterate that I was *purposeless*? I wasn't some hero, Mya... this wasn't some urban legend or underdog story. I lost my happy ending a year ago.

"I'm too **weak**!" My fingernails scraped the concrete in protest. Mya was *far* from done, and that little ruffian knew just how to rearrange my strings so that I'd be enticed to pay attention.

"No you *aren't*! I know you've lost the knife, but even without it, you *have* what you *need* to defeat Daniela! You are the ***only one who can***!"

*The only one*? What about you and Evie? Actual heroes? Actual people of respect? I *wasn't* a hero; I was just some *shell* of a creature, not even a *human*, with no superhuman abilities, no Hall of Fame recognition. I had *literally nothing*. I was *Snowblind* and only that *vile* name.

She needed to just let me go and fade into the colorless landscape like the colorless being I was. I was *nothing*. I was *Snowblind*. Being *Snowblind* was a curse of *my past*. Daniela won, and her trophy wasn't going to be ripped out of her scarlet hands.

"If I walk back in there, Daniela is going to **overpower me** and **kill me**! She hauled me for **half a mile**, Mya! What makes you think *I* remotely *have* the strength to stop her??? I **DON'T**!" I snapped, heart racing, eager to forget this all occured in the span of one night. Eager to forget my own past. I wanted amnesia.

The only thing I had was my jacket, which I held up to me, pressed up against my internally-bleeding heart, while the tears rained down.

I'd just accepted this was who I was now. This was *me*. Nothingness. Speaking with no conviction, just numbness. Everything around me was unfamiliar, a different reality. A reality I was unwilling to ever go back to. A reality with gaping jaws that would kill me off and banish me to hell, where I'd rot in the minds of everyone who dared remember me... and if I remained alive? *Everyone would laugh at me and continue calling me Snowblind*.

"I... I *can't* return... *everyone* knows my past! *Everyone* has probably turned *against me*! They'll just **ridicule me** for being *Snowblind*!"

It should have ended here. I should have ran away and ignored Mya, leaving her to stop Daniela with Evie. But I didn't complain any further and was quickly stunned to see Mya's unwavering form turning to me. She *hadn't* given up and *wouldn't*.

From then on, there was no pain, no more arguing. No more dark wisps and broken dreams... but the promise of *magic* that came alive from under the *ashes*.

Mya brushed a stray tear falling down my cheek aside, the touch of an angel gracing me. A flood of warmth that lightened me, gravitated me down from despair.

"Winter... you can't keep *fleeing your past*," she murmured gently, saturating the air with sweetness that batted back the tension. "I know you're hurting. I know you struggle to bear the weight of your trauma. You've struggled so bad that you *created* a world that *you* could live in, a *waking dream*, to try and escape it. No matter what you did... that trauma *always* bounced back to you..."

Mya *did* understand how I was feeling and what I was processing. She knew *why* I *had* my waking dreams. She *read me*. Was I that easy to read? I squeaked and sniffled. I didn't want to be reminded of my trauma - *my entire past*, I just wanted it to *disappear*. It was never as simple as I painted it out to be.

"You might be confused as to why you couldn't *escape it*... because you *can't*. You *fear* having to confront Daniela. You *fear* people getting onto you and deconstructing you, using your lies and your trauma to bash you and make you feel like a *burden* on someone's back. This went on forever, and forever, and *forever*... until you crumbled underneath the weight of the pressure."

*How did Mya know*? I feared everything she mentioned. I feared that whole cafeteria was armed with *knives*. A *barracks* in session, people training people to *slaughter* me, all united by Daniela, a child who believed she was *destined salvation* by *death*.

I always ran away and found *solutions*. Solutions that made me *ascend* to the stars, run among them. A solution that twined me to nature. A solution that *convinced me* that the world couldn't *destroy me*. I was *infallible*.

No human is infallible, however. Dreams were not cover for *reality*. Because, at one point, you *had* to face reality. It's not something you can swipe off your phone screen or decline the call for. Reality is the world *you live in*. You couldn't ignore your own troubles... or they'd only mount.

Until they buried you *alive*. I was *so scared* of facing that reality, since that reality had *nearly* killed me. And who said I had an *advantage* against *the queen of savage wickedness*?

"I..." Mya *shushed* me, and her body began to *glow*. Glow, with the angel's light, one colorless, but one that reminded me of *something*. *Something* that used to be held so *dear* to my heart...

"You may think you've lost **everything**... but where there is burned earth, *you* can start anew and blossom *again*. This is your *chance* to *resonate* and *conquer* your past *once and for all*! While you may not entirely see what I do... I present you with two choices. You can *run* from your past, which means Daniela will *win*... *or* you can *learn* from it, which means you *face* your past, let the colors *shine*, and *prove* to Daniela that you're no *coward*. You're *unbroken*. You're *dynamic*!"

*Burned earth*. A comparison that brought me *strong* familiarity. Wasn't I here when I had first run away from home and felt as if I lost *everything*... and then made an unusual home in an *unusual*, but *gorgeous* woods?

Mya was *right*, I was beginning to see. Nature *healed* from destructive forces, like fires. If I ran now, Daniela would win undaunted and go on *streaks* of tyranny that wouldn't just end with *me*. She'd hurt *Mya*. *Evie*, who was battling her *now*, making my heard thud. My friend, in *heavy* danger...

...I could go back and *prove myself*. *Resonate*, as Mya had said. *Resonate*... *resonate*, a word that lingered with... *promise*?

I looked *up* at Mya. She *valued* me. She saw me as *more* than some hermit crab shell at the bottom of the ocean... was she *right* that I was *unbroken*?

"Winter, you *have* courage. You have *strength*! You have *desire*! You have *power* in every action you do, emotionally or physically. Remember what you've accomplished *before*? You threatened to kill me and Evie when we met you and didn't back down straight away. You feared confiding to Aiden that you were queer, but stood your ground and made a friend in him. You thought we'd *hate you* if you told us you and Daniela were lovers, but you pulled through and told us *the truth*! You shared your most personal secrets, *survived* a kidnapping attempt, and even when you got stabbed by Daniela tonight... you *lived*. You didn't *die*. You're still *here*! You may not realize it, but you *are* strong. You have the *fire* needed to take on Daniela and *win*!"

An electric wire *connected* in me. A surge of power took ahold. Was it me, or was the world regaining *color*?

I did recall what Mya had mentioned. I recalled being *ferocious*, absolutely *unrelenting*, when I had first encountered Evie and Mya and put their lives on the fine line to get them out of my cabin, only to let down my walls for one of the only times... and in the end, Evie and Mya *were the best people I met*. That was *courage*.

I feared confiding my sexuality to Aiden, a boy who had *aggressive* unrequited love for me... but I had contributed to the problem by not playing the game intelligently and refusing to de-escalate a rapidly unstable, ugly situation. In the end, telling Aiden secrets which he *vowed* to *uphold*, and witnessing Aiden apologize and swear to respect my boundaries, had taught me I could be a *blooming flower*. To open. I had placed trust in someone new and it didn't *betray me*. That was *strength*.

I was paranoid for days that I'd be rejected over dating a *sadistic monster*, but learned that my friends *appreciated me*, *loved* my memories, and would always *support me*. I survived a kidnapping that could have been *homicide*. *I survived tonight, the worst night of my life*.

That was *power*. Courage, strength, and power rolled into *one*. I *was* those things. What mattered wasn't the Snowblind bullying... what mattered was the fact I *existed*.

I wasn't *over* or in a graveyard. My voice wasn't strangled... and neither was my *fire*. I was *listening* to Mya. I was *listening*, with an open heart, awakening to what I *had* on me that I never knew was my own personal *armor*.

I was a step *away* from entering a beacon and shooting up to *space*. I just needed to find my footing, the last *fuse* to *light*. Mya had the spark.

With a press to my forehead, and words that were *eternal brilliance*, she kindled a *flame*, the *brightest* flame, a flame that would *burn* for *lifetimes*. The *resurrection* of the *light*.

"You are **NOT** Snowblind. You have **never** been Snowblind. That name **does not** define you and was only meant to **humiliate you**... you are not *Snowblind*, but Snow*light*. You're a *warrior*, a *guardian*, a *protector*, a knight in *shining armor*! You are **fearless**. You *are* in control. You **can** stop Daniela and **show** her and the school that they were **WRONG** about you! Be *Snowlight* - not just for you, but for *everyone*."

*Snowlight*.

*Snowlight*.

*Snowlight*.

*Snowlight...?*

There was *frost* settling in my head. Frost, a *soft* coldness of years past... years of *running in my blood*. A *melody*. A *harmony* that was my *lifeblood*.

Chilled trap ran its course throughout my ears, echoing back to me the softness of *snow*. Someone I held as my *idol*. The highest *God* there ever was...

*Snowlight... Varien...*

*I remembered*. The semi-colorless landscape diminished, and I blinked; for a second, there was dark, and then, *the world was bursting at the seams with the most illuminated, vivacious color I had ever seen*.

It was a *clear* winter day, and the sun danced, its beams frolicking on the white show. The air was frosty, and I inhaled it, finding it *sweet*. Sweet, just as it was from the day I was *born*. Flurries of snow, coming down from the partly cloudy sky, swirling around me. Landing on my cheeks and my *shoulder*. A shoulder that bore a *snowflake birthmark* that had assisted in granting me my name.

My hair was long, a fluffy sandy-brown mess, behind my shoulders. I was back to my youth, the early years where I had first discovered the *meaning* of nature. The *power* interwoven in the trees, sky, and *clouds*. Every gift handed to us by nature was a *blessing*. Nature had the most *holy*, the most *pure* blessings earth had to *offer*. I was *one of them*.

*I was born as Snowlight... born of blood, risen from the light that graces the cold season.*

*Snowlight* was a song that was melded into my *bones*. It *was* me all year round, notably when the winter snows came and when I stood outside, taking in the beauty and having it to myself as a gift. I *respected* winter. The *winter* birthed me, and I was eternally grateful for it.

Another memory's sensation built in me, buzzing from my birthmark, and I felt it, imagining its glow from my touch alone. I *remembered* what the winter had *given me*.

*When I was born, my parents named me Winter because of the snowfall. The birthmark on my arm, rare, yet... mystifying. The blessing of my birth, how I was completely healthy and didn't inherit my mother's lupus, and how I would grow as every flower does when the winter season ends...*

I *realized* it, then and there. What I should have known all along, what I should have known that would *set me apart* from the rest.

I *wasn't* the being they demonized me to be. They could call me names, but they *couldn't* snatch my *purity*. They couldn't *desecrate* what was my *sanctity*.

*I am Snowlight.*

Winter eased its way out, slowly, and from a wintry wonderland of *dreams* and *prosperity* was *spring*. The temperatures, warm, *inviting* me to a world *rich* with resources and *greenery*. Flowers, from shasta daisies, to dahlias, to *Pacific bleeding hearts*, an *overabundance* of them, their seeds and petals carried by the wind, spreading the legacy of Mom, who lived in me wherever I traveled.

The sun shined, residing over a clear blue sky, skies where I could fly away in and run whilst painting the air with my fingertips. This meadow was *free* of strife, yet *ample* with the most beautiful and defining emotion I had ever felt, in every speck of the air, grass, flowers, and the sky.

Represented to me by a *chirp* and the *buzz* of a lifelong companion, his red feathers on his neck *pristine*, an *aurora* of *color*. Of *life*. Of *tenacity*.

Of *hope*.

My heartbeat was going *faster* than his heartbeat, one of the fastest heartbeats of any animal alive. He had *liberty*, expressed in the beat and flap of his wings, how he was free to move and act as he *pleased*.

Rufie *soared*. He *had* a rhythm. He was *following his rhythm*.

My heart was *beating more than a million beats*. I was *flying*, *soaring* from where I stood on the ground. I had the *freedom* of a hummingbird, the *yearning* of a hummingbird, the *craft* of the hummingbird, whizzing around my face and chirping and showing me that I always had the potential to be someone *unique*.

Someone *special*. Someone that was a *dynamo*.

Someone ready to *blow*.

Someone ready to achieve *salvation* and *avenge* everything I lost.

I never lost anything. I never lost *this battle*. I lost myself, but *I still had my roots*.

My philosophy had returned to me, reinforced with the *strongest* emotion of all: *hope*.

*Follow the rhythm*.

*If I am still alive, my heart wild, free, and like the hummingbird...*

*Then I can stop Daniela. I can... I can thrive!*

*I am Snowlight... and I can restore hope to everyone around me. I'm not going to be that fraidy little runaway girl I was anymore.*

Who was *Snowblind*? Oh, some girl who isn't picking up the phone anymore. She was *dead*, *killed off*. Snowblind didn't even *exist*, surprise, surprise.

Because, *Snowlight* was in me all along. Mya was *right* and had struck exactly where she needed to reinvigorate me. I was full of *light*. *Snowlight*.

There was no darkness mauling me, no darkness on the front. The vision I had fell away, and Mya was back, a halo on her head and angel wings perched on her back. She was *my angel*.

I could be *who* I wanted to be. Destiny was *my choice*.

I was going to *make a difference* in the world. Daniela's reign of terror ended *tonight*.

Fleeing my past ended *now*.

*I have to stop running from my past... despite the horrors it's brought on me. Daniela is dangerous. She's toxic. If I stand here now and let her take control of the school... she will kill everyone and everything and take even more victims in Pineshadow.*

*I'm not Snowblind. I'm not weak, or dumb, or blinded by my faults... but rather, I'm Snowlight... and I can defeat the evil that's been stalking me. I WON'T back down.*

Rejuvinated by *hope* and a wish to *resonate*. I threw on my jacket, fortifying my body with the extra grit I needed for *war*.

"You're right, Mya. Thank you. I cannot and *will not* let that *bastard* get away with her sins *any longer*. Not as long as I stand! C'mon, we *have* to get back to the cafeteria!"

Mya smiled, eyes alight with *determination*. We were *united*, *bonded together*. She was a firecracker ready to *launch*, and ready to see her *bully* for months on end *crumble* as the cookie did.

"Right! Let's go!" she cheered, turning towards the cafeteria.

But I had one last thing to do before we went back. I wanted Mya to know *something*. Something that she had *given me*, and something that had the *longest shot* of ever being real - that, in my heart, was a *fantasy worth living for*.

"Wait, Mya."

She halted, and didn't have room to breathe, for I threw myself into her arms and *hugged her*. Squeezed her with the *fiercest* love I had ever shown. I *loved her* for who she was. She, and Evie, too, had brought me *here*. They'd help me grow from neighborhood recluse to a *dreamer*, a dreamer who *dreamed* bigger and now had a *new beginning* to *live*.

Mya was always going to be *more* than a friend to me. *More* than that - my platonic soulmate.

"We aren't related by blood... but you will *always* be my sister."

"You will always be my sister too."

We ran furiously in the direction of the cafeteria afterward, entering to find a scene of *utter chaos*.

*Poisonous* chaos. Mya's cheeks turned green, and she hardened with an equal mix of fear and terror. I did not blame her for feeling both.

The environment was the same as it when I bolted for the hills, except for the fact that a lot of punch and pizza had spilled, decorations strewn everywhere. The partygoers had mostly been evacuated to the back, watching and hearing the unfolding scene below.

A scene that made the war sirens *wail*. That made anger *spawn*.

Daniela, hair messy, eyes *rabid*, her face streaming with sweat, had Evie *pinned* to a table; Evie had broken just as much of a sweat, but she was gazing at Daniela with a *mortifying* amount of *fear*.

Daniela had *my knife at her throat*. She was going to *give the killing blow*, and had the killing words to say in turn.

"Say *sayonara*, Ly!"

Not on my damn watch, asshole.

"***HANDS OFF MY FRIEND***!"

Daniela acted as if she just swallowed *scalding water*. Alarmed, she discovered that I, in fact, hadn't screwed off and died like she ordered me to, but was standing *miles higher* than she stood. She was facing a *threat*.

A threat she was so *blindsided and unprepared for* that she made a rare gaffe, and Evie sprang free, joining our side. She was safe from death, and I intended for it to remain that way.

Daniela regained her villainous stature. "**SNOWBLIND**! You should have **ran away**! Get out of my *sight* and **DIE**!" she commanded with a vicious snarl, questioning how I had cheated death this time.

I wasn't going to play that old game with her anymore. I was going to play her own games. Welcome to not receiving the benefit of the doubt, Daniela.

"I was a fool, once," I bluntly admitted, eyes focused on the ground, not on the cesspool of fuming energy before me. "I was a coward. A big one. I *ran* from the truth and buried it beneath me, covering it in a thousand layers and a thousand lies. And every time I did so, my past only came back to *remind me* of my scars. I lived in a world of *fantasy*... but that world is *gone*."

I'll be right there

But you'll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air

"You **rotten maggot**! ***Run away before I DECAPITATE YOU***!" Daniela retorted.

No.

If you need anyone

"Now I see *why* my past has followed me everywhere I've gone... I've *refused* to *face it*. This time, I'm not *going* to flee with my tail between my legs. Not *anymore*."

It was a *promise* I could *make*. I sensed the crowdgoers coming back in, wanting to see what had unfurled now. People shocked that *I*, thought *dead* and *forgotten*, had *returned*. I wasn't just a stranger, but something deep within firing away...

I'll stop my plans (I'll stop my plans)

But you'll have to tie me down and then break both my hands

"I've got no reasons, no shame, and no more family I can blame... except for one. You might have thought I could disappear like I do, like the name people give me. I became what I couldn't be... and yet longed for people to see what I see. I met those people, and all that's happened since then has helped me realize that no matter what, the past ***can never*** inflict any more scars on my body, even with my trauma. And I'm going to express *myself* for who I really am **loud and clear**!"

"*You*-" Oh, were you not *adapted* to being *intimidated*, Daniela? Were you not used to *prey* fighting back with its *teeth* and *claws*? She tried to break me, but she had only *strengthened* me.

If you need anyone

"**This** is what you made of *us*, Daniela. The words have been *spoken*. There's no changing *our fates*."

Daniela's aura toward me didn't reek of *animosity*. It reeked of the very emotion she *despised* so fervently and made a *fortune* feasting off of. She was *drowning*, and the sharks were laughing at how the tables had turned.

I'll be right there (I'll be right there)

But you'll have to grab my throat and lift me in the air

I raised my head, and ice-blue eyes seeking *justice* saw the frightened, flamed-out amber eyes of the diminished sociopath who had underestimated her so-called quarry. She was *out of her comfort zone*, and I was going to *shatter her*. What did she say about revenge being sweet again?

"**You** destroyed ***my life***! You ***destroyed*** *everything* I had. My home, my *family*... me. You caused me **immeasurable pain**, took away my **innocence**... and **you** were the one that **killed our love**. **Only you** destroyed it, *hurt my friends*, **tried to kill me**, and renounce me as **useless**. ***Worthless***."

(If you need anyone)

The tension in the air was *rising*. A *winter storm* was *arising* in this cafeteria. Previously, it had battered my sights and rocked me to my core, plucking me bare and forcing me out. The storm here, though, was a *different* storm - since its power was in *my hands*. I could do what I wanted with it, and Daniela was chewing on dire *ire*.

"You have **no idea** what you're talking about!" she hissed in aghast fury, but it wasn't enough to conceal the fact that she was *scared*. Scared of *me*. The person she pinned as public enemy number one had *flown through the ashes*, and like a hummingbird, I would *fly*.

If you need anyone (If you need anyone)

My head steadied, and I glared *fire* on my ex, a fire of *resentment*, the same resentment she handed me. *Fearless* fire, lacking a tail between my legs. *Piping hot* fire, one that when in contact with the arsonist, would *burn them alive*. I was *everything* Daniela hated.

Everything Daniela *feared*.

If you need anyone (If you need anyone)

"I believed in all of your lies. Your claims. I cracked and fled. You stood here triumphantly, soaking in bloodlust, convincing this crowd I was a *snake*. I thought you were **right** about me. That I was *nothing*..."

She had brainwashed an entire crowd into believing I was *nothing*. Tonight, I'd *rewrite* that history book. I'd *change* history.

(If you need anyone)

You can never change your past and what built you... but what you *can* change is *your future*.

I was *never* going to run again. I was going to *defy*.

I was going to *dominate*. I would defeat Daniela. I would restore order and faith in this school.

I would *resonate* and be the *Snowlight* these innocents *deserved*. It was time to show Daniela *who I was*.

No more holding back. No more lies. No more secrets. In stead of that was *anger*. The signature anger *I had always known*.

"But you're **wrong**, Daniela! I'm **not over**. I'm ***not dead***!"

I can't believe how much I hate

Fire *crackled* and *roared* within me.

"For as long as I **breathe**, I'm no coward. I'm not going to give up! *I will not surrender*!"

Pressures of a new place roll my way

The air was *hot*. Ashes were *falling*, and my body was *screaming* with *red-hot flame*.

"***I won't be held down***! There might be **pressure**, but I have fought and ***WILL KEEP FIGHTING IT***!"

Jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me

That flame *erupted* all at once, and all that I thought of was concentrated on *Daniela*. Hate, infinite hate. A desire to end *violence*. End this *war*. End *tyranny*. End the person who had taken my life away from me. Tonight, my life was back. Tonight, a *new hero*, born of blood and risen from snow, was *born*.

"***Everything*** you've done to me has **only** made me ***STRONGER***! **I WILL DOMINATE**! ***I***. ***WILL***. ***RESONATE***!!!!"

Without a moment's hesitation, without *any* second guessing, without *any thought but eliminating the evil that infected my life*, I *charged*.

Oh, jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me, oh!

The world was a supersonic blur, but there was no sound but *roaring*. Sirens, heartbeats, *war*. *War*, and *rage*. *Overpowering rage*. The air was *hot* with a *thunderstorm* and *sheer hostility*.

I collided with Daniela; she aimed a punch, but I deflected and blocked the blow. I was *untouchable*. I swerved to the left, nails digging into neck flesh that I *flung* into the side of a table. *Wham*! That one could have been the knockout, but *I wasn't going to stop until the evil was disbanded*.

Daniela pushed me, scrabbling for my throat. In her haste, she forgot she was armed with my own pocket knife. My turn to take the tricks for my advantage, and boy, I was *flooded* with *eviscerating strength*. Daniela was hauled out into the middle of the cafeteria only to get a knuckle sandwich to her nose. As soon as the blood fell, I tasted the satisfaction on my tongue.

Daniela had been *weakened*. She had been *outmatched*. This battle was *done*.

It was made that way, as with a *roar* that came with a stroke of *lightning karma*, I *sprung* into the air like a pronghorn and swong a boot heel square in the center of her *chest*.

Jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me!

Jumpsuit, jumpsuit, cover me!

There was no way in hell Daniela could've prepared for the blow in time. She tumbled into a wall railing, head contacting bricks, and she slumped over, bruised, bloodied, and *finished*.

She sent my pocket knife somersaulting, but it landed safely in my left hand - reunited with its rightful owner. Back into my pocket it went.

The feeling after storms hit are oddly *relaxing*. Daniela was defeated, dazed, and just in disbelief over the past five minutes, and I had just *avenged* myself for the past year of having everything ruined and shredded in front of me. There was just *calm*, washing over me, and the rage subsided gradually. The air was cleared of tension, and the sirens of war had ceased.

There was just *calm*. *Peace*. Peace could come with this victory, with *beating* my own fears and integrating myself back into a reality no longer so daunting, but *bright*.

A light had been brought to Pineshadow on a late winter night, and with her light, she had cost the darkness a chance to ravage others with its deceitful wiles.

The crowd flocked back into the cafeteria in droves, catching my eye; there were no more debates, socratic seminars, and deceit to be whispered among the faces. They had been lifted up and had seen Daniela - previously *invincible* and the *real face* of scandal and doom, *collapse*. She had *lost* the battle that minutes ago, she declared herself the *winner* of.

Isn't it amazing how the tables had turned? Instead of being persecuted and exiled as a traitor by the community, I was *welcomed*. *Embraced*. They had judged me wrong, and now, could call me a *hero*. Worthy of a name.

I, for one, think hero is *boring* in this day and age. Yeah, I just saved you all and restored glory and honor to you guys and myself, but... the term *hero* reads a bit null on my tongue. Please refer to me to as *Snowlight* - creatively, I think it has more of an artistic pop to it.

Nitpicks aside, I wiped off the sweat. The battle had come to a thrilling, vindicative *close*, but it wasn't fully *over*.

I just had to ensure that tonight, we would *all* receive closure.

*Time to put her out of commission for good.*

So I stepped forth, greeting Daniela with what appeared to her as the mini projection of an *ice storm* in my eyes. She flinched, retreating like the dormouse she should have been narrowed to *long ago*.

The emotions in my eyes never *switched*, and my voice held *firm*, *condescending*. Perfectly cut to thread the needle, perfectly trained to use rehash old tricks into something *purposeful*.

"Once, long ago, you took *away* someone's life, Daniela. Destroyed it. Because *you* ruined her life and *caused* her to fall. Luckily, that made her *realize* that she was *stronger* than you. I should have *done this* since the day you *swore revenge* on me, but I couldn't be more *proud* that I'm living to *say* those words to a sociopath like you."

She gasped, horrified that the tropes were acting in *reverse* against her. I couldn't have felt more serendipitous in my life... and more *amused*. Plot twist, Daniela - David was *Goliath* for the duration of the night.

"Well, what do *you* know?" I then quipped, dusting my ex's wounds with the salt she used to shrink me to my lowest point before. I was going to have some *fun* with this, boy oh *boy*. "*You* made me be the *bad guy*. Lost *your* paradise, *fallen* from grace. It *never* should have ended this way... fists, blood, and war... but hey, I think the *villain* is a bit fun to play."

My friends were applauding the show behind me, and I took the thrown roses. I was no *villain*, of course, but to Daniela, I was the definition of a *barbarian*. News flash, *I didn't care*. I was having *fun*, and best of all, these jabs and jeers were directed at someone who *used* to be a wielder of said jabs and jeers, mended to kill me from the outside-in. I had *power*.

Now to return to playing *hardball*.

"You **know** the **truth** runs in ***my blood*** as it does in ***yours***," I added, an icy shot lobbed at Daniela's heart, and I conjured a few more without much thought. "The **lies** between us **didn't** become *us* - but *you* manifested ***into them instead***. You **are** a villain. It's a **permament** blight on you... and I think it *suits* you."

I was almost finished with my epilogue. I tore a page out of her book and stepped up to her face, my boot tapping in front of her face. How was that forced amnesia going, Daniela? Did you find it wasn't working?

She couldn't escape *her* reality. Karma is such an asshat, and I love it.

Daniela only had to be *reminded* of one more thing, and so, calibrating my words, I allowed them to bounce off my tongue. Attention, everyone: *Public Service Announcement*.

"And by the way, *Dani*. My name's **not** Snowblind. From this day forward, *you* have lost the **right** - along with ***everyone in this school building*** - to *use* that name. Call me by my *actual name*: *Winterlyn Falin McCormick*!"

The partygoers were letting out *decrees* of *approval*. *Heralding* the *oracle* that had toppled the school's supreme bully and the *sadomasochist demon* hiding within. I felt *glorious*, *restored*. More proud of myself than I ever had been. There could have been a neon rainbow above my head.

There was one that came after I made sure, and *triple checked*, and spoke with *facts* to Daniela. The last *buzzkill* to tarnish her hopes of a pardon. Her pleas? *Garbage*. Sorry, Daniela. Puppy eyes can only work on guillable children.

"You're a **lesson learned**. What happened to the young lovers, the pain, bitterness, heartbreak, battles, and wars of words, will **always** be on you. I once thought you still had *some good* in you, Dani. I was wrong. You're pure *evil* down to your **core** and won't *ever change*. It's *done*. You've *lost*. It's **over**."

With that, I *whammed* the last chapter of that book *closed*, and stepping back, I was flanked my by friends.

Finally, there was peace of mind, solitude, and the start of healing-

A *growl* interrupted the reunion between me and my friends, and we jumped back - *Daniela had rebounded*. I readied myself for another battle to the bitter end.

"Oh, this is **OVER**? You *intoxicated flowery assholes* are going to ***PAY*** for this! I will make you ***RUE THE DAY***! Especially ***YOU***, Snow-"

She took off in a running stride, lunging toward me and expecting to pin me to the ground.

Luckily, destiny is a jackbox of surprises. Yoinked out of mid-air by a group of men - *cops* - Daniela was formally placed under arrest for attempted murder and hauled away, spitting threats of vengeance and further war.

Yeah, like that cheap stuff's ever gonna happen. Once those doors slammed closed and Daniela disappeared... *it was over*.

*I'd won*. *We'd* won.

Me, Evie, and Mya jointly celebrated. Evie and Mya were quickly lost in a world of their making, staring at each other with love hearts in their eyes. They honestly make me beam every time they stare at each other like that.

Then, we were beckoned up to the second level - I saw the girls' parents, and calling to me in particular was *Rex*.

Rex was *relieved* the drama of the night had concluded and Daniela was finally *gone for good*. She stared at me with fleeting fondness, and I dove into her, hugging her tightly. She wasn't my mother, but she had *felt* like one.

"Oh, Winter..."

"Rex, will you be... okay? After this?" I prompted gently, remembering that this mother would have a whole *prison* scenario and trial for her daughter in the coming weeks. *Goddamn*...

Rex's blue eyes clouded over, and she stared elsewhere."I honestly don't know what the future has in store for me... but darling... I'm so- I'm so sorry... I let you down. The secrets between us-"

Oh, Rex...

"It's okay," I reassured her, smiling and nodding. "It's in the past, Rex. You did what you could to protect me from the world and Daniela. No one could fault you for wanting to, I *was* going to die..."

Rex brightened, nodding, and she held my smaller hand gingerly in hers. "T-Thank you, Winterlyn... for stopping her."

I *blushed*. Guess I was always going to be that heart tattooed under her sleeve, since Daniela was eradicated from the picture. That psycho...

*Who's also now going to go to jail... that's going to be a lot for Rex to think about.*

"Y'know..." Rex started, her eyes suddenly thoughtful instead of forlorn...

"Yeah?" I questioned.

"Winter... there's something I've wanted to confess to you for a few months now. Something I've personally held off on. Truth be told, I didn't want to *offend* you, and I wanted to say it in a space where Daniela wouldn't call shots in..."

"Rex, you could *never* insult me at this point," I pointed out teasingly. This woman had done *everything* to protect me. How could she make my mood turn sour in a flat minute?

She blushed a bit, then spoke her mind. "I... I really see you like my own daughter."

*Daughter*? It could never be made official... but I suppose it could be said that Rex and I *had* that type of bond. I wasn't going to detest it. Rex saved my life, and I reciprocated her affection warmly.

"You really do?" I inquired just to be sure.

"Yes, Winter. I don't know what's gonna happen after all this is cleaned up and PMS goes on as normal... but *you* have been one of the *best humans* I've ever gotten to work with here."

"Please, I'm not as legendary as Evie and Mya."

"Already humbling yourself, Miss Snowlight?"

"Rex, my friends deserve just as much credit as I do for tonight."

"Okay, fair."

All of a sudden, I heard the excited cheers of Evie and Mya, reading over a paper together, and Evie looked at me with *blazing spirit*.

"Winter... out of everyone here... I think you're the most *deserving* of seeing this."

*Huh?* What on earth had gotten her and Mya so riled up? This piece of *paper*? I trotted over and picked it up, scanning the text on it.

*WAIT A WHOLE DAMN MINUTE*.

I gasped. No... how was *this* right? *This*?

*Wait... wait. WAIT.*

I read the *title*. The *text*. I read *everything* over and over *again*.

Holy *jesus*, was I *alive*? Was this a *dream*? Who was smoking *crack* up in here?

I kept reading, with each reading stretching my eyes wider and stretching my heart into an elongated helium contraption that was constricting my ribcage.

*Me? No way it's me...*

I did a brief enumeration of the whole paper, slowly to make my brain's gears properly turn. Was what I was seeing *true*?

*CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION*

*This is to certify the adoption of WINTERLYN FALIN MCCORMICK as requested by **NITA DELLANDREA HEARTLEY** and **PATRICK ROBERTSON HEARTLEY***

*Thereby making WINTERLYN FALIN MCCORMICK their adopted daughter and entitled to rights as one of their daughters*

Hello, WAS THIS REAL?

I clutched that paper, reluctantly tearing my eyeballs off it to face Mya's parents, Nita and Patrick.

They smiled at me. Christ, was Christmas *this* early?

"You... you want to **adopt me**???"

Murmurs of *more* approval rained down from the heavens. Mya's parents *nodded*.

*This was real*. Mya's mother certified that for the history book.

"Of course, Winter... we have *always* wanted to give you a place where you could *belong*, ever since the day Mya described her initial meeting with you... you *deserve* a real home! You deserve the chance to *have* a family, a real mother and father, and a sister that will *love you*! You shouldn't have to live on your own for the rest of your life... and we knew our decision was right the night Mya took you to our place... you belong as a Heartley, Winter. You *always* will."

Holy *shrimp*. I couldn't *believe it*! After so long, after going a *year* of never believing a divine treat would ever be available to me again, after believing I was *undeserving* of the gift, the love...

*I had a new family I could be apart of*.

Mya responded to this proclaimation by draping her arms over my shoulders, exuberantly exclaiming, "We're going to be *sisters*!"

*It was real as real could ever be*!

I *had* new parents. I *had* a sister, a *legal* sister. It wasn't just made-up or the affirmations of sworn friends that we made despite reality's imput. Reality had changed its mind.

I was going to get a fresh, new start in a *real* family - one that wasn't going to be tragically split up or run to the fiery grave with inner turmoil and evil. That was in the *past*. The past was *behind me*. I *learned*.

I had a true *family*. I had *family*. I was the daughter of *loving parents* and had a *sister*.

*I have a family... I HAVE A FAMILY!*

I screamed, hugging Mya and shaking her and then jumping around her and Evie and back into Mya's - no, *our parents*, pulling them into the biggest hugfest of hugfests and vowing to *never let go*.

"Oh thankyouthankyouthankyou THANK YOUUUU!"

"Anytime, love," said my mother. "You just need to sign here."

And then I remembered that I needed to sign the certificate and go through all that other legal stuff.

Now, where was that damn pen?

"Someone give me a pen. *Someone* give me a **PEN**!" I demanded, thriving off the wonder of the crowd.

"We have it!" shouted two voices, and two Muslim-American sisters dashed up to me, an ink pen in the elder one's hand. "We found this in the office... it was on the floor."

"Thanks!" *Finally*, brimming with delight and *vindication* and *pride*, I signed my name in cursive and made the deal *official*.

"Alrighty, then. We'll have to mail this to the city, and soon enough, they'll certify it," replied my mother, and I *glimmered* with honor.

"Thanks, Mrs- no, Mom and Dad." I held onto them, thinking about *us*, and thinking about how the *future* was a sun *rising* over an untouched plain.

Something else also prickled into my mind - calling my parents by their new names.

Patrick was now *Dad*. A far better *Dad* than *Father* ever would be. Father was rotting in prison while I'd gone on and *saved humanity*. Sure, that's an exaggeration in a small town like Pineshadow. But I had moved *mountains*. He'd only engaged in mutiny and dabbled in murder attempts. He was no *Dad*.

*Dad*, the one before me, was *Dad*. My *real* Dad.

As for Nita, *Mom*, I realized as soon as I spoke it that Mom wasn't *right*. It didn't fit to me, didn't sound appealing. There could only be *one* Mom in my life, and that was my *first* mother: Lorelei.

Mom's spirit ran with me wherever I went, and I always remembered what she taught to me and urged me in the years leading up to her death. Even though my interactions with her in my dreams wasn't apart of my reality, I had still *cherished* that. She never disappeared. She would always be my *first* Mom.

My new mother, to me, was *Ma*. Or *Mama*. Ma was going to fill a void long left in my heart, as with Dad, and now, I'd be able to go on a *thousand* new adventures and live in a *real* home - and share a room with my *sister*.

It was after this epiphany that I met my fangirls, the ones who also just handed me the pen. They were Evelin and Sarah, some of Evie and Mya's friends. I'd gain much more besides them.

I also reunited with Aiden, who had used *wayyyyy tooo much* Abercrombie cologne, and his friend, Henry, who also was a friend of Evie and Mya's.

The night should have closed here, and the school should have been left abandoned for the police investigation and premature spring break, yet *one more voice* had to be heard that night.

One more voice, an *unexpected* luck of the draw. One that, out of all of times and places, had to *show up here*.

"Winter?" A bulky seventh grader with messy brown hair, freckles, split eyebrows, and the *buff* body build of an athlete dared to reveal himself to me, his arms crossed. Oh god *no*! *Him*? I threw myself back into war mode.

"*You*!" I spat accusingly. "*You're* the reason why *everyone* called me *Snowblind*!"

Everyone breathing air in the room collectively *gasped*. Out of all of the things that night, they weren't expecting *Lars Miller*, everyone's favorite football fanatic and football player, to be the *instigator* of one of the most sickening names ever crafted.

Lars looked away from me, and for the first time *ever*, he betrayed *dejection* to me. *Dejection*. "I know. I was the person that called you Snowblind. And... I'd just like to say..."

*I did not predict that coming out of his mouth*. Neither did the crowd. We were all stunned into silence by his confession. I held my hand by my pocket, waiting for the *gotcha*, waiting for the remorseless behavior to kick in. I noticed, in the distance behind Lars, was Desireé, who was pointedly glaring at her (presumed) ex-boyfriend, and the clique, also apologetic, was beside her. Majken and Hendrick looked disappointed in themselves, their eyes never meeting mine. They were never the heroes they dreamt they were and appeared to also be estranged from Lars, who then uttered:

"I'm sorry."

Lars *apologized*. Holy *hell*, how much was going to happen tonight? I tilted my head, giving him an olive branch to explain upon.

"I'm sorry, Winter. I know the severe amount of damage I caused *creating* that name... back ages ago, you didn't return the love I had for you, and I treated that like it was an *insult*... that morphed into hate. You were *beautiful*, an apple to my eye, and yet I could never have you... and then you sealed the deal with *Daniela*..."

*He was still apologizing*?

"When I found you walking alone that one snowy October day... jealousy overrode my common sense. I wanted to see you *hurt* for *choosing someone else* over me. It's petty, I get it. But after you had fallen into the snow... something inside of me snapped, and I, just... I called you Snowblind, thought you were blind and couldn't see what was in front of your nose..."

*Damn*. That was pretty solid for an apology, I had to give it to Lars there. But what was he hoping to gain out of doing this so *late*?

"What are you trying to tell me?" I asked.

Lars bowed his head regretfully, his eyes narrowed with sadness. "That I don't see you as weak," he admitted. "You were **never** weak. The events of tonight proved to me that, even when you're facing your worst nightmare... you can still stand *defiant* and *strong*. You *are* a hero, Winter. You're *not* Snowblind. I should have never underestimated your strength... and your tenacity."

His voice *cracked* at *never*. Oh my *god*, Lars was *hurting*. Lars *was* a human being. Deep down in that rocky heart of his, Lars had *compassion*. Desireé took that as enough of a cue that he was serious and walked out of the picture, the clique trailing behind her.

On the other hand, I walked *up* to him. I knew the amount of pain Lars was in. He did something he *regretted* and *couldn't take back*. He wasn't diminishing or denying the scope of the damage he did to me by inventing the Snowblind name. He was *acknowledging* me for *who I was* - a *strong*, *heroic*, *white-hot*, and *intelligent* young girl.

He wasn't Daniela and didn't want to be Daniela. Whereas Daniela never felt an ounce of guilt for the lashings, beatings, assaults, and threats she levied against others, never felt an ounce of guilt for attacking me and vowing to kill me, never felt an ounce of guilt for the events of the party, Lars had *humility*.

He had a *conscience*. He had *accountability*. He had *empathy*.

*He's not here to attack me... but he wants to forgive. He doesn't want to be the next incarnation of Daniela.*

I'd *never* forgive Daniela for her sins and *everything* she ever did to me, my sister, my best friend, or the entire school, but if Lars was willing to move on and blame himself for his assistence to staining the school's reputation and my own with dirt... then I had room in my heart to grant the *same compassion* he had granted to me.

There were foes in the world you *could* forgive once meeting in neutral territory. I dipped my head solemnly.

"Lars, it's in the past now," I responded. "And I will not hold a grudge against you for what you caused. On one condition..."

"Yes?"

"Promise that you will ***never*** utter the word "Snowblind" out of your *mouth* **ever again**. Solid?"

"Solid." Consider it the start of a redemption arc.

The crowd applauded me, causing me to *blush*. *Whew*, *fans*. I waved to them in appreciation.

Mya cranked up the excitement in the air, jumping onto a table and cupping her hands to her mouth. "**HEY EVERYONE**! Let's acknowledge Winter's **bravery** with a special nickname, one that is not ***demeaning***, but distinctive, only to **her**! She is the school's hero and savior with the heart of an angel and the wings of a *hummingbird* - *Snowlight*!"

"Snowlight! Snowlight! Snowlight! Snowlight!"

I drowned on the sappiness, hugging my family, Evie, and my new friend group, and everyone else joined in, chanting my new hero name.

I guess I *was* a hero after all this time. For the rest of that night, I was *floating* off into the starscapes, turned from Pineshadow's most elusive to Pineshadow's *most* beloved.

A title I'd also share with a sister and my best friend. Heaven.

Now hear me resonate

Just a few nights later, I laid in the moonlit grass of Pinelake Park with Evie and Mya, going stargazing as a universal sendoff for the *last life* I had known.

The last few days were *insane*, so I'll be brief and cut straight to what made them impactful.

PMS staff gave us a premature spring break, mostly because the Daniela situation had shaken everyone to their core and the school needed to allot time for criminal investigations and to prepare for a new semester with a *new principal*.

Yeah, that's right. Rex *resigned* from her position, which didn't come as a shock to me. She didn't seem the same after Daniela shredded the school's reputation and had done the most *unthinkable*, *grotesque* actions in front of a crowd didn't help her spiraling mindset. She needed the time away from the limelight to heal from the trauma and to rid herself of Daniela.

As for Daniela, prison was all but a *yes*. Me, Evie, and Mya testified to police (so did Rex, but that's her own business); I was also not fined or put into harm for the choices of my past given the circumstances and my age. Her trial was *not* going to end well, that I was going to be convinced of. The day she gets at least three years in prison is a day where I'll be popping open the champagne and spraying it like a fire hose.

What about me, Evie, and Mya? We're local heroes now, universally recognized for our efforts to stop Daniela and put an end to the violence and scandal at PMS. Best of all, I had permissions, under an NDA (understandably), to concealed-carry my pocket knife on me at school. It was my defense mechanism, and I needed it on me to ensure my safety.

Flash forward to now. I had wanted to spend a final few days in my cabin, a final few days of solitary living, to properly say *goodbye*. The cabin had grown to *be* a home I'd *loved*. I'd miss waking up every morning and running around in the Piney Woods, tasting the pine air, rolling in pine needles, splashing my boots and my hands through the stream. Climbing up trees, gaining a view of the mountains and the neighborhoods. Going to the clearing, dreaming of the stars and a prophecy bound by animals and gods...

It seemed like *yesterday* I found *home* in the Piney Woods. That I found my *calling* in those woods and disappeared out of society's *eye*. That I launched myself into the waking dream of my creation.

That chapter of the book had come to an end. I was ready to sign off on it. But just for tonight, I would live that life one more time.

Evie and Mya were beginning to distract themselves in more lovebird chatter, and I gave them the appropriate room to have *that* conversation. I refused to be jealous of the two when they had *effortlessly* found love with each other over the three years they had been friends. They *deserved* happiness.

Someday, I'd find my own new girlfriend, a new love to share. Healing from Daniela was going to be a lengthy process, and love could affect it however it wished. At this point, there was no questioning fate. It worked in mysterious ways, and trying to find clairvoyance was pointless when there was a life to *live*.

I'd just gotten to the rim of the Piney Woods when I turned back, facing the oak tree Evie and Mya liked to climb. For just a second, I saw their noses touch, and then, their lips had met for the first time. They were enamored in bliss, unable to be split apart from each other. *Linked*.

I wished them the *perfect* first night together. Solace was a beautiful and remarkable thing.

When I arrived at the cabin, I felt its bricks, the broken tree, leaping up it and onto the roof for the last time. Throwing my head to sky, messing with the stars and dazzled by the moonlight.

It would be hard abandoning this *spectacle*. The oracle I had created and *immersed* myself in here. But it was time for me to live with a *real family* in a *real home* again. And *that* was the most worthwhile.

I slipped back to the ground and slunk into my cabin, where I tucked myself into my bed and slept myself into the most terrific of dreams, eagerly anticipating what would come the following day.

I woke up with a hummingbird's buzz in the morning, not wasting a second to get dressed for the day. I folded up my bed shirt and my long-sleeve shirt, then put on my sweater, fit, and snug, and holding more significance than ever. Checking myself in my mirror, looking *perfect* for the move in ahead of me.

Once I was brushed and prepared for the day, I then went packing up my things into my backpack, including my box. My necklace was already tied around my neck.

*I hope you're ready for the new life, Mom. I sure am.*

I had just slipped the box into my backpack when I got a *knock* on the door. A knock that made me *squeal*. It was *time*.

I opened the door, and there was Mya, smiling and holding the handle of a *wagon* behind her.

"*Mya*!"

"Hi, Winter!" We flew in for the hug. "You ready?"

"I've said my goodbyes," I affirmed. "I'm going *home*."

"*We're* going home. Since I doubt *everything's* gonna get crammed in that backpack, I brought along Ye Old Wheeley here to assist."

*Pfft*. I loaded up Ye Old Wheeley with my other things, and then, with a wave to the cabin, I left the Piney Woods for the final time. Run high, my beloved woods. I'd return for visits... but my residency among your sheltered spruces, firs, and pines was a memory archived in the past now.

The walk to Mya's place was *pleasant* in this weather, warm, the sun beating down on our heads, the grasses blooming with the imminent promise of *spring*, the flowers opening to catch the morning rays and dew. A spring that was going to be the most *wonderful* spring in Pineshadow yet.

After ten minutes, I was back at Mya's house, permanently; flowers were blossoming in the front yard, and I happened to notice that a tree swing and birdbath were recently installed. "Whoa. You did some home improvement," I pointed out.

"The tree swing was home improvement. The birdbath was for the hummingbirds," Mya stated.

"For the *what*?!" I asked. Mya wanted to bring *HUMMINGBIRDS* to my doorstep?

"You *know* who I want to lure here." Mya winked, implying to me that she wanted to give Rufie accomodations so he'd stick with me.

Bless that enormous heart of hers. I'd hoped Rufie would follow us here, and we'd play in the front yard, and I'd hold his soft feathers... time would tell, but perhaps we'd meet again.

And then, opening the door, I entered *paradise*.

The house was neat and prepared, exactly the way it was when I entered those weeks ago, and now, it was my new *stomping grounds*. Mama and Dad were in the kitchen, and they ran out, sweeping us up in arms and laughing.

"Welcome home, kids!" said Dad. *Kids*. Cue the sniffles.

"Mya, I can assume you're giving your sister the house tour?" Mama asked teasingly.

"Hell yeah! C'mon, Win! You need to see the bedroom!"

"Race you!" Giggling endlessly, and picking up my things, we entered the bedroom, which had been cleared, to my shock, to fit *my belongings* in. One half of the room was Mya's things, from a hanging bisexual flag, photographs of her with her family and Evie, her sorted wardrobe, art desk, and framed wooden bed with room for *two*.

"Holy *jesus*..." I had never seen a room so *extravagant*. I could have *luxury* again! Something to *live* and *breathe* for!

"Take it in, Winter, because *this* is where you're gonna be crashing from now on! I'd say it looks sparse, but this room is *yours* just as much as it's *mine*. Which means *you* get to decorate your share too!"

"Really?"

"You're my sister. You are automatically *entitled* to decorating. What are we waiting for?"

Nothing, sis. Talk about *our* fixer-upper!

Me and Mya got to work, spending an *hour* hanging up new lights around the bed, stringing up wires, and decorating newly-installed shelves and empty tabletops with *antiques*. I had a special drawer and space for my Varien albums and my music player.

The most *special* part of the room, however? The stringed lights that hung around the perimeter, not only hanging with Mya's photos, but hanging with *mine*. *Combined* memories. My photos were back on the wire, where they *belonged*. A *starstruck* callout to my youth.

"I have no words..." I murmured.

"Winter, you're going to be rendered *speechless* once you get used to this." Mya nudged me in my shoulder, and I knew she was going to be right. We weren't just gonna start with redecorating the bedroom.

Or with the house tour (spoiler: THERE'S A GARDEN!), for that matter.

*Or* all of the places Mya loved to visit. Including, as I learned, her surprising love of Sunday mornings at Denny's (Denny's has never left me since my youth, huh?).

*We were gonna conquer the world*.

Step outside

Don't look back 'cause we don't need to justify our crimes

After a *luxurious* breakfast out at Denny's that our parents treated us to, we were then driven to a tall building with multiple floors that smelled of *bleach*. Take a gander as to where we were.

If you guessed the hospital, correct! I was *long overdue* for a doctor's appointment, and the doctor was shell-shocked that I was relatively unscathed and had no infections or breathing issues or diseases from living in the Piney Woods for over a year. I was given antibiotics for a week, though, mostly to remove some minor gunk in my system and to help my shoulder heal. Win-win in the checkbook.

The days began to fly off the calendar, and me and Mya spent time checking off the list doing each one. Starting with a surprise one I was fished into.

"Winter! Today's the day of my screening!"

"Screening? What screening?" I asked, clueless as to what she was talking about.

Who are you to say it's wrong to live my life?

"My autism screening!"

My mouth fell open. Mya suspected she was *autistic*? I hadn't really dabbled in that stuff, nor had she alluded this to me, so I was *astonished*.

"I had no idea you suspected you were autistic!" I leaned in against her, and she blushed, giggling. Our parents joined us on the sofa.

"Well, Winter, Mya's been confident for a few months now that she has autism. We scheduled her for a screening and got her date in the spring, and she's been nonstop hyped about it," explained Dad.

I won't hesitate

Oh, I won't bend or break, no

"Do you think it'll explain why I'm constantly distracted, Dad?" Mya inquired. He chuckled.

"We'll see, pumpkin. Winter, do you wanna join?"

I nodded, more than delighted to see my sister go on her own quests. "I'd love to tag along."

What was tagging along became verified results for not one Heartley daughter, but *two*, and Mya and I had matching rainbow infinity keychains on our backpack we were sure to flaunt for the entire school year. While Mya had ADD, I had ASD, and it just kept pushing us closer and closer together. We were sisters to the *end*.

We (we!) won't (won't!)

Know if we don't try

The sun, with every new day, brought a day of fresh ideas and passionate promises and junkie risks that me and Mya made a *list* of fulfilling. Most of these ideas were of the simple, mundane, everyday things that I hadn't enjoyed in *forever*, while others, mostly Mya propositions, were more on the *reckless* side of fun, feeding an adrenaline impulse in me that I had also *craved* for the longest time.

The first of those tasks was us going to a *fireworks store*. Walls and walls of *explosive material*, rainbow rockets and patriotic rockets and shining stars and-

"There!" Mya yelped, pointing me to a corner of the store titled *Fiery Flares*. I studied the flare sticks, seeing they were in varying colors, from blue, to pink, to the classic neutral smoke, and *ruby red*.

If we don't try

Mya and I had gotten an *interesting* and *risky* idea involving flares, one we'd need to do in an *open field*. These flares were to represent *something*. A *virtue* that, when Mya brought up to me, I couldn't reject. I *needed* the *thrill*.

"Which color do you think is the prettiest?" Mya questioned, peering at the blue flares and holding a box with one.

"Blue is nice," I confessed, but my eyes were drawn to the smoky red shade in front of me. "But I think the red smoke is gonna work best for what we're aiming for."

If we don't try

"Hmm..." Mya over-meticiously analyzed the box, then gave me a thumbs-up. "Rioting goes together with red. Yep, I think we got the one."

Yeah, we were going to light *flares*. Well, not we, *me*. Mya was going to *help*. *What* were we wanting to do with a red flare, a potentially *dangerous* object? One that brought *thrills*, but was also *startling*?

Standing in an open field, with the lighting cap, where the grasses blew and where nobody dared impede our quest, I knew what this flare was meant to symbolize. I felt its power riveting in my veins. I was *excited*. *Stoked*.

We are here to do more than to just survive

We are here to do more than to just survive

"Alright, Winter. Got the lighter. You ready to run wild?"

I nodded, determination set. "Light me up, baby."

This was going to be a *blast*.

We are here to do more than to just survive

Mya carefully held out the flare, and coiling her body to avoid any potential damage, rubbed the cap against the top until the flare started *smoking*, emitting *sparks*. It had *life*. I had *life*.

The power of life, spurting to life in my hands, smoking with the *enjoyment* of that life. There was something I realized long ago about living, what living meant to *me*. Why *living* was *important*.

The flare sparked, and sparked, and sparked more, and then, smoke *poured* from the top. I *held* it to the sky, and red puffs trailed off and away, ascending.

Life was like that *ascension*. It was *worth living*. *Every second* was worth living.

There was *nothing more special* in life... than *living to* be alive*. Being alive and* thriving*.*

I'd been deprived of that *feeling* for *forever*. That changed *tonight*.

"*Wow*!" Mya shouted, jumping on her feet. I turned to her, and her smile lit a flare that could have shone from the United States to *Asia*.

When will you realize?

Tonight, I'd light up the whole world.

Tonight, I'd run with *liberty*. With *nothing* holding me back. I'd go out on a *limb*.

"For *freedom*! For peace, for being *alive*! For *unity*! And most importantly... for **light**!"

Triumphantly holding the flare, my torch, my *salvation*, I took off *running* through the fields, leaping into the air, feet leaving the ground, my soul *living* and *thirsting* for every *milisecond* of what life offered, with Mya following behind, triumphantly drowning in the awe of *living*.

*This* was *being alive*. This *passion*, taking off and leaving plumes of red smoke, in front of my face, all around me, decorating the field with my presence, with Mya behind me... nothing was *stopping us*.

This was *liberty* and *justice*.

We were *renegades*.

It started with the flare, and the flare made the neverending bucket list of things to do *our shared priority*.

Mya and I, as well as my parents, visited the local graveyard where Mom was buried. It had been a while since I laid my soul down at this grave and gifted Mom her flowers, but we mended this gap in time by stuffing the burial ground with bleeding hearts. Dad brought a rose to add to the collection.

Mom likely appreciated the gifts, as a cloud blocking the sun zipped by, and the grave was enlightened. Symbolism at its finest.

We also visited Rye Lake, a place I only visited when I was nine. It had hardly changed, uninhabited by the hands of time. Its lake water was still a gentle lap against the shores, and the scenery was just as picturesque as I remembered. Some things *never* changed.

Mya and I skipped stones across the lake. I hadn't done stone skipping before, but I mastered it with ease and even had longer shots than Mya, surprising her. Nature liked catering to me (#biased), and we laughed this off with sandwiches by the lake.

Soon, I was snuggled with Mya on the sofa when Mama shut the door to the house, having just gone outside to fetch the mail, and she approached me, eying a pink letter in intrigue.

"Winter, we've been mailed this letter, and it's addressed to you for some reason?"

*Me*? I ripped it open and read its writing, and familiarity struck me, and I felt myself *squealing*.

*Winter,*

*I know the last time we held one of these, you got horrificly scarred, and I regret not sending you enough hugs and kisses back then. I'm so sorry this has come eight years late. I should have done more to help you instead of standing there headless.*

*But now, in the years following that, I've learned of your full story and what you've done. My niece, I am so incredibly proud of you and your accomplishments, and you've made me exceptionally glad that you've carried on a piece of my sister in you throughout your journey. You are an incredible young woman.*

*I'm writing to you to let you know that I've invited you to a much more relaxed family reunion at the mall, which I know from Lorelei's stories is one of your favorite places. Everyone's been ecstatic that you've become a local phenomenon, and your cousins can't stop babbling about you and your heroics. They keep mentioning "Snowlight." Is that your hero name or that one song your biological father told me about?*

*Anyways, see you soon, Winter. I can't wait to see how you've grown these past eight years.*

*Best regards, your Aunt Debbie*

"It's one of my aunts," I explained. "It's a family reunion at the mall."

Mya sprung up from her spot, sitting erect like a jackrabbit. "Family *reunion*? Winter, am I going to meet your *family*?"

"If she says yes," Mama pointed out.

"Already a yes," I affirmed. I didn't care less about what happened when I was *five*. That was *long ago*. A memory fading from me. My family would see me again, and see me again in *epic style*.

Waste no time

Stop letting worry hold you back

That trip to the mall was a trip to kick me in the *feels*. Sure enough, *all* of my family was there - my aunts, Debbie, Bonnie, and Jodie; my cousins, Steph, Brody, and Fanny, now *way* older and matured; my maternal grandparents.

And my uncles: Barry and Willie. Uncle Lewis was not present, and likely never would be. Uncle Barry did admit that he was back in Forks, but had chosen to move on from the family and focus on his own individual life. I thought that was for the best, anyway, so none of us had hard feelings. Everyone coped differently. I personally held no grudge against my uncle, but didn't really feel that favorable toward him. Still, a *lot* had *changed*.

There was gossiping, stories told, and a hyper meet and greet between my extended family and my new family. I learned so many extraordinary tales and embraced each and every member individually. My cousins had grown *exponentially*, with Steph now owning two motorcycles and Brody working as a librarian, while Fanny aimed to be a marine biologist. Big dreams to take over this planet!

My grandparents had also remembered me, and noted that I was so much like Mom. I'd always be like Mom. Her legacy would never die, not as long as I protected her sacred blessings in the fires of my heart.

Start asking "why would I waste another day while life just passes by?"

That family reunion *also* resulted in much-overdo shopping, and I got myself some future fall outfits as well as a whole plethora of emo gear from Hot Topic. Heaven was *real* on this earth.

My pocket knife wasn't immune to the thrills of being alive, and thanks to my cousins, we reached out to Saul, my old neighbor. He was just as sappy and prideful of me like everyone else and gave me an offer that I clamped down on in no less than the tick of a minute.

"I can erase The Dad Redacted's initials off your knife and etch yours in instead."

I won't hesitate

Oh, I won't bend or break, no

"Deal!"

It took three days of careful carving, filling, and fine-tuning, but when my knife was mailed back to me, and when Mya and I opened the package, it was a *masterpiece*.

The blade was sharpened up, deadlier than ever and shining silver, and the bottom initials read *WM*, not the filthy *EM*. The knife was *mine*. Father had lost his last mark on the McCormick name. That bastard could rot *even more*. Me and Mya quietly flicked him the middle finger.

We (we!) won't (won't!)

Know if we don't try

A day later, and there was *more* mail for us, addressed to me *again*. The surprises just didn't stop coming, but I'd welcomed them. My life was full of unexpected turns, anyway, so what was wrong with a hedgehog's prickle's worth of more?

This package was *huge*, wrapped in gift paper, and Mya cut the top off with scissors. She had the honor of opening it this time.

"Dude, is this a *scrapbook*?" I froze. A *scrapbook*.

If we don't try

*There's no way!*

"Mya, that is not just any scrapbook," I pointed out, holding it in my hands and seeing the brown cover, the dusted edges, the photos sticking out at the corners. "Mya, this is my *mother's* old scrapbook!"

"**WHOA**!"

"This is a *treasure*. I don't know how this was found, but I'm just relieved Father never discarded it. This has... this has *so many memories*!"

"It's teeming with them... wait, there's something else in the box." Mya pulled out a camera that was now bearing a shoulder strap. She gasped.

If we don't try

"A Polaroid!"

*Mom's Polaroid*.

Mya and I wasted *no time* spending even more days filling up what room we could in the scrapbook, reflecting on what Mom had captured throughout my years of life, from when I was baby up until when I was nine, the last year her luminous spirit ever roamed the earth. The emotions evoked in me were *unreal*. I had crossed Mount Everest and went to the *sky* and *back*.

We are here to do more than to just survive

We are here to do more than to just survive

With the Polaroid and some purchases of additional cartridges, the memories piled on. Silly walks in the park, rolling in the Piney Woods. The stars. Family dinners at Blue Goose, drunk-walking on the mall fountain.

And not just that, but photos of me and Mya being the *best siblings* we could be. Living a life as we should. Me, living *my new life*, being *happy*. Smiling, no longer *worrying* about the outside world. Not worried about anything.

I was *free* to be *me*, free to end off this sunset by snapping a photo, on Mya's request, of her and Evie sharing an intimate, but amusing kiss. What a time to be alive.

The day ended when Mya and I got dressed for the night and settled under the covers, gazing up at the ceiling.

"We've done *everything*," Mya drawled, yawning.

"Say that now, but we'll always have more to do, Mya. The world's full of adventure," I countered playfully.

"Touché," Mya conceded. "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."

"Same here," I responded drowsily before my mind had a little spark of light overtake it. A part of me still clinging on, still convincing me to honor it...

"Mya, would I be allowed to still celebrate Hanukkah with your family? I know you're not religious, but..."

Mya nodded. "You bet on a million wishing stars that we can. If it's important to you, it's important for us." She shut off the lamp, and the light in the room dimmed to darkness. "Goodnight, Winter."

"Goodnight."

When will you realize?

We'd done remarkable things these past few weeks, continued the tales, and lived life to the *fullest*, as one should. A life is meant to be *lived*. A life is something that is *fragile*, but when stable, is full of *magic*.

I *loved* living life, and this new life was set to be something to *adore*.

Hands closed in on my waistline, pulling me into her space. I smiled and pulled Mya into me.

Forever my sister, forever my family.

Forever *alive*.

Forever *Snowlight*.

*Every adventure has a new beginning. Mya and I have a world to see, and for me, I have much of a life left to live.*

*I've come very far from the very beginning, and for twelve chapters, you've joined me through heartbreak, loss, resilience, fire, and recovery. Darkness balances a world of light. The greatest blessings can be found when we least expect it. Love is a beautiful thing that can be controlled by destiny and the human hand.*

*You've joined me since the very beginning, learning of a child's perspective of the world. Through choosing paths, undergoing transformations, waking to death, finding soulmates, transcending to a betrayal of blood.*

*Then, there was a waking dream, battling inner demons, dancing with foxes and hounds, facing blindness, meeting friends, and now, resonating in my darkest hour.*

*No hero's story is told in a day. To this day, I think of myself as not a hero, but as the name everyone gives me to represent my light and hope: Snowlight.*

*I am Snowlight. No one can take that away from me, and no one can destroy what I have now.*

*I've learned many things over the years, but perhaps the greatest things I've learned are to follow the rhythm, to spend every day being alive, to dream the biggest dreams, and to never run from fate, but to face it, learn, and grow.*

*The shores of anger can wash to peace. Beyond my exterior is someone bound by layers, upon layers, upon layers. While some might not see what I can... I hope this story can enlighten you and the others out there, and give you hope for you own lives. To inspire.*

*I'm not an author, don't say I'm that. But thanks for giving me the time to share my story.*

*I have a new life to live. A second chance given to me. When the world had dumped me and left me to die, I was dead convinced that I was a failure.*

*But I now know who I am, through and through. I've ran with hummingbirds, visualized aethers against lights, painted an entire world where the stars had entities, and more famously, scalded people alive with the hottest temper.*

*I know who I am. And when this book closes, a new chapter's bound to open.*

*My name is Winterlyn. Winterlyn Falin McCormick in full.*

*You're welcome to call me Winter - or by my hero name, Snowlight.*

*And this was my story.*

**THE END**

## Cast

* **Mae Whitman** as Winter
* **Eden Riegel** as Daniela
* **Dakota Fanning** as Mya
* **Peyton Elizabeth Lee** as Evie
* **Trent Garrett** as Patrick
* **Nora Dunn** as Rex
* **Jorge Diaz** and **Dee Bradley Baker** as additional voices
* **Kari Wahlgren** as additional voices
* **Matt Chapman** and **Kimberly Brooks** as additional voices
* **Fred Tatasciore** as additional voices
* **Wendie Malick** as Nita
* **Zehra Fazal** as Evelin and Sarah
* **Clifford Chapin** as Lars
* **Timothy Olyphant** as Saul

## Songs

* Hellberg & Rich Edwards (ft. Danyka Nadeau) - *Ashes* (snippet)
* Varien - *Aether and Light* (hummed by Winter)
* Varien - *Morphine* (snippet)
* Razihel - *Children of the Night* (snippet)
* DM Galaxy (ft. Tyler Fiore) - *Paralyzed* (snippet)
* Twenty One Pilots - *Jumpsuit*
* Varien - *Snowlight* (snippet)
* Tut Tut Child (ft. Augustus Ghost) - *Hummingbird* (snippet)
* Slippy & Danyka Nadeau - *Resonate* (snippet)
* Puppet - *To Be Alive* (ft. Aaron Richards)

## Trivia

* This chapter is technically named after *Birth of Snowlight*, the first chapter, in a reference to how Winter has grown since the very beginning. It is also meant to signify the return to her roots and her regaining her pride.
	+ As with *Birth of Snowlight*, it is also named after *Snowlight*, which makes a physical return in the chapter during the retelling of the visualization scene from *Winter Storm Arising*.
		- *Hummingbird* also returns during that scene as well.
	+ Winter also quotes her introduction to the reader from *Birth of Snowlight*, with slight alterations to fit the current part of her story.
* Once again, Winter quotes *Valkyrie I: Bloodshed* in the opening.
* The references to *Just A Dream* and *Don't Make Me* from *She's Plotting Something* make a reappearance in this chapter.
* As a large portion of the chapter is Winter's retelling of *Winter Storm Arising*, most of the following is recycled from the episode:
	+ The same exact inspirations: *Jumpsuit*, *Resonate*, *Hayloft* and *Hayloft II*, *Snowlight*, *Autonomy*, *Just A Dream*, *You Hide*, *Don't Make Me*, and *Snowblind*.
	+ The same music score, though with minor changes and alternations to the snippets for story consistency. The biggest changes in the soundtrack are the addition of *Morphine*, a Varien song that would help give Winter more reason to enjoy the party, and a massive tweak of *Jumpsuit* - instead of just being a full instrumental, half of it is instrumental and then switches to the version with Tyler Joseph's vocals when Winter retuns to confont Daniela.
		- Av made this exclusive change from Winter's POV to help signify the importance of *Jumpsuit* to her character, as well as add a special rate of intensity to cap off Winter's anger, part of the reason *Jumpsuit* has remained integral for so long.
	+ The same scenes, just shortened for time constraints with additional details covered from Winter's POV.
	+ Most of the references, though some are cut out due to condensation of the episode.
* The cover art for the chapter is a remake of the YouTube thumbnail for *Jumpsuit*.
* In Winter's monologue, she alludes to a line she previously spoke in the monologue of *Betrayal of Blood*: "Paid with my blood and my autonomy."
* When Winter confronts the shadow in her cabin, she refers to herself as an "impressionable youth," a reference to the Veela song *Sugar Youth*.
* As Winter prepares herself for Daniela's schemes, she almost-exactly quotes the "Honey, you've got a big storm coming" meme.
* A brief snippet of Daniela's private dialogue - the part where she instructs Winter to lower her shoulders - is inspired by the control methods used by Atlas/Fontaine in *BioShock*.
* It is revealed that:
	+ Daniela somewhat tended to Winter's needs, giving her food and drink and taking off her gag to let her eat. This further suggests that she had at least some standards.
	+ Like Evie, Winter knew Daniela's destruction of the rose was meant to signify their fractured relationship.
	+ Winter picked her jacket over her sweater for the party because her jacket was still significant to her - she wanted to wear a throwback to a crucial period in her life.
	+ Even though she was infuriated with both Evie and Mya in *The Party* for suggesting Rex would cave to Daniela's blackmail, Winter knew they weren't lying to her. However, she didn't know who to believe, having known Rex better than the two girls but also trusting the girls with her life. In the end, pressure over this dilemma made her snap at Evie and Mya and ignore them for days, though she felt severe regret for how she treated Evie and Mya, which is especially shown when she misses them at the party.
	+ Winter did indeed witness Evie and Mya's first kiss.
	+ After being adopted, Winter was taken in for a doctor's appointment and was cleared of any health issues.
	+ Mya was due to get a screening for autism in the springtime. Winter attended her screening and also decided to get one of her own, thus making her and Mya the first characters to be stated to have autism in canon, with Winter having ASD and Mya having ADD.
		- Amira is also stated by Av to be autistic (ADHD), though this has not been directly conveyed on-screen.
	+ Winter returned to her mother's grave and Rye Lake.
	+ Winter reunited with her family in a much tamer reunion (Lewis was not present and had moved on from family matters). With the help of her cousins, she also reached out to Saul, who replaced her father's initials on her knife with her own.
	+ The new tenant of Winter's former residence mailed her her mother's scrapbook and Polaroid, which she and Mya immediately got around to using.
	+ Winter asked Mya if she could still celebrate Hanukkah with her, as it is a key part of her memories, and Mya instantly agreed.
* *Ashes* makes a reappearance during the *She's Plotting Something* retelling, though it is cut down to only the first drop instead of the first vocals and the drop together.
* In one of Winter's descriptions of Daniela, she calls her the name of a Varien song, *Resurrection of the Dagger*.
* When Winter describes falling into a pit from Daniela's words, the pit in question is inspired by the scene where Alice falls into the dream wonderland in *Alice in Wonderland*.
* During Winter's celebration over being rid of Daniela, she makes an allusion to the slogan of Vans, "Off the wall."
* Like in *The Party*, Winter hums *Aether and Light* for a few seconds.
* After Winter reflects on her rushed apology to Evie and Mya, she wonders if she should take an elixir and hope it tells her to apologize properly. This is a reference to the Kooma, Nomyn, and Veela song *Elixir*.
* When Winter declares that "Snowblind" is unresponsive, she references the infamous spoken bit about the "old Taylor" in the Taylor Swift song *Look What You Made Me Do*.
* In one of her reverse psychology-themed responses to Daniela, Winter references the TwoThirds and Feint song *Epiphany*, which Daniela previously referenced twice herself in Season 1.
* As Winter scoffs at the idea of Daniela getting vengeance after her defeat, she references the "Like that's ever gonna happen!" meme from *Shrek*.
* A reprise of *To Be Alive* is featured as Winter spends her time with Mya after her adoption and gets into many adventures with her.
	+ Notably, Winter recreates the cover art for *To Be Alive*, and the flare scene itself was directly inspired by the song.
* Before Winter helps Mya decorate their joint bedroom, she alludes to one of Timon's lines from *The Lion King* ("Talk about your fixer-upper.")