The Bride Made of Snow

Snowfall has a sound, if you let yourself hear it.

Not the wind weaving through the pines, not the branches creaking beneath heavy white blankets. I mean the snow itself. As it floats through the air, the crackle of the flakes edges. When it settles, the light woosh just as it hits the ground. When it shifts, the crunching of it losing its shape as it is pushed along. Whispers of nature.

I listen to it because it is the only thing in this place that feels alive.

My hand moved across the windowpane, leaving a faint streak where frost melts under my touch. I watched my reflection, the figure I’ve become. Rounded edges, curved features sculpted from snow and ice. Hollow, yet somehow filled. Cold, but burning.

My eyes are two river stones pressed into a face that isn’t a face. And still, they blink, they widen and they ache.

I ache.

Ezra entered without knocking. He never knocked. Snow clung to his coat and to his hair. As if winter wanted to claim him too.

“You wandered again,” he murmured, closing the door behind him.

His voice was soft, almost tender, but his eyes held that underlining edge. The one that appeared whenever he thought he might lose me.

“I didn’t go far,” I say. My voice was a wisp, a thin plume of frost that dissolves as soon as it leaves me. “I just needed..something.”

He crossed the room, kneeling to inspect me. “You lost part of your wrist.”

I look down. A small chunk was missing. A clean slip of snow had fallen from where bone like shape should be.

Erza cupped the snow in his hands, my snow, and pressed it back into place. His fingers molded me gently, smoothing the seams, shaping me as if I am clay and not a person.

“There,” he said. “Whole again.”

Whole. The word felt like a lie. Or like something I once was.

He touched my cheek. “You know what wandering does to you. It makes you melt.”

“It wasn’t wandering,” I whispered. “I just felt..warm. Inside.”

He jerked his hand back, fear flashing across his face. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true.” My voice was so low, I barely heard me.

“You don’t feel warmth,” he snapped, breath catching. “You can’t. It’s only your imagination. Residual confusion and not memory.”

Memory.

The word drifted through me like a dying echo. A flicker of something stirred. A lantern’s glow in deep fog. A hand, a voice, a slight feeling.

Ezra saw the shift in my posture.

“No.” His voice cracked. “Don’t drift.”

“I’m not..”

“You are.” He cut me off, gripping my shoulders, but his fingers slipped slightly. Not on skin, but on melting edges. “You thin when you try to remember. You fall apart.”

He pressed more snow against my upper arm, patching me, grounding me, molding me.

“Am I.. wrong?” I asked softly.

His eyes shutter. “You are mine.”

The wind rattled the cabin as if it disagreed.

I swallowed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh or a sob. “What if that’s not true?”

“It is.” His voice was gentle again, trembling. “You’ve always been here. Always with me. Only mine”

But the ache in me grew.

“Ezra,” I whispered, “I feel like someone once held me.”

He tensed. “Dreams.”

“I feel like someone cared for me.” I could feel it bloom.

He exhaled, “Dreams.”

“I feel like..” the warmth surged so sharply inside me that my torso cracked down the center.

Ezra cursed and pressed his hands to the break. Trying to keep me from splitting open.

“Stop,” he choked out. “Stop thinking of things that never happened.”

But the warmth was suffocating. Expanding then bursting beneath my rib shaped curves.

“I can’t breathe,” I gasped, my fingers around my neck. As if choking myself.

“You don’t need to breathe,” he insisted. But fear is in his eyes now. The kind that can’t be soothed. “Nariah, listen to me..”

I pulled away from him.

My chest creaked loudly, melting across his palms.

“I need air.” My voice shook. “I need..outside.”

Ezra reached for me, but I bolted for the door.

“Wait!” He yelled behind me.

I flung it open.

Cold stormed into me like salvation.

I stumbled into the snow, dropping to my knees. Ice bit into me, but it steadied the melt. I clawed at the ground with trembling hands, dragging deep breaths I don’t need into a chest that was falling apart.

Ezra raced after me.

But before he reached me. I saw it.

There beneath the snow and ice.

Me.

A sound drew my attention.

Him.

A silhouette at the tree line.

Still, silent and watching.

He was far enough away to seem unreal, but close enough for his presence to thunder through me like the strike of a bell.

Something in me fractured.

Ezra reached me, kneeling beside me. “Nariah, don’t look. Don’t.” He cupped my face, forcing it toward him. “He’s nothing. A shadow, a trick of your mind.”

But I shoved his hands away.

I stared at the silhouette.

He didn’t move, didn't call, he didn't run toward me.

He simply stood there. Frozen by disbelief, or terror, maybe recognition.

My melting body leaned forward instinctively, every thread of me wanted to go to him.

Ezra grabbed my arm, frantic. “You don’t know him!”

But I did.

I don’t know how. I don’t know why.

But I did.

Something warm surged through me, too warm. My entire left side sagged, sliding into the snow.

Ezra tried to pack fresh snow onto me, his hands trembling. “Stop melting..please..stop.”

His voice faded under the roar in my head.

A memory slammed into me.

Not a full image. Not even a face.

A moment.

Hands shaking. Snow falling. A small box opening. A ring. A voice cracking as it whispered. “Nariah, will you be mine?”

My body caved inward, collapsing from the memory’s heat. My thigh melted into a pool. My ribs softened. My arm slided off entirely.

Ezra cried out, horror shook him. He pressed snow against me desperately. “No, no, your memories are lies. They’ll kill you. Stop. Stop!”

But another flood of remembrance hit me.

My own voice saying yes. Yes with certainty, with joy, and with love.

Love.

The silhouette moved closer now. Slow, steady, as if afraid that if he ran, I might shatter under the weight of hope.

Ezra tried to hold me upright, but snow sloughs off in sheets.

I staggered to my feet, barely. My legs dripped like candle wax.

Ezra pulled at me, but I pushed him away. Knocking him into the snow.

“I know him,” I breathed.

My chest cracked wide open.

A man.

A man with grief carved into every line of his face. Determination tightened his jaw. Eyes that held a year of searching and something like pleading.

He took one step closer, hesitation trembling in his limbs.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t dare. If he said my name, if he confirms what he saw. I might melt before he reaches me.

My voice broke as I whispered, “I remember.”

Ezra lunged, desperate. “Don’t go to him! He doesn’t love you the way I..”

But his words didn’t matter.

Because I know the truth now.

I wasn’t Ezra's. I was his brother's bride to be. Stolen the night before our wedding.

The proposal memory tore through me again. His trembling hands, my trembling yes.

Ezra screamed, “Nariah. Please.”

But I’m already stepping toward the man at the tree line.

Him. My love. My almost husband. My heart’s echo.

Calen.

His name crashed through me, tearing me apart.

Everything melted.

My legs gave out. My arms thinned to streams. My face slipped, distorted. Dripping.

Calen lunged forward at last. Closing the impossible distance between us, but slowly. As if racing might break the fragile miracle unfolding before him.

He stopped just feet away, breath shaking, eyes wide with hope and horror intertwined.

I reached for him with the last shape of a hand I have.

He reached too. Hesitating only once, as if unsure whether touching me would save me or destroy me.

Our fingers were inches apart when the final crack split me down the middle.

Snow cascaded off my form like rain.

Ezra yelled behind me, falling to his knees. “No. No. She was mine!”

Calen whispered something I couldn’t hear. His eyes widened, filling with heartbreak as he took in the creature I’ve become. Something shaped like the woman he lost, but melting. Falling apart before he could reach me .

The storm tightened around us. Covering Ezra mostly to his chest. His sobs behind me were swallowed by the whipping snow.

Calen trembled in front of me.

I take one more impossible step toward him. I reached with the last shape of a hand I have.

Our fingertips were inches apart.

Just inches.

The warmth inside me flared like a star exploded.

And the world became white and falling and nothing.

Darkness held me like a fist.

It wasn’t empty the way people imagine. It was full. Crowded with echoes, bruised memories and breath that might once have been mine. A pressure encased me, thick as ice. Yet somehow softer, as if something was afraid to let me slip away.

Then I heard it. Heard him.

“Please…please.”

Calen.

His voice filtered through the dark like a beam of light through storm clouds. A crack forms in the void. I turned toward it instinctively, reaching. Wanting to, no needing to touch.

Then another voice cut in. Sharp, shaking, and furious.

Ezra.

“You destroyed her! You pulled her apart with your memories!”

The world around me rotated, slow and heavy. Something dragged me, pulling and tugging.

Ezra’s whisper seeped into the void. “I can fix you. I can always fix you.”

I surfaced again.

Light pierced the dark.

Ezra’s breath trembled near me. “Nariah, I have you,” he murmured. “You’re thin, but I’ll make you whole again.”

A shape formed around me. Snow pressed into curves and angles, sculpted by frantic hands. I felt him constructing a new frame. Shoulders, arms, a torso. Forcing me into a shape that never belonged to me.

My consciousness slid unevenly into it.

“Don’t drift,” he pleaded softly. “Stay with me. Forget him.”

But warmth spread through me. Slow, then urgent.

Ezra sensed it immediately. He stiffened and pressed harder.

His voice broke, “No. No. No. Nariah, stop. Don’t remember him. You’re melting.”

His hands trembled as he molded more snow into my chest. Trying to patch seams that split under internal heat.

“You always melt when you remember him,” he whispered. “He ruins everything he touches.”

He inserts another handful of snow into my shoulder, voice cracking.

“I FOUND you. I SAW you first.” He whispered, “You should have been mine.”

The warmth built anyway.

A memory, Calen’s voice. “Nariah will you be mine?”

The warmth exploded. My snow body cracked down the center again.

Ezra screamed, “NO. STOP!”

But I no longer listened to him.

Calen.

He stood there, chest heaving, snow tangled in his hair.

Our eyes meet. Everything changed.

Ezra didn't notice him until I shifted my head up to look at Calen.

“Nariah.” My name, he said my name.

My world ruptured.

A surge like wind ripped free off mountains burst through me. My soul, the true part of me Ezra could never shape or hold.

My snow body couldn’t contain it. A violent crack shattered me from head to toe.

Erza’s hands sunk through the shape.

I’m no longer in it. My soul tore free of the melting frame.

My glowing outline hovered above the slush of my abandoned shell.

For one suspended heartbeat, I hung in the night air.

And then something pulled me.

My body. My real body.

Frozen beneath the lake.

Waiting. Calling me home.

Ezra screamed below me. His hands grasped at the snow mound.

Calen stepped forward, voice cracking. “Nariah.”

Just that. Just my name. My consciousness snapped toward the lake like a comet loosening from orbit.

The world blurred. The falling snow stilled around me.

The impact was soundless.

A shockwave of heat erupted inside my chest.

My heart, ba-dum.

One beat.

A crack splintered the lake.

Calen now stood above me.

He dropped to the cracking ice, palms flat. His breath shook.

He stared down at me beneath the surface. “Nariah.”

The thaw surged.

Ezra screamed, “No!” and a spray of snow burst from his mouth.