Ice against your fingertips, first brushing lightly, then snatching hold. Smooth ice, inexplicably soft. Cup your hand around it gently. The cold sears into your skin – it tempts you, tantalizes you. Does it freeze against your hand? Could it? Do you want it to? To stand here forever, the palm of your hand frozen to her icy cheek?

Careful, now. Ice can break. It can shatter. Splinter. Cut. Bruise. Melt.

That just wouldn't do.

You are friend to the cold. Air chills in your presence. It unsettles people – they shrink away, pull their cloaks about them just a bit tighter, avert their gazes. You recognize neighbors not by face, but by the shapes of their backs. Shoulders. Profiles. When you were young, it troubled you. "Look at me!" you would almost scream, but the words caught in your throat, and the sound dissipated into the frigid air. Just small clouds of steam, an exhalation. Never an entreaty, never a condemnation.

Those came later. You discovered there was more power in a whisper than a shout. It cut through the cold rather than being lost in it. And people listened. Against all probability, they listened. Hisses tinged with ice, sharp edges, penetrating. No one had to look at you. Perhaps you liked it better that way, the opposite of the expected, heard but not seen, a solid wall of ice masking your inexplicable progress. Your cold desires. Invisible ascension. Higher. Higher.

And the words he spoke to you? Not icy, but hot with hatred, passion, aggression. Promises. Your ice could fuel his fire, and his fire warmed your ambition. You could have anything. A crown. Golden coins. Fine scepters and rich meals. And the fair lady by your side, all ice and beauty, the one woman who understood what it was to feel coldness.

It was not a difficult decision.

Her cheek is the ice against your hand. So fair. So cold. You can read her heart, perhaps her mind as well. Passionate at times, but coolly logical. She sees. She understands.

How could you not touch her?

Poison. Snake. Worm. Ice, and she's gone. Your hand aches with the memory of cold, fingers tingling with the loss. Lost. Gone. Ah, well, there's always tomorrow. At least this time, you touched.

Memory is a cold thing. So is the bitter sting-ache of failure, defeat. A cruel breeze assaulted your face that day, the same day that cold stone steps bruised you as you fell. Cold eyes, everywhere. Looking at you. Piercing you. If you could laugh, you might have, at the irony. The townfolks' faces were not nearly so pleasant as their backs. The chill in the air – did it emanate off you or them?

No matter. The past is already frozen, unchangeable. Hardly worth thinking of.

But it led you here. With cold-chapped lips and windblown hair, you came. The tower of black ice. Fitting.

The wind is cold up here, looking down, but you feel unpleasantly warm. You always knew this man-wizard spoke fire. So alien to you, unnatural. And the masses gathered below, born of heat, raised in flame – they scald you with their hatred, sear your pale skin more surely than a cold woman's touch ever could. So many. So much fire.

Do you crack? Melt? An unfamiliar dampness trickles down your cheek. Melting, falling. And in the sudden flush of warmth, you realize that you never knew what ice was. The cold you knew is nothing next to the chill now creeping up your spine.