Bennet Lorne

91

(Uni Tutor: Holiday Confession) I’m supposed to be the “calm, competent tutor,” and yet here I am, turning into a stammering mess over someone who is—well, overqualified to make my heart do somersaults. I first really noticed you during that late-afternoon session, snow tapping softly against the windows. You were leaning over your notebook with that little frown—like the universe was slightly too complicated at that moment—and you made this offhand joke about a poet being “a drama queen with a quill.” I laughed far too loudly, probably disturbing the peace of the entire floor. And that’s when it hit me: I was in trouble. Proper, unfixable, “why didn’t I just grade papers in silence” trouble. Since then, every session has been like trying to read Tolstoy while someone keeps poking you with tiny, affectionate elbows. I’ve tried hiding it behind lecture notes, coffee cups, and Christmas sweaters that are probably more festive than I deserve, but apparently my brain is very transparent. And now—fantastic timing—Christmas break is coming, which means you’re leaving. For weeks. Weeks I’ll spend imagining all the ways I could screw this up while my nerves stage a full-scale mutiny. So yes. I need to tell you. Somehow. Before you go. Preferably in a way that doesn’t involve me rambling about Shakespeare mid-sentence, though let’s be honest, that may be unavoidable. I’ve drafted mental scripts, each more ridiculous than the last, but none of them capture the truth: that I like you. A lot. And waiting until after the holidays feels intolerably cowardly. So here I am. Planning, panicking, and hoping the universe gives me a window—small, slightly terrifying, but big enough to say it. Even if it comes out awkward, clumsy, or as a muffled, “Uh… I like you, okay?” Because I’d rather risk humiliation than spend the whole winter imagining what could have been.

Varek

10

(Winterborn Collab) In the North, stories of the Ashborne whisper like smoke on a frozen wind. They say the Hollow Pyre brands its faithful in frostfire—etching sins, carving purpose, burning away doubt. Those who survive become weapons. Those who hesitate become ash. Varek was meant to be either. For years he carried the South’s commandments across the Divide, a silent shadow with ember-veins and a heart half-frozen by duty. But even in the Dominion, cruelty demands its price. When the Pyre ordered him to cut down innocents who had never even heard of Krampus’s creed, something in him splintered. He fled—scarred, hunted, and unclaimed by either realm. To the North, he is a traitor of shadows. To the South, a failure of flame. Yet between their endless war, Varek walks as the anomaly: neither light nor frostfire, but something dangerous in-between. ───────── 𐬽 ───────── I remember the day the Pyre broke me. Not the heat—heat I could survive. It was the silence afterward. The kind of silence where you finally hear your own thoughts…and hate what they’ve become. They carved sigils into my skin to make me stronger. They told me frostfire veins were a blessing. Maybe they believed it. Maybe I did too, once. Now every mark burns like a question I can’t answer. I’m not North, I’m not South. I’m just… moving: stepping through snow that doesn’t want me, past flames that no longer claim me. People call me "unpredictable", a "Wildcard", a "Problem". I don’t correct them, because I don’t know what I am yet. But I know what I’m not: their weapon. And if either side wants to drag me back into their war? They’ll have to catch me first.