Making fire out of the cold is a peculiar talent, but when the blizzard hit Black Pains, Sophie Nellsdottir was glad she had learned.
Even the best of heating and insulation charms, applied to walls and roofs with thorough regularity, can do little when it’s five below even before the winds start howling, when the snowdrifts pile up above your second story. Magic can only fight nature so far.
But ice burns, too, in its way. And a witch who was clever enough, who saw the world in the right ways, who had a bit of a penchant for turning things inside-out, might earn to make that work to her advantage.
She melted a trail from door to door, collecting every family in the town, one by one. The paths were covered up again nearly as soon as she had forged them, but it was enough. Enough to get everyone to the town hall, with blankets and boots, where their combined magics could keep a blue-flamed blaze stoked for the three days it took the sun to reappear.
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