#herhusband

Cait and Tony are on the "cutest couple" list at the Oscars!

Most people find it curious—some, even poetic—that a sorceress so attuned to frost, so woven into the rhythm of water and ice, could loathe the sea.

But I do.

I hate it.

I fear it.

I despise it.

They say all water is one in the end, that the sea is just the sky reflected downward, endless and deep. But the sea is no mirror to me. It is a grave. It is a thief. It is where he was taken. Heathcliff Dracone—my love, my heart, my husband in all but law—was lost to the waves. They said his ship never made it to port. Said the winds howled and the sails tore and the masts split like bones. Said the sea swallowed him whole, and not even the tide bothered to return his body.

The cold I wield is sharp and precise. It listens to me. It bends beneath my will. The sea does not. The sea does not listen. It devours.

To this day, I cannot stand the scent of salt on the wind. I cannot hear the gulls cry without my heart stuttering in my chest. I avoid docks, harbors, the sound of waves lapping against the hulls of ships. I walk wide circles around tidepools and whisper incantations to keep the ocean at bay.

When others speak of sailing, of voyages, of open waters and sunlit adventures, I say nothing. I smile with closed lips and offer polite nods. But in truth, my blood goes cold, and I feel again that night the letter arrived—the one that said the vessel was lost, all hands presumed dead.

No one knows how long I stood at the cliffs that evening, staring out over that endless stretch of black water. No one heard what I screamed into the wind. The sea does not return what it steals. It is cruel, and endless, and indifferent. And somewhere beneath its waves—whether in truth or only in my nightmares—is the man I love, lost to time, to fate, to salt and current and storm.

I work with water, yes. But not the sea. Never the sea.

I command frost because I know its pain. I speak to glaciers and ice floes and rivers turned still and silent. Frozen things do not lie. They do not pretend to be deep and gentle and then swallow the world whole.