[Aster]
Sitting alone in the pitch-blackness of a narrow tunnel, with his back against the wall and his legs crossed, Aster took a deep, slow breath and exhaled. Again. And again. And again. His eyes were closed, but that made no difference; the winding tunnel he was in was as dark as the depths of the ocean, no light reaching a skinny boy sitting at its end.
If he strained his pointy ears enough, he could hear a quiet, muffled sound of his mother's and sister's voices coming from the distance. Too quiet to make out any words, but the occasional "ouch!" from Silvia told him they were busy with their embroidery lesson. Each one brought a weak smile to his pink lips, hidden behind the darkness and the dirty cloth that covered his mouth and nose, unseen.
Another breath, in and out, his delicate, protruding ribs rising and falling with each one. He was taking a break, not a long one, just enough to rest his eyes and calm his beating heart. It was strange how relaxing it could be to sit in the dark, unable to see anything, listening to the soft sounds of his own heartbeat and breathing, the darkness making his mind calm and quiet. He needed that, now more than ever, with winter slowly approaching once again.
He didn't want to spend another one in these tunnels, not again... words couldn't express how much he didn't want to, constantly casting the same spell over and over again without stopping. He was tired, really tired, of having his mana drained day after day, for more than a year and a half now.
Remembering how he thought it would be just a few weeks of work to melt through the stone and reach the surface outside made him chuckle, a sad kind of chuckle, with not a single wrinkle reaching his weary eyes. The dark rocks surrounding him returned the sound back to his ears, distorted and eerie, almost as if mocking him for his naivety.
The reality was quite different from what he had hoped. Much different. Instead of taking just a few weeks, the entire summer and a good chunk of fall had passed, and he hadn't reached the surface yet. Every day, every single day, he came here to the end of the tunnel, to melt the stone, to carve a path leading up and out, towards the sky, the pine trees, and the sun. He longed for fresh air and puffy clouds, for the feeling of wind on his face, anything that these caves are not.
Sometimes, when he felt particularly lazy, he would spend only an hour or two here before returning to the girls, but usually it was more like four or five. But now? With their hot spring getting colder and colder by the day? Now, he practically lived in here. There was no way he would let the girls suffer through another winter, not when it was within his power to prevent it. Aster is the man of their small family, after all, and that means something to him.
Running his scarred fingers through his dirty hair, the boy took one last deep breath before opening his golden eyes, seeing nothing but darkness. 'Was it the right decision not to explore the tunnels further? What if we had found a way to the surface by now?' he thought to himself, rubbing the burns on his palms as his tired mind pondered over all the decisions they had made since last winter. For countless times, he had asked himself those very same questions, and each time, he arrived at the same conclusion: it was the right choice. It was much safer this way.
But he just couldn't shake off the feeling that maybe, just maybe... this whole tunnel idea of his was a mistake? What if there's a huge-ass mountain above them, and they had barely made any progress? It's been so long that he honestly didn't know what to think anymore. "Maybe we should make a proper trip into the tunnels before it gets too cold... at least once," Aster muttered under his breath, sighing softly into the dirty cloth. He tried to hide it, but he could feel hope slipping away, little by little. And losing hope of ever seeing the sunlight again scared him to the bone, perhaps one of the worst feelings imaginable.
"Asty, are you alright in there?! I think I heard something?" came the worried voice of his sister, echoing through the tunnel and reaching his ears, snapping him from his dark thoughts. Before he could answer, the girl spoke again, "We're almost done with the lesson here! I'm about to finish the three-headed bunny! Well... it was originally a tree, but the needle slipped a few times and..."
The girl's voice faded into silence for a moment, followed by the unmistakable sound of their mother facepalming herself. "...it's a bunny now. A very cute one, regardless of what some people might say! You just have to squint a bit." Taking a deep breath, Silvia continued, her voice softer this time, the words barely audible, "Anyway, I'll be there soon, okay? Ten minutes, tops."
A soft chuckle escaped Aster's lips before he shouted back, "I'm fine, still taking a break!" His words echoed down the long tunnel he had painstakingly created. "Take your time with the lesson, no need to hurry! It's pretty boring in here anyway," he added, his golden eyes staring into the blackness ahead.
He could hear her faint, "Alright," and a bit of mumbling that he couldn't quite make out, followed by the familiar sound of Nivalis giving her yet another patient advice on how to improve her needlework, something about "feeling" the thread and "becoming one" with the piece of cloth. Once more, Aster found himself in the company of his own thoughts and the sounds of his breathing.
Creating a small flame above his palm, hoping that it would help his mind wander away from the dark places, the boy watched it flicker and dance in the air, its light casting eerie shadows across the stone walls. Absentmindedly, he began to draw on his dirty thighs with his fingertip, making little hearts and trees, smiley faces here and there. Pretty much anything that came to mind.
After a few minutes into it, a sudden realization hit him like a slap on the cheek: these drawings looked almost identical to the ones on the walls back in their cave, left by the unknown family of two. "Dammit..." the boy cursed under his breath, quickly wiping the drawing off with his palm, leaving behind nothing but dirty, pale thighs.
Aster grimaced at the thought of ending up just like them. "No, we are not going to die down here. That won't happen," he told himself as he got on his knees with a pained groan, the joints popping quietly under his weight. Facing the end of the tunnel, a wall of black stone, Aster took that heavy stone plate from behind him and placed it between his bent legs, where all the melted stone would land once he started working.
After taking a moment to ensure the plate was at the right angle, the boy extinguished the small flame with a flick of his wrist and leaned forward, placing his hands against the rock. He felt its cold, rough surface beneath his scarred fingers as darkness enveloped him once more. 'Alright... back to work,' he thought, taking a deep breath of the dry, stale air, steeling himself for yet another battle against the stone—a battle he had fought countless times before, each time hoping it would be the last. But it never was.
With a gentle hum escaping his lips, the boy focused on the fire within him, feeling the pressure build in his chest with each heartbeat—the process of igniting mana, now familiar and almost second nature to him. He could probably do it even in his sleep if he had any reason to.
It didn't take long before the heat of fire mana became overwhelming; anything less simply would have no effect on the tough rock. Like a caged beast, the raging mana within him yearned to break free, and so he let it. He allowed it to flow down his shoulder and into his frail arms, twisting it to his will in an almost unnatural way until he felt a thin mist envelop his scarred hands, his protection spell that would shield them from the searing heat that would soon follow.
And heat did follow; his mana rushed into the stone like a tidal wave against the shore, with such intensity that his eyes began to glow in the dimness, illuminating the wall of black before him and his own skinny body, naked save for the dirty piece of cloth covering his mouth and nose.
Pain followed the heat, sharp and biting, causing him to gasp and grit his teeth, sweat blurring his sight. Aster's hands trembled as the wall beneath them heated up, the pale-golden mist swirling wildly around them, struggling to keep him safe from harm.
Twenty seconds passed before the dizziness hit. The walls, the floor, the stone beneath his palms—everything spun. His stomach twisted, acid rising in his throat. Only then did Aster let go of the stone and fall back onto his bum, panting for air as if he had been underwater. More than anything, he wanted to rest, but he forced himself to pick up that old rock he was using to scrape the melting stone and began to work, his muscles protesting against each move.
The black wall was now soft, almost like wet clay under his efforts. Chunks and clumps of it fell onto the stone plate beneath with each scrape of the rock in his hand, an acrid smell burning his nostrils. As always, after about the twentieth scrape, when all the softest parts were gone, the boy began to struggle with the more solid ones. By the thirtieth one, Aster's arms were screaming in agony, barely making any difference with each scrape of his tool.
He kept pushing anyway, straining his muscles to the limit until, with one final, desperate scrape, he managed to dislodge the stubborn chunk of stone and send it clattering onto the plate. "F-finally..." he breathed, throwing the tool to the side and looking down at the pile of black goo between his knees, which was almost a third larger than usual. "Whew, that was a good one."
Just as Aster was about to start dragging the stone plate away, through the tunnel towards their little cave, something on the rocky ceiling he had just worked on caught his attention, right where that big chunk of rock used to be—a slight hollowness, a patch of darkness darker than the black of the rock. "Huh?" he muttered, moving his head right beneath that weird spot, his glowing eyes squinting into the darkness of it.
It took him a moment, but he eventually managed to see a slight... glint? Some new crystal? A reflection of his own light, maybe? He wasn't sure what he was looking at. "Huh..." Aster repeated, but in a bit different tone, reaching up to poke the hole with his finger, the tip of it going into the darkness, only to be met with something soft and cold. When he pulled it back out, there was nothing but a slight dampness on it. "What the heck?" he muttered, sniffing his finger, and... nothing, just the smell of his sweat and burnt stone. "Weird," he whispered, wiping the wetness off his thigh and looking back up.
He looked at that weird, dark patch for a few more moments, staring, trying to understand what it could possibly be. With his finger, he reached up again and pushed it through that weird, soft, and cold thing, his face getting scrunched up in confusion the more he moved it around. "Hnnggh...?" Aster made an adorable little noise the moment he pulled his finger out, seeing it was covered in a white, cold, and soft substance that melted quickly against his scorching skin. 'What?' he thought, blinking slowly, his tired mind refusing to accept the obvious. Snow.
— "That... that's... doesn't make any sense," he mumbled under his breath, wiping his hand on his thigh before pushing his finger into the unknown once more. The same soft, cold, and damp feeling met him again. He began scooping it out, letting it fall onto the pile of half-molten rock between his knees, filling the entire tunnel with a quiet, hissing sound as the snow melted the moment it touched the hot goo. 'Why would there be snow?' he thought to himself. 'Doesn't it only snow outside? When rain freezes while falling, and all that...'
It certainly wasn't an outside; there's supposed to be a bunch of soft dirt, maybe some sand even, and roots before that. 'Maybe it is some kind of source for why it gets so cold during winter down here? Like a hollow space with some strange ice crystals surrounded by snow?' he tried to rationalize, continuing to dig the snow out of that little hole and onto the molten stone beneath him, some landing on his thighs. That sounded so far-fetched that even he didn't believe it, and he came up with it.
Aster scooped and scooped and scooped, his mind full of question marks and confusion. When his finger couldn't reach for more, he picked up a stone tool and tried to widen the hole by scraping the edges, but it did little more than leave a few scratches on the rock. Not wanting to ignite a bunch of mana once again and get even more dizzy than he already was just to see some stupid, magical cave ice, Aster simply made a tiny flame above his finger. No bigger than a candle's flame, he stuck it into the hole along with his finger, hoping it would melt enough snow to get a proper look inside.
Water began to drip out of it, soaking his silver hair and his shoulders, his skinny chest, his dirty thighs... and it felt nice, really nice. Then it abruptly stopped, after just a minute or two, much sooner than he would have liked. He extinguished the tiny flame and pulled his finger out, only to be blinded by the brightest light he had seen in his life, the ray hitting him directly in his eye. "Aa-aarghss!" Aster hissed, squeezing his eyes shut and covering them with his hands, tears flowing uncontrollably down his face from the pain.
However, in that brief moment before his eyelids closed, his mind managed to process what he had seen, something so impossible that he forced his eyes open once more, his tearful gaze meeting the brightest, most beautiful sight he had ever laid his eyes on. A little bit of the sky, orange in color, and a single cloud floating on it, slightly pink and so fluffy that it could be mistaken for candy floss.
More tears started to run down his cheeks, this time for a whole different reason. "S-sky?!" Aster choked, rubbing his blurry, golden-red eyes and blinking rapidly, staring at the sky through a small, finger-sized hole in the ceiling of the tunnel, a hole that he spent months making. He even pinched himself to make sure it wasn't just a dream. It was the sky, the real sky, his stinging butcheek confirmed it.
Covering his mouth to muffle the noise, Aster let out a weak laugh, followed by another and another, each one louder than the last until he was chuckling like a madman, a crying one at that. "Ha-ahahaha! Holy crap, I did it..." Then he suddenly froze, and without a moment of hesitation, turned around and began crawling towards the girls on all fours, not caring about the jagged rocks digging into his palms and knees. "Agh, damn it..." he cursed halfway through, realizing that he still needed to dump that damn pile of goo on the stone plate. The tunnel was quite narrow, and the last thing they needed was Nivalis getting stuck in it; her hips could be too wide for her to squeeze past the molten stone.
Panting like a dog, he returned to the stone plate and began to drag it towards the cave, his hands and knees burning from all the crawling. The sound of stone scraping on stone echoed through the tunnel as he dragged the heavy plate along, his frail arms straining with the effort, his back and shoulders aching with each push. Reaching the end of the tunnel, Aster practically popped out of the entrance into their little cave, dropping the plate with a thud onto the stone floor and falling face-first beside it, gasping for air like a dying fish.
The girls were lying on their bed next to each other, naked as always, their slender bodies covered only by their silver hair as they watched him with wide, surprised eyes. Silvia had a piece of cloth in her small hands and a needle stuck in it, which she quickly dropped aside when Aster suddenly burst into the cave, looking like a man possessed. "Asty? Wh-what happened?" the girl asked, her voice laced with worry as she sat up, pulling her hair to the side, revealing her flat chest to the soft glow of the crystals above. Nivalis did the same, her big, soft breasts hanging beautifully from her chest as she got up on her knees, staring at her little boy with worry.
— "H-hah... h-hah... I'm... I'm done... Haaah..." Aster panted, pointing at the tunnel behind him while trying to stand up, his legs shaking and his hands clutching his knees to keep himself upright. "I... hoooh, I-I...!" His chest heaved with each labored word, sweat glistening on his forehead and bare chest. "You know?!" he blurted out, throwing his hands up in the air and then pointing at the tunnel again, gesturing wildly.
Thinking that he had encountered a monster of some kind, Nivalis and Silvia immediately jumped to their feet, their silver hair swaying around their slender, naked forms as they rushed toward him. Nivalis took her slightly rusty knife, while Silvia began igniting her mana, panickingly so, the cave suddenly getting much cooler as she did, showing her lack of focus.
But Aster just shook his head, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. "No, no, no, no... that's not it!" he exclaimed, waving his arms in front of him, the cave filled with his labored breath. "I mean... hoooh, I... finished, done it," he managed to say, his words coming out in short bursts between gulps of air. "I saw it... the sky. It's right up there, just a little stone left..." he panted as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
Silence fell upon the cave, and for a moment, the only sound was his heavy gasps and the quiet bubbling of the hot spring. The two girls stared at him with wide eyes, their expressions a mix of disbelief, shock, and hope. "No way..." came Silvia's girlish voice, barely a whisper, her golden eyes darting between him and the tunnel, then back again at her dirty, tired brother. Nivalis simply stood there, her puffy lips slightly parted, the rusty knife trembling in her hand barely noticeably.
Aster couldn't help but let out a weak chuckle at their reaction, and he began nodding vigorously, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Yes way... get dressed, we're getting the hell out of here," he whispered, his childish voice full of excitement and relief. Then he pointed at the pile of dirty clothes they called their bed.
With a squeal of joy, Silvia ran toward their bed, almost tripping on her own feet in her excitement, and grabbed her worn-out cloak, pulling it on with trembling fingers. Nivalis, on the other hand, stood there in stunned silence, staring at her skinny boy with those big, blue eyes of hers, so dirty and tired, yet smiling like the sun. Only when he gently took her hand and pulled her toward the bed, where Silvia was struggling with her cloak, did she snap out of her daze. "Oh..." she breathed, her voice barely louder than the rustling of her clothes. "...are you sure?"
Smiling, Aster nodded as he helped Silvia untangle herself from the cloak. With his breath somewhat calmer, he explained, "Yeah, I'm sure. I think it's evening right now, because the sky was orange." The boy then untied the ragged tunic from his face and handed it to Nivalis, who stared at it with trembling fingers. "Mom...? We're getting out of here," the boy spoke softly, seeing her hesitate, and helped her put it on, covering her beautiful, big breasts with the old cloth.
Nodding slowly, Nivalis took a deep breath, her hands smoothing the tunic over her curves as she looked at her little boy. "...are you absolutely certain?" she asked again, but he just chuckled and took her pants from the ground, kneeling in front of her so she could put her feet in. Hesitantly, she stepped into her ragged, dirty pants, and he pulled them up for her, all the way to her wide hips, covering her hairless womanhood from the sight of her children.
Silvia, now dressed and in old boots, giggled as she jumped up and down on her toes, her silver hair bouncing around her face, her cloak flapping with each movement, giving glimpses of the pink, hairless kitten hidden beneath. "Let's go, let's go, let's goooo! Oh my gods, we're getting out!" she squealed, running in circles around the two of them like a cute, excited bunny. "If it's a prank, I swear, I'm going to freeze your butt off," she said, suddenly stopping and pointing her finger at him, all the bunny-ness gone from her face in an instant.
The boy chuckled as he handed the girl their mother's boots, much older and more worn-out than theirs, "It's real, I swear. Help Mom get dressed and gather our things. She's a bit..." He trailed off, looking up at their mother, who was blinking at him with those long lashes of hers, looking a bit lost. "...yeah," he said, watching the girl nod and kneel next to him, helping their mother get into her ancient leather boots, after which he turned around and picked up his own cloak, much smaller than Silvia's and not looking like a skirt at all.
Noticing in what filthy state he was in, Aster dropped his own cloak back onto the ground and rushed to the hot spring while the girls were getting ready, jumping into the water without hesitation and giving himself the quickest scrub of his life. His last one in this place, a thought that brought a wave of goosebumps all over his underdeveloped body. 'It's really happening... We're getting out of here,' he thought, smiling like an idiot while rubbing the grey out of his silver locks.
Once clean, Aster nearly jumped out of the water, watching the girls for a moment while wringing the excess water from his wet hair. They buzzed around the cave like two cute bees, gathering what little was theirs and putting everything into a small cloth bag they used during hunting trips. Nivalis was now fully clothed and looked much more alive than she had a moment ago, a hopeful smile playing on her lips.
When they rushed past him to grab that old necklace they had found a while back, the one Silvia occasionally used on their trips to light their way through the tunnels, Nivalis stopped for a second and showered his face with countless kisses, whispering "thank you" and "my little boy" over and over again until Silvia pulled her away to help her with something.
Smiling even brighter, Aster grabbed his own cloak and used it as a towel before putting it on, tying it loosely around his hips, leaving his skinny torso naked as the day he was born. Just as he was putting on his old boots that were almost falling apart from years of use, a strange noise made him drop the laces and look toward the ice wall that guarded the entrance to their little home. Nivalis and Silvia stopped what they were doing and looked at the ice wall as well after hearing that same sound. A faint, unnerving sound that sent a shiver all over their skin, coming from somewhere deep within the tunnels.
For a few moments, they all stood there in silence, listening, until Silvia broke the quiet by looking up to her mother and whispering, "W-What was that?"
Nivalis did not answer, only gripped the rusty knife tighter in her hand while staring at the ice wall. Aster walked past the two of them, holding a small flame above his left hand, the warm light reflecting on the ice wall as he got closer, listening. Silence... It seemed that even bubbles in the hot spring decided to take a break, as if the entire cave was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
Squinting into the blurry darkness, Aster used his palms to wipe off the fog that formed on the icy surface, his golden eyes trying to see something, anything. "I think it was nothing. Just the ice settling, or—" He didn't have time to finish his sentence as a single, disgusting worm suddenly rammed itself into the ice wall, making Aster flinch away from it with a loud yelp, making him almost trip over his own untied shoelaces.
In less than a heartbeat, two more worms emerged on either side of the first, flattening themselves against the ice, their disgusting, leech-like mouths pulsating and wriggling against the ice wall as they tried to break through, not caring in the slightest about the light of his flame. Soon, even more, so many more came spilling out of the darkness and jumped onto the ice, sounding like heavy rain hitting a window, the ice shaking with each impact of their slimy, disgusting bodies.
The Silverfrost family weren't the only ones excited about the tunnel leading outside, it seemed. "Oh fu—" the boy swore just as a deafening crack rang through the cave, a massive fissure tearing through the ice under the weight of the wriggling horde behind it.