Warning: Brief mention of suicide.

Ima's guest sits at the table once more, speaking of his father's trip northeast through the Brimalto mountains. Unlike most of the folk in Eidenswill, Artemis' father Kalen, is not a farmer, but one of the finest artisans north of the Grim Woods. Perhaps their family would be rich if they lived south, where most of the aristocrats reside. Instead, Kalen makes a modest living, traveling with exquisitely crafted furniture to sell at busy market squares, mostly to foreigners that visit Valsinya by sea. Artemis' mother, Camellia, tends to an herb garden that she uses to make tonics for travelers about to set off on the Jolly Road. Artemis isn't sure what he will do when he's older, neither interested in crafts or tonics, and not very skilled with either.

"On the other side of the Brimalto mountains is the Tarminian sea. Have you ever been there?!" Artemis asks with a high pitch to his voice.

"I have," Ima answers. "Though it did not fascinate me as much as it does you."

"You're just hard to impress."

"Suppose so." Ima pinches red flakes and pink sand between her fingers, dropping them into a bubbling pot of pearl white liquid.

"Papa said this is his biggest sale yet. It will help get the materials for the very special gift he promised to bring me," he says, tapping his feet against the ground. "I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell."

"Would the gift be as special if he had told?"

"I don't know, but I hate waiting. He won't be home for at least two months!"

"Two months is hardly any time at all."

"To you, it isn't. You live forever."

"Perhaps. So long as none relieve me of my head." Ima smirks.

"Ima," he whispers. "Will you miss me when I'm gone?"

"I imagine not. I've watched many come and go. It's all the same. Time goes on. Before long I'll forget your voice and your face and the conversations we've had," she answers, as honestly as ever. Another child may cry or whimper, but Artemis likes Ima's honesty.

"I'd miss you," he declares. "But maybe that's because I wouldn't have as much time to forget you."

Ima hums, reaching for his two coppers. She slips them between the pages of a notebook Artemis purchased weeks ago from a merchant. The pages are filled with scribbled letters she has been teaching him. When he spelled his name the other day, he was nearly in tears. Ima couldn't fathom why, and she has never been interested to ask for an explanation.

"Hurry along before it gets dark," she instructs, handing the notebook to Artemis. He shares a smile before darting out the door.

But the threat of the Grim Woods soon becomes the least of Artemis' worries. Days later, a strange storm made of ice and snow hits in the middle of summer. Crops wither and die. Travelers freeze in the night. Citizens fight over food, wood for their fire, and blankets to keep their loved ones warm.

The king of Valsinya calls a state of emergency in less than a month. He empties the warehouses of rations. Soldiers distribute them from town to town. The children of Eidenswill watch the soldiers march from carriages, arms overflowing with rations. They tell tales to each other, stories explaining a soldier's missing finger or scarred face. When one overhears them, he sneers, sending the children squealing in all directions. The laughter and smiles are brief for Artemis. Although he sits warm in his house with a full belly, his mind is stressed with worry. There has been no news from his father--not until many weeks later.

In the middle of the night, a small caravan of travelers stop in Eidenswill. They wake the village head, claiming to have an item that belongs to Kalen Redbrook. Shocked, the village head escorts them to Camellia's home where she learns of her husband's fate. He was on the mountain path when the storm hit, seeking shelter in a hunter's hut with four other merchants. The unforgiving winds accompanied by mounds of snow trapped them for many weeks. When the storm passed and travelers risked the mountain path, the caravan came upon the hut. Two men, half dead, minds rattled and overtaken by hunger, gnawed on the bones of their companions. All that remained of Kalen Redbrook was bloody clothes and a package wrapped in cloth.

"We're sorry for your loss," the traveler says, handing Camellia the package. "We weren't sure we could trust the survivors, but they told us that this belonged to Kalen Redbrook of Eidenswill. Since we were coming this way to journey the Jolly Road, the least we could do is return it to his family."

In tears, Camellia unwraps the gift. A bow rests within, accompanied by a leather quiver engraved with ocean waves. Kalen promised to teach Artemis to hunt when he was old enough. The bow is the special gift he spoke of, crafted by his own hands. He hoped to give Artemis the best bow he ever constructed, made of expensive materials carried across the Tarmanian sea.

"Thank you," Camellia whispers, cradling Kalen's last gift. "Thank you so much."

After the travelers leave, Camellia doesn't have the heart to tell Artemis the truth. She isn't certain she believes the truth. She peeks into his room, thinking of a lie to tell come morning, only to find him sitting motionless by the door. When he raises his gaze, eyes puffy with tears, she knows that he heard everything.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," she whispers, cradling him in her arms. It becomes a memory that Artemis clings to; his mother wiping away the tears when whispering words of love because, with his father's death, Camellia changes. Everything changes.

The storm isn't the last. More follow well into the winter. Children freeze in their beds. Travelers disappear into the Grim Woods that remain untouched, as green and warm as ever. More and more risk the Jolly Road, hoping to reach the south. Then news spreads of the king barring off the trail by stationing soldiers at the southern gate of the Jolly Road. They don't have enough food for the sudden influx of citizens, or so they say. The desperate are pushed back north, to the deadly cold that takes life after life until graves are no longer dug. Bodies are piled high to be set aflame. Even with the horrendous stench, people crowd around for warmth. And when the food runs low, a body goes missing here or there.

When hope forms in spring, it's taken just as quickly during harvest. The worst harvest they've ever had. After the last storm, there aren't enough rations from the kingdom and no money to spend. The pain of hunger takes and takes until the world seems to die with them. Villagers pick the apple trees clean. Animals are scarce as hunters prowl the wilds. People fight in the streets, killing for a bag of potatoes or a slice of meat. Mothers smother their infants to silence their hungry pleas, then hang themselves from trees. Little Maggie wakes one morning after the first supper she's had with meat in months, feeling much better than the day before, until she realizes the family dog is gone. She searches for days, her parents too frightened to tell her. When she puts two and two together, she buries his toys in the backyard and never speaks of him again.

Camellia sets stew on the table, warm water with cut up turnips and half a potato. Artemis eats, his stomach growling for more. His body aches from more than hunger, but he says nothing of it or the nightmares refusing to let him sleep. When Camellia watches from across the table, he sees the frustration in her eyes, the hunger that screams, "you'd have twice as much if he weren't here."

"When will you learn to use that damn bow?" she grumbles under her breath. "I slave over that garden and I slave finding what I can, but what do you do? You eat and sleep and eat and sleep."

Artemis made the mistake once of reminding her that he searched all day for berries and caught fish with nets he learned to make from Ima. Camellia brought her hand across his cheek in the first of many strikes to follow. Initially, her eyes widened in horror. Then days passed and she withered away, mournful of the loss of her love, hateful of looking upon Kalen's spitting image every day, and resentful.

"Why am I stuck with a child that isn't even mine?" she asks somewhere between a whimper and a shout.

Yes, Artemis learned the truth over the harsh winter months. She let it slip in a fit of rage; Kalen returned from his travels years ago with a baby. He always wanted a family, but Camellia couldn't have children, and she was grateful. She never wanted children. However, to make Kalen happy, she accepted the child, until now.

Artemis sits at the table, head lowered as he repeats a new common phrase, "I'm sorry, Mama. I'll do better."

She mutters and grumbles, then disappears with a burlap sack to scavenge before dark. Artemis watches her silhouette bathed in dusk stalk out the door. His gaze strays to the Grim Woods where the trees remain lush and plentiful. As if to spite them, fruit has grown where there once was none. Apples dangle from branches and berries sparkle from bushes. But perhaps it is not spite; they're tricks.

Paulo appears along the edge of the forest, his head on a swivel.

"Paulo!" Artemis calls from his bedroom window. His friend looks back, cheeks sunken and limbs thin. "Paulo, get away from there!"

Paulo doesn't listen. He lingers over the bushes, staining his lips with berry juice. Shadows overtake him, gobbling him up as swiftly as he does the berries. Artemis waits, his chin set atop the windowsill coated with salt to keep out unwanted fae guests. Darkness falls. Paulo doesn't return. He doesn't return any day after. More go missing, especially when winter is on the verge of returning.

As Artemis looks out from his window, the fear and hunger so painful that even he contemplates risking taking an apple from the tree, he gets an idea.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:✧*⋆.*:･ﾟ✧.: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆ ☾