The ice I was leaning against was cold but Villai always had a higher body temperature so I was nicely toasty. Father claimed in Villai ran especially strong our lava titan blood, making him stronger and hotter than any Villager ever known. Bad phrasing but you know what I mean. He also says I got all the human blood, which is why Villai got so much titan. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mind or hate the fact but I'd never fault Villai for getting what I didn’t and for being what I could never be. Thunder boomed again, rattling my teeth. I looked down at my sleeping brother. 

Villai was a true Villager. His hair was as dark as a cave sunk deep beneath the Marshlands, green eyes that shimmer from the Deadly Forest at night to the Deadly Forest just before dawn. His hair reaches just past his shoulder blades, normally done in a Villager braid. Villager braids are complex plaits that usually depict a scene but Villai’s was so dark that the image is usually lost in the black whorls. He was the image spit over a fire of our father , and promised to be just as strong, if not stronger.

I yawned.

Father is sure that when Villai hits puberty he’ll start to vomit molten rock, and I wouldn’t put it past him to do so. There had been tales of Villagers able to do lava titan things along with other wonders of deit-al proportions.

 I fell asleep halfway through my musings on how to keep our house from catching fire once Villai started belching it.

When I woke up I couldn’t make sense of why my mind felt so fuzzy. Even though my eyes were open the fringes of my vision were black and everything was blurry. I tried to lift my arm but got only a twitch. Panic set in like a storm on the horizon and I had a vague sense that something was desperately wrong. I managed to prop myself up slightly,blinking blearily. Villai muttered in annoyance at the shifting and squirmed into a more comfortable position, moving from my chest to my middle torso. Suddenly, I sucked in a breath.

 It was such a big breath and did so much to chase away the cobwebs on my brain that I felt I had never been so surprised in my thirteen years of life to breathe. I coughed out some ice that had flown into my mouth and yelped when an icicle cracked from the force of my hacking body against my cave wall and fell onto my head. It split into about five main pieces and two rolled onto Villai. He didn’t wake up, and the icicle started steaming slightly. Okay. Now was the tricky part. Mission Get Out Of Villai’s Sleep Grip was now in operation. First step, standing. I tugged on my leg. It was stuck fast under Villai’s bulk. Okay. First step, free legs. I wriggled like a fish caught in a trap and used my arms to create enough space between my knee and Villai’s face to free a leg. 

Ha. Less a fish in a trap and more a hare in a weak snare. He murmured something bloodthirsty and squeezed me harder in his sleep. Okay, a strong snare. A really, really strong snare. He shifted and relaxed. I jerked my other leg free, my foot slipping out of my overlarge furred boot. With some fine stealy stealy skills, if I do say so myself, and I do, I rescued my boot from Villai’s clutches.

He continued to snore.

Ha. 

I jammed the boot onto my foot. And people thought taking something from a sleeping Stonebone was hard. Pphht. I’d stolen the socks off of Father before on really, really bad days when the wind didn’t just scream endlessly but tried to tear Osesh apart. 

It’s the difference between clawing someone’s face off and eating a few vital organs.

I ducked out of my cave and started down the stairs.

When there’s no one up and the house is silent in the predawn darkness it makes me wonder if this was what death was like. Quiet and vaguely blue, a clear dark, like the thin film of ice above deep waters.

I jumped at the second to last stair because of luck and tiptoed past the lifeless hearth, then the sleeping room. I breathed gently and stepped lightly in the four steps it took to get far enough out of my Father’s earshot to be able to silently scurry again. I made it past the sixth stone and slithered into the open room.

The open room is basically a small storage area that opens into the outside with a flap of leather over a doorframe. Every Villager house has one, else they invoke the wrath of Toor Hurondah, the god of wind, seas, ground, killing, blood, and basically everything. There are other gods of those things but we worship Toor Hurondah because he takes it all and the other gods fight him for taking what's theirs. I walked over to the basket of laundry huddled in the corner next to the door's frame and grabbed a handle. As I was the official laundry Whelp of the Village it was my duty to make all the Village’s laundry wet and then dry. I don’t grace what I do with the term clean. By the time the Villagers give up their laundry to me there is no possible way the term clean would apply to them every again. It might have to whatever made the the clothes but once something gets into Villager hands the very idea is but a distant dream. 

I started heaving the monumentous pile of laundry towards the door. Every time I go to wash it’s almost up to my chest and the basket was bigger than my cave. I’d put it on skids a few weeks after I became the Laundry Whelp because it’s mighty difficult dragging something heavier than you through hip high snow or across a yard that’s more lake than land. I started grunting with the effort. 

The stream that runs by our house is usually deep and wide enough for Villai and I to splash and swim in when Father isn’t home and no one can see us and usually takes no more than a minute or two to get to but it takes me ten whenever laundry day comes. Naturally by the time I get to the steam I’m sweating in the bitter air and my muscles are jam. Whew. I straightened and tried to push out a crick in my ba-wait. Was someone in the forest? I’d seen a flash of red. I stared into the dark foliage. Nothing so much as shivered beyond its normal thrashing in the howling wind. I moved my eyes, then snapped them back to where I thought I’d seen the color.

I stared for a few more seconds, mainly to delay the inevitable and cold task ahead of me.

I blinked. The sunrise was starting to show above the cliffs, I confirmed with a glance over the Village, and since everything on Osesh is always wet a leaf must’ve just caught the sun’s red. I reached down and grabbed a soggy rock, the biggest I could hold with two hands. I threw it as hard as I could at the ice over the stream. Fissures appeared but the ice held. I scooped up another and lobbed that one as well.

CRACK plunk!

“Haha! Take that, nature! Who is the Villager that cannot conquer the elements? Not this one, no!” I cheered, then did a little Villager jig which involved a lot of pretending to decapitate your enemies and make their heads into candle holders.

SPLASH!

Night bugs! I skipped back away from the backsplash and shook my fist at the stream, which gurgled like a laugh. “So you think you could get me? Ha! I am a Villager! I rule you, blue phantom! Just try me! I’ll bring you tophhbraaaaahhh!” I sputtered as jet of water nailed me right in the face and onto my sitter area with a splash. “You-you! Why do you always do this every morning?” I demanded, wiping water out of my eyes. A rock shot out of the hole I’d made and skinned the side of my ear as I dove out of its trajectory. It smacked into the basket of laundry with a dull thump. “Well, maybe if you didn’t freeze every night then I wouldn’t have to throw rocks into you!” I rationalized. The water through the hole got a little more turbulent, splashing onto the ice and glittering in the sun’s rising rays.

“Yes, yes, the ice makes you look really pretty, I understand, but I need to do this laundry, and you know that either you get a lot of soap into you, or only a little, so which one is it gonna be, huh?” I stood and put my thin hands on my skinny hips, then gave my best stern glare. I thrust my hips to the side to dodge another jet of water. Hmm. Threats were a no go. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." The stream made a kind of wavy motion I could only describe as a 'hmph'. 

"But you're pretty without the ice!" The water splashed over the ice again, like it was preening. "You don't need the ice to be pretty or shiny! So what I broke it?" Foot smells, that made it angry. "But I only broke it because you're so pretty and useful and I just wanted to see you, the water, not the ice!" Ooh, I was close! And cold, but mostly close! "You're so pretty, would you mind if I used you to make these clothes pretty as well?" I snatched a shirt from the pile and held it up to the water. I burbled. "Please? We all just want to be as unbelievable shiny and amazing and beautiful as you." I pleaded. 

The stream squirted a bit of water into my eye but settled. Stupid streams, stupid rivers, and stupid water. “Thank you.” Just for dramatic effect I gave my most dignified bow.

“AGH! Coldcoldcoldcoldcold!” Stupid water dumping freezing water on my neck with my head down! “AAAGGGHHHHHHH!” With my pitiful Villager war cry I scooped up my ice breaker stick and got into a very wet war.