I am Winter

I awoke to a deep chill.

Breath rose from me and disappeared as the last bits of heat fled from it. I wiggled down into the covers trying to find a warm pocket. The chill remained. I needed to pee, but getting out of bed was not an option.

What happened to the heater?

Then, the phone rang. I grabbed the cold chunk of metal and plastic and touched it lightly to my ear.

“Hello,” I whispered.

“Son.,” It was my mother. I was rare for her to call. She preferred to wait until I finally called her, and then complain that I never call her. “It’s your father.”

“What’s wrong?”

“A spell has been cast upon him and he’s been frozen solid.”

“Um, what?”

“We’re not sure what happened. The Council can sense his life, but it’s fading. Come quickly, there may not be much time. I love you.” The line died.

I sat up and threw the covers off. A snowy cloud swirled from them. I swung my bare feet to the floor. A burning cold chased the blood from the extremity, to places my body deemed more vital. I recoiled from the cold floor with some effort, tearing my frozen sole from the sheet of ice.

I looked around the room. Familiar surroundings looked alien beneath layers of solid cold. Long, icy spikes reached out of the air vent high on the wall. The ceiling fan lolled to one side from the weight of icicles gripping the blades. The sterile smell of cold rode on each breath.

I shivered in disbelief. In the oppressive cold, I remembered a dream. The dream, actually. The dream of my manifestation. The dream where the world was white and cold and desolate and I was at its center driving the heat away as one would scatter stray cats from a porch. The cold freed me from the heat of mortality and the world suffered for it.

For thousands of years there has always been a mage of seasons; Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.

I am Winter.

Each of us manifest at adolescence with a significant event. The last Winter was responsible for two ice ages. It is thought that power of that magnitude no longer exists. Technology, and its proliferation in society, interferes with the harmonious nature of magic, diminishing its flow. That, in and of itself, is a part of the natural order. People rely on technology for the things that magic used to provide. It is inevitable for evolution to weed us out.

Right now, however, my power surged into being. It threatened the lives of everyone I knew and loved, and everyone else in the world. I had to gain control or become the creature of apocalypse from my dream.

Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll take care it.

I stood on the burning-cold floor. I exhaled foggy breath. The cold flowed into me. The patter of rain filled the room, as the ice returned to water.

I am Winter.