Snow

Out of all the many days of the year, there are only seven that are the coldest. These coldest days are known as the Ice Goddess's, for they are hers alone.

It was on the first of the seven days that I met him, that icey beauty that came from the otherworld.

He had snow white hair cut short, with two longer locks that flowed just before his ears. He was dressed in a sapphire blue winter coat, trimmed and lined with white fur. The trim was at the cuffs of the arms and the base which went to his knees, and all the way up around the hood. Even his matching sapphire blue boots were lined with the white fur. His eyes were a piercing sapphire color to match, and his skin was a nice light tan. Not white and inhuman looking, but a nice fleshy color perfect for any human.

He was standing under the street light I passed each day on my way home from work in the dead of night, when no others dared to walk the streets. At first, I just walked past him. But something about that empty stare in his eyes he had when I passed him sent a chill down my spine to the core.

I stopped and walked back to him, my shoes crunching the soft snow beneath.

"You okay?" I asked, leaning down a bit to look under his hood at his face.

That blank look in his eyes remained. It took a second of my staring at him, but his eyes moved just a bit to look to me.

"Are you okay?" I repeated.

He straightened his head up, shaking it slightly.

"Are you lost?"

"Yes." He answered softly. "I... Can't remember who I am."

I smiled at him, "You can come with me, if you'd like."

"You won't hurt me?"

"Why would I?" I asked, giving him a reassuring himself.

It won him over. Without a word he nodded and followed me back to the house. There we undressed to just a single layer of shirt and pants.

"You must be from the south." I said upon inspecting the inner of his winter coat.

"Why do you say that?" He asked, looking at me from my fireplace's mantle.

"Your coat's lined with thick fur." I answered, walking over to him. "Only those in the south have those kind of coats."

He nodded a bit, but didn't say anything.

"You can't remember anything?" I asked, tilting my head, my auburn hair moving.

"I remember being in a carriage, hearing its wheels move and a horse pulling it." he answered. "Then it stopped. The door opened and I got out, standing under the light. I remember watching the carriage, covered in ice and snow, just leave."

"No one was there?"

"No one."

We stopped talking about what he did and did not remember. Instead we turned our attention to food and keeping warm.

As the time passed we grew more and more familiar with each other. He didn't like to speak much, he was shy and quiet, but was very honest and polite. I must've seemed a little gruff to him in comparison.

On the sixth night of the Ice Goddess's days, I came home to see the inner of my house covered in a thin layer of snow and ice. I hurried in to find him in the living room, standing there.

Behind him stood the Ice Goddess herself, dressed in very little with blue tinted skin and dark blue hair flowing everywhere.

Her voice echoed on the ice, "My child. You must return to me soon." She said.

"You can't take him!" I shouted. I must have been out of my mind- to shout at the Ice Goddess.

Her eyes looked to me, and he turned around slowly to see me. "Why not?" she asked, "He is mine. As are the next 28 hours. He belongs with me in the frozen lands of the spirits."

I couldn't think of any logical reasoning for him to stay, but I blurted something out nonetheless.

The Goddess thought a moment, then looked to him. "Is that your wish as well? To stay here with a human?"

I stood in suffocating shock, my body going numb from the piercing cold.

He nodded a very small nod.

"Then all of your powers return to me, and you shall live as a cursed spirit trapped in that form." she said, but not angrilly. She simply lifted her arm and blasted an artic wind at him. The frost that covered him, and all the rest in my house vanished as she snapped her hand with a loud deafining crack.

And she herself was gone.

I fell to the ground, gasping for breath from the warm air returning to my lungs quickly. I looked up when I felt a hand touch the top of my head.

"Can I stay?" He asked, his appearance the same as before. The only new thing was a small white snowflake mark burned into his forehead on his left temple. "Wataru?"

I nodded a bit, shifting up. "S...Sure."

Then, he smiled. Like the artic snow that had finally melted, he smiled a soft adorable smile. "I'm really happy."

I found myself smiling with him, whenever he smiled. "What's your name?"

He thought a moment, then smiled brightly with his eyes closed. "Areus, child of--"

"I cut him off, hugging him close to me." Wataru said to the young children listen to his story. "I was so happy to have someone like him near me."

"Then what happened?" asked a little boy.

Wataru sighed, smiling a bit to the boy, "We spent our days happy and joyous, filled with laughter and smiles. But when the spring came, Areus told me he couldn't handle the heat. It was the showing of his curse."

"What'd you do?" asked a little girl.

"The only thing I could." Wataru answered, "I saved him from his fate."

"Children," came a female voice from down the hall. "It's time."

"Aww but we wanted to hear the end of the story!" the children wailed, running out to the woman and left with her.

Wataru stood up, walking out of the classroom. He left through the halls and outside. In the heat of the ending summer, he returned to his home and walked down to the basement. He flipped on the lights, revealing frost and a cold area.

He walked to the large metal door, pulling it open. "I'm home."

Inside the cold room of snow and ice, there sat Areus in a lovely blue and white satin kimono. He smiled, seeing Wataru, and stood up. With open arms, Areus ran to him and embraced him.

"Welcome home."

"Were you lonely?" Wataru asked.

"A little." Areus answered shyly.

Slowly, Wataru led Areus to the door. "Can you come out now? The last day of summer was yesterday."

Areus carefully allowed his hand out of the giant refridgerator and into the warmer room. The cold layer of frost on his hand melted away and his skin turned from the cold white to the beautiful tan it should be.

"Yes." Areus answered after a moment, letting his hand test the air.

He yelped as Wataru swung Areus around and out of the cold into the warmer room. The two fell clumsily onto the stone floor.

"Areus."

"Hm?" He asked, gently stroking Wataru's hair as his head was in his lap.

"Can we have sex today?"

Slowly, Areus's cheeks grew red.

"We haven't in a while. It's too cold in there for me." Wataru looked up Areus's face. "Can we?"

"Y... Y.... Y.... Y-y-y-y-y-ye.... Yes."

Wataru smiled a bit at that nervousness that never left Areus. Together they stripped down to their fleshy bodies and adored the other with caresses and touches filled with love.

Every touch Areus gave to Wataru was cold and frigid, and every touch given to him from Wataru was warm and hot. They melted together in that wet cold and steamy sex, loving that feeling of cold and heat that pulsed through their bodies.

And so that's how it went. Every fall to the first day of spring, the child of the Ice Goddess Shiva, would give his full company and love to the human whom he had bonded to. But because his mother took his powers, Areus couldn't survive in the spring and summer, and was forced to live in the cold cellar. Wataru would open the door and the two would touch sparsely.

On the day Wataru died, he was taken by a friend down to the cellar and the door was opened. He had been hit by a car in the heat of the summer, six years after the two met. Areus took his body close, and enveloped his entire icey being around him, ice coming forth and covering the body.

The Ice Goddess appeared before her son, "I warned you. He was human. Will you return home now?"

Areus agreed, and left with his mother back to the frozen lands of the spirits.

It was there that he sought and found Wataru's spirit and they made love countless times.

The child of a god forever in love with a human's spirit. Never would Areus surrender Wataru's spirit to be reborn, and never would Wataru allow Areus to return to the world of the humans.

Finally, the Ice Goddess granted them their eternal happiness by encasing their bodies together in a solid block of ice while they were making love. Areus embracing Wataru as the other filled him up. That is how they were frozen.

It is said that should the frozen lands ever melt, the two would be free from the Ice Goddess to have their sex and love forever. But the Ice Goddess will never allow her lands to melt, for her son froze in that happiness is all she wants. She knows that a human will one day fall in love with another spirit, and her lovely child would be destroyed from the anguish he would feel.

After all, humans can only love humans eternally.