A/N: title reads as "Laal" meaning "red" in Hindi

The moon was a slice of hoarfrost; a slender curve of crystal that shimmered with borrowed light.

Junghee raised her eyes to it and sighed. Her lengthy exhale clouded out of her lips. She rubbed her palms together, blew into a cup of them to help gather scraps of warmth. She pressed a foot against the snow outside to keep herself awake, but quickly withdrew it with a curse. It was solstice night and the earth was shuddering from the sheet of cold building upon it.

By the pile of sand inside a nearby hourglass she could tell the other was late. Uncharacteristically so. Most nights, when the dark grains were split halfway between the bulbs, they’d be looking into each other’s eyes. They’d be swirling unsaid words on their tongues. It was a routine they followed without break. And any defect in the custom burned like a defect in Junghee.

"Please," she summoned into a biting wind, holding her hands together in prayer. "Be here soon…"

The addiction of her sight enervated her; weakened the drumbeats in her chest. She fretted in her seat, looking for relief, looking to mitigate her coiling pulse. She searched for those frozen blue lips that looked resplendent in the rays of moonlight. She sought those long tresses that carried the glint of another moon within themselves.

As she lay in wait, Junghee slowly contorted into an enemy of herself. She changed through every trickle of sand like a gumiho thirsting for the sight of red. She slid down in her seat as thick mist slid out from under the house, dismissing it as steam from the ondol and readying a cry to bubble out of when—

"You mustn’t stay out this late, young one."

Junghee whipped to look to a side, pulling a nerve in the action. “Ah…!” her hand flew to her neck but before skin could touch skin she was stopped.  The grasp round her wrist burned and tingled like ice. Eonsook bent close and lightly blew the pain away, carressing the spot with her cold thumb. It brought a strange wave of ardor to Junghee’s body, clamping her eyes and curling her fists. If the thumb would’ve dug any harder into the ache, she could’ve forgotten her name.

And changed it to whatever the other told her it was.

"Are you not cold?" a frigid finger traced the side of her face. But the voice fondling along the shell of her ear was like a rising sun. "Are you not tired from the day?" It wiped all memory of sunny days and sweltering afternoons, replacing them in Junghee with soft utterances and kind inquiries. Whispered heat slunk down to her shoulder. "How is sleep not dancing by your eyes yet, young one?"

"Dare sleep arrive before you have?" she asked back of the snow woman, bending into her like plants bend into light. Swaying drunkenly, Junghee looked up at Eonsook with exposed devotion that grazed the top of raw. "And dare I deny myself the sight of you?" she insisted as cold spread upwards from the fingers cupping her chin.

Fingers that once held those of a child, helping it walk for the first time. Fingers that petted the face of a husband who’d trailed snow in with his long robes. Fingers that weaved flowers and folded clothes on a lazy afternoon, or cooked lunches and counted money through a busy morning. Fingers that grew accustomed to holding a quill long enough to fill the length of parchment with their writing. Fingers that clutched and grappled and seized and clasped a life’s worth of remembrances.

Fingers that slapped the landowner’s face when he’d showed up one night, stinking of drink and soliciting to be allowed between her legs. Fingers that covered a horrified pair of lips over threats and consequences of saying no. Fingers that had clawed at the ashes of a burnt home, a white storm howling and lifting the flames to the size of an inferno. Fingers that dug and buried their vengeance under many feet of bitter winter.

Fingers that retold their story even now when Jungee wet their tips with her tongue, healing their wounds in each .

Eonsook smiled adoringly. “I will fight you once over such… poetry,” she jibed. “It falls like honey from you.” Another hand skated down Junghee’s front, to pinch meaty thighs. Their mouths hovered a blink away from one another. “Sticky and… unbearably sweet.”

Junghee scrunched her face at the words, turning away in embarrassment. “Y-you tease me.” Kisses fluttered across her forehead as Eonsook’s bare, pale s pushed up closer to her. Burnished recollections of the first time she’d cupped their fullness in her hold swept into view. She blushed, bit her lip to stop it quivering. “I have—” she gulped when a set of piercing teeth rested against and left a symbol of ownership on the flesh. “I have given myself to you,” Junghee tried again with more success. “Must you s-still tease?”

Eonsook leaned back. Her midnight hair fell like curtains around them. And she supplied no response as she moved her palm under Junghee’s silk hanbok; lifted her into a blunt curve that could rival the moon. Stars spun in mad spirals, appearing to fall towards them all at the same time. Appearing to fall like icicle daggers that hung from the eaves. Nothing was the same as blood coursed harder in her, changing just like Junghee was changing; changing like the moon changes. Changing like names, changing like a thawing planet, changing red into blue. With heat or cold, she couldn’t tell. Only that nothing remained still when Eonsook pressed her fingers deeper and shook Junghee out of the ground.

In the morning, as every morning, no footsteps were left behind.