One morning Dara was walking down the hall when her husband stepped out of a room in front of her and threw something at her.  Dara ducked, her arms going up instinctively to shield her face.  A few moments later she hesitatingly opened her eyes and stared in shock at the solid wall of ice her hands had drawn up before her.  Then she shuddered as the King of Ilindria let fire pour onto the ice, melting it in seconds onto the floor.  Again he held his hand out to her and Dara realised he was giving her a thick pair of gloves. 

“Control your ice, Wife.  There’ll be trouble if you don’t.” 

“I can’t, help it.” Whispered Dara as she pulled the gloves on wearily then wrapped both arms around herself.  She flinched as the Fire King swung on her again.  “Conceal it wife.  Conceal the wretched stuff so you don’t wreck my palace with it!” 

“It isn’t your palace.”  Whispered Dara.

Gripping her chin in one hand he let fire swirl under his skin and watched Dara’s eyes dilate in terror as the heat rushed through her head.

“So pathetically helpless.  Just like my little brother.  He thinks he’s such a great fire King.  He and his land can both burn for all I care.”

Dara stripped the gloves off again then wrapped both her hands around his larger one on .  She could feel the cold in her body struggling against the heat in his and knew she was losing.

“What are you going to do to Seoulician?”  She gasped.  The grip on her neck tightened and Dara began to see colours pinpricking her vision as the heat pounded in waves over her body.  Against she could feel the stone in JiYong’s necklace pressing into her windpipe and it burned.

“I’m not going to do anything to his land until I’ve killed him.  Then I’ll rule both lands and we’ll find out why other kings won’t trade with my beloved little brother’s country.”  He dropped Dara onto the floor and she waited, leaning on her arms until he had left before collapsing onto the flagstones, gasping raggedly.   A slight crackling sound filled the room around her as ice raced up the walls, sending shafts across the rafters and into the upper parts of the room.  Pressing both hands over her cheeks Dara let cold flow through her skin once more and finally pulled herself up to run back to her room.  Once inside she sank down on the window seat and stared around her.  Over the previous months her room had slowly become almost totally covered in ice.  Only JiYong’s stone in its case and her bed, with inner heating rods spreading through it, remained ice free.  Dara preferred the familiarity of ice and cold.  The cold had never bothered Dara, she felt only its comfort.  And so much pain and fear in her life was fuelled by heat and fire.  Her husband was planning to take over Seoulician?  That would mean a war.  Unless JiYong had let even his land’s defences slip into disarray.  JiYong’s older brother planned to kill him.  Was JiYong still the boy she had played with who used to be distressed when he burnt butterflies by mistake while playing hide and seek?  Would he still trace one fingernail of silent apology over the snowflake pattern on her shoulder?  Or had JiYong completely turned into the angry monarch she had been hearing about, who let his flames engulf any opposition to his ire?

Standing Dara went to her wardrobe and took out a pair of thick boots.  Pulling these on, she reached for the gloves her husband had told her to don and shuddered at the thought of him.  She was pulling them on too, when something occurred to her and she bit her lip thoughtfully before reaching out to hold her hand against the bedspread.  “Don’t let it freeze… Control it Dara... Don’t feel…”  The bedspread began to turn to ice and Dara pulled the other glove on.  For one moment more she paused then, taking the case off her bookshelf she lifted JiYong’s necklace out of it. A half smile tinged her lips as she looked at it; bitterness, happiness, sadness and pain all building up in her memory. 

Dara pulled the necklace impatiently over her head and put the case back on the shelf.

She had been swinging out her window ever since she was big enough to climb over the sill but tonight was different.  If she was caught Dara knew her husband would show her no mercy.  Up until now he had no reason for harming her and most of his inflicted injury had been in private.  If he caught her now though she could face public charges of betrayal and Dara could hear his roar of wrathful satisfaction as fire spewed from his fingers.  Shaking uncontrollably now Dara stopped running suddenly.  In her terror she hadn’t noticed, but looking back she could see snow spreading over the grass behind her.  For a moment Dara simply stood, staring in fear at the expanse of snow heralding that something had happened. Looking up she saw snowflakes spiralling downwards, more of them all the time.  Her fear had again turned the ice within her uncontrollable and it was now seeping into the very land she was fleeing.  Dara set her jaw and suddenly bent down to pull the boots off.  Slipping off the gloves as well she flung them away into the wind which was now beginning to snuff across the snow.  Hands still trembling convulsively in fear of everything she was doing and running from, Dara sent a blast of ice before her and skated away from the palace towards Seoulician and JiYong.  After some time she lost track of time and half asleep on her feet as she moved, Dara remembered playing with Bom and Minzy.

Both girls sprinted over the grass to their special playing area underneath the weeping willow.  Near the great gentle tree was a large patch of daises and under the bending boughs was a small stream, tame enough for small legs to wade in.  As they ran Bom looked back to her five year old sister yelling “Can’t catch us Minja!”  The smaller girl caught up with them at the willow tree, her smile undisturbed by Bom’s teasing.  She was much quieter than her sister and had a far more stable temperament. 

“What are we going to play?”  She enquired then suddenly forgot her question and the others as she noticed something about the tree before her.  Minzy frequently tried to climb that weeping willow tree but she had never gotten past the first several feet.  Now she put feet and hands onto the first holds and knotholes almost without thinking about them.  The two older girls watched until they saw where she stopped, searching for the new handhold.  Then Minzy gave a soft exclamation of triumph and kept climbing.  Bom plopped down on the grass and threw a pebble into the water beside them. 

“What are we going to play?”

Dara grinned as Bom repeated her little sister’s words.

They had been sitting under the willow for some time, absorbed in plaiting grass rafts then setting them afloat in the stream, when something small and black thudded into the grass between them.  Both girls looked down at the grass between them then up at Minzy sitting on a branch above them as she said mildly, “Bother. I dropped one.”  Bom glanced back down and picked the thing out of the grass.  It was a marble butterfly; etched in surprisingly delicate detail and small enough to fit in the palm of Bom’s childish hand.  Both girls stared at it for a moment then back up at Minzy. 

“Come down here!”  Commanded Bom and Minzy obligingly squirreled back down the tree to her big sister. Dara grinned again as she watched them.  Minzy loved her sister and Bom loved Minzy although Dara often felt that Minzy had to put up with a much more boisterous kind of love. 

“How’d you make that?” Demanded Bom, pointing to the butterfly.  Minzy shrugged, her eyes opening wide in endearing ignorance.  Dara often wished she could have Minzy as a younger sister.  She was very cute in a quietly shy way.  Bom stared at her sister, pushing her lips up and eyebrows down in a hideously exaggerated frown and pout of curiosity.  Minzy sat down on the grass and asked they had been doing.  A few minutes later Dara looked over and stared transfixed at the marble daisy growing with stunning likeness under Minzy’s fingers.  Dara poked Bom and Bom too stared.

“How long have you been able to do that?”  She asked her sister and again Minzy shrugged.  For the rest of the afternoon, Dara and Bom had amused themselves finding objects to either name or show Minzy for her to form in marble.  Bom and Minzy’s mother was ill at the time so it was to Dara’s mother that the three girls ran, out of the sunset and crisp, cooling grass to shout out Minzy’s new talent.  Almost like a second mother to the two girls, the queen of Ilindria had gazed mournfully from their filthy feet, to the floor then given her total attention to their words.  She had exclaimed and asked for examples and exclaimed again and altogether been so mollifying about it that shy little Minzy had gone bright pink and hid her face in the older woman’s skirt to brush away the hot tears of little girl confusion and pride.

A few years later when Minzy was just eleven, Dara’s mother had died.  Unable to cry because of the great burning pain in her chest Dara had gone to Bom and remembered spending a long time sitting with Bom on one side of her and JiYong on the other; no one speaking.  She remembered Minzy hearing what had happened, her eyes going a wide, deep black as she listened in silence.  The younger girl had left the room and Bom had been too preoccupied with her own, terrible loss to think any more of it. That night all the friends had walked Dara back to the palace and Minzy had come in with her to see Dara’s father.  Before their eyes, Minzy formed a stately marble gravestone from her fingers with a set face and hot tears pushing from between her eyelashes.  The stone had been simplistic but with the Queen’s favourite flowers curving over the edges.   Dara would visit their grave for years afterwards and always remember how Minzy carved every dictated word with a movement of her fingers as the King of Ilindria spoke them.

Sorry it's taken me so long to update this guys, Uni interrupts one's life so much...

Soo... any thoughts?  anything I'm not doing right?  Oh and PLEASE guys,,, this is kind of pretty important.  I am Christian, please do not use God's name or... any type of strong language I guess, when commenting on this story or I will start deleting comments. 
Thanks everyone :)  and... please don't think I've gone all uppityor whatever, I LOVE reading your comments like nothing else on earth.  honestly they make me smile like an idiot for the rest of the day >_<