There’s a pause to their tea time, but Minji kept drinking her tea, while Siyeon paused, eyes wandering around the little cottage she calls hers. The smell of peppermint tea was comforting, and outside, snow fell in a soundless manner, coating the world in white. Minji knew Siyeon can’t see much of her surroundings: they’re not in front of each other physically, a camera and too many kilometers to count separating them.

It’s been a while since Minji had talked to anyone from back home, but she had ran away to Norway for a reason that she barely remembered. It had been five years since she had grabbed Siyeon’s loaned money and one year since she’d thrice repaid it. 

The smell of peppermint is the one thing that makes her feel sane these days. That, and the dull, mechanical bore of everyday routine. Wake up, tend to the sheep, tend to the chickens, check the plants that grow on the greenhouse, do whatever repairs were needed, sell eggs and, when the time came, spun wool, buy what she needed. It was hard work, and Minji went through the motions, day to day to day, mindlessly. Most of the time, she waited for snow to fall, until the water froze and night fell, drowning the world in green. Summer wasn’t her favorite season; as far north as she was meant a lot of midnight sun, and a lot less of Yoohyeon.

There was a reason, clear cut, but she couldn’t tell Siyeon what it was without sounding like she had lost her mind. Who’d believe her? Minji sometimes barely believed herself.

“Don’t you feel alone?” Siyeon asked, breaking the silence, setting aside her own cup of tea, fingers touching her own face with a gentleness that Minji found foreign. She barely looked like the Siyeon Minji remembered - fierce, vivid, in screaming color. This girl in front of her was a demure, proper lady of high society, hair in its natural color, something the Siyeon five years before would never have, piled atop a high bun. She doesn’t look like herself, and maybe Minji doesn’t, as well.

Maybe running away had been the right idea. If this was the fate that had awaited her, then maybe being where she was was good.

“Not really.” Minji said, a smile on her face. The reflection on the small, tiny camera showed a certain sadness to it. To hide it, Minji drank another sip of tea. “I have company.”

“Funny.” Siyeon started, slow and bored, eyes cold; too bad Minji knew what real ice looked like. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone around there. Have you looked into those part-time workers thing I saw? You can’t possibly manage that farm of yours alone, Minji.”

There is someone. Minji refused to share, egotistically so, but Yoohyeon is special. She had never believed in gods, ghosts and other supernatural affairs until she met that girl, half god half human, and had fallen in love as winter was: slowly, blindingly, and it had covered every inch of her being before Minji herself could’ve said anything about it.

She doesn’t answer Siyeon, instead drinking her tea.

“Minji…” Siyeon started, but a small, bell chime sounded, and Minji knew what it was, smiling gently. She rose, distracted already, and she could hear Siyeon say something.

“It’s time for me to check on the sheep, I think.” Minji replied, putting her teacup down, eyes looking away from Siyeon’s grief-stricken face. Siyeon made a faint sound of protest as she disconnected the call, turning back just in time to see winter herself waltz through the door, dragging in snowflakes in her white, white hair, taking off her fur cape and humming along a song that sounded like the wind against the fjords.

Yoohyeon is a representation of winter, one of many avatars, and Minji had found her wounded a few years ago - back when she was still alone and scared and her flock was just a few ewes and three chickens, the aurora bathing the world in green -, breath raspy and covered in ice. It had taken her a whole night of work to chip away the ice and she had the burns on the tips of her fingers to prove it; then, as she transported the girl to her bed, she saw snow fall as they walked. 

Minji knew something wasn’t quite right when the strange girl’s blood was cold and gold, but she stayed quiet, opened her first aid kit and patched her up. No questions asked; Minji knew woods had their mysteries. 

When the girl woke up, she revealed her eyes and her secrets, and thanked Minji profusely. She left in a flurry of snow that left her bed wet and frozen, and Minji did not expect her - a literal spirit of winter, the one who made snow fall and the world silent and white - to come back. 

Until she did, that is. After that, falling in love came easily, and Minji could barely remember a day where Yoohyeon wouldn’t appear in her doorstep, drinking tea that became cold with a touch and eating whatever Minji could produce from her crops.

Yoohyeon looked at her, smiling brightly, eyes that shine in all the colors of an aurora focused on Minji, and Minji smiled back, her hand finding Yoohyeon’s own easily. Even through the thick gloves she wore she was cold, and it suited Minji just fine. She could be warm for both of them.

“Hard day at work, I suppose?” Minji asked, starting to dress herself up to go outside; she wasn’t lying to Siyeon, and she really had to put back the sheep on their pens before night fell. Yoohyeon stared at her, snowflakes falling gently from her hair to the ground, forming a small, but surely growing, puddle. “I don’t suppose you’d mind coming with me?”

Yoohyeon smiled, nodding, and as Minji went outside, Yoohyeon latched onto her, cold but comfortable. It was fine, but Minji’s arm would need to be heated later to avoid another burn.

“I heard you talking to someone.” Yoohyeon said, as they walked, slowly and under the lights of a nascent aurora, to where the sheeps were grazing. “Did I interrupt it?”

She thought of Siyeon, a pale shadow of herself, and shook her head, leaning to kiss her lips for a moment. The ice stung against her skin, but Yoohyeon giggled against Minji’s mouth for a moment, leaning into it.

There’ll be a pile of snow when they separate, and Minji knew this, but she couldn’t care much at the moment, leaning into her girlfriend as she is.