A Hot & Cold Heart

Rain drove relentlessly outside, a cruel foreshadow to what was yet to come and simultaneously, what had passed...Bran would have enjoyed this, Flora thought wistfully, staring out the window of the cabin and into the storm. It was the tail end of summer, the days still quite warm but the evenings hinting of what was ahead in only a few short weeks...The cursed winter which inevitably brought nothing but strife to the Kinrade family. Every year, a member seemed to die in the bitter cold until there was no one left to remember what anguish the season caused...Bran is gone. Everyone is gone now, claimed by the merciless mountains. I will not befall the same fate. My family would not want this for me. They did not want this for themselves...A strand of thick, red hair fell from the loose braid at the base of her neck, covering a blue-grey eye but Flora did not bother to brush it aside or straighten her appearance. What was the point? There was no one there but the lone hound who, too, had lost his companion in the relentless winter, nearly at the same time that Bran had passed. Would she ever find anyone to love again?