[Silvia]
— "I-I don't see anything..." Silvia mumbled under her breath, her voice weak and barely audible. She and her mother knelt in the powdery snow, peeking from a small bump in the terrain at something in the distance, their silver heads blending almost perfectly with the surroundings. Her golden eyes squinted hard, her long lashes nearly touching her cold-kissed cheeks from the effort, but she still couldn't make out the thing that her mother was pointing at.
Everything was just white. Pure, endless white. Turning her head to look at her mother, the girl frowned, her red nose scrunching up slightly. "Are you s-sure?" she stuttered through her chattering teeth, her whole body trembling in the freezing winter air, her skinny legs buried deep in the snow.
Nodding, Nivalis put her arm around the shivering girl and hugged her to her side while pointing with the other hand at the white shape on the white ground among the white trees, her pale blue eyes never leaving that spot. One blink would be enough for her to lose sight of it forever... or until she used her Blessing one more time. "It's a rabbit. A fat, juicy rabbit," the woman said in a hushed, excited whisper, lining up the girl's face with her arm and pointing finger to help her find the animal in the distance. "Right there, sweetie."
For many long moments, Silvia stared at that spot, her golden eyes squinting so hard it hurt a little. And just when she was about to give up and shake her head, her eyes widened, and she gasped. "Oh!" she breathed out, and her head snapped to her mother again with those wide, shocked eyes, her trembling finger pointing in the same direction, right at the fluffy, white ball of meat hiding in the shadow of the pine tree. When she looked back, she lost it for a moment, but a few blinks later, it was back again.
Temporarily off his mother's back, Aster was right behind them, crouching in the snow with a frown beneath his blindfold. He tried to lift it a bit and take a peek at the animal, but all he got was a painful stab of light in his eyes that made him wince.
Putting his blindfold back over his eyes, he crawled closer to the two of them as silently as possible, his knees sinking into the powdery snow, and whispered, "You can do it," in his sister's ear, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "And if you can't hit it, well... that means you can't do it, I guess, and that's okay. I've found this rock on the ground that I'll throw right after you, so we'll get it either way," he quietly added, showing a really dope, smooth rock in his right hand. The girl didn't even look, not wanting to lose sight of the rabbit again, but he didn't know that and kept smiling proudly.
Only by some miracle did Silvia not roll her eyes at her stupid brother and break her concentration. "Ugh, you doofus... shush," she breathed out as quietly as she could, a thin fog forming in front of her chapped, parted lips. A heavy silence followed, in which her breathing grew heavy and uneven, her small, bare hands gripping a bunch of icicles that she had made earlier to hunt with. Each was no bigger than her pinky, yet deadly nonetheless, so sharp that she had to hold them carefully not to cut herself. "I'm starting," she finally whispered, and with a flick of her wrist, the first icicle rose into the air from between her slender fingers, lining up with her golden eyes.
Instead of using her exploding mana-mist behind the icicles to launch them forward, Silvia decided to do it with just her ignited mana. Invisible, odorless, and almost intangible, it flowed out of her hand and "gripped" the icicle tightly, the same way she would grab it in her hand. In her mental image, it was pretty much what she imagined, and the mana had no choice but to obey its master and make it fly. It was a much weaker way of throwing her icicles, and it cost more than doing it the mist-way, but it was also much faster and completely silent, just what is needed in the hunt.
'Goodbye, fluffy friend...' Silvia thought sadly, feeling bad for having to kill something so adorable and round. What if it had a bunch of baby rabbits somewhere that would starve and die without their only parent? What if they were just as fat and fluffy, but in an adorable way? The thought made her feel a bit guilty and sad. 'No, no, don't think. Just aim, aim, aim, aaaaim and...' the girl concentrated, her tongue sticking from the corner of her mouth. In an instant, the icicle shot out like an arrow, whistling through the air and toward the unsuspecting rabbit.
Just when Silvia was about to start thinking how much she would grieve and mourn the little critter, and how she was going to blame herself for its death while stuffing her face with its meat, the rabbit twitched. A second later, its fluffy body bounced away from her projectile, making it miss and pierce the ground, leaving only a tiny, unnoticeable hole in the powdery snow. "Damn it..." Silvia cursed in a whisper as she sprang after the rabbit, her skinny legs kicking and flailing about in the snow, struggling to move her feet fast enough after the rabbit.
A second later, a really awesome rock flew through the air in the entirely wrong direction, hitting one of the trees with a loud, dull thud. "Got it!" Aster exclaimed with pride before his blindfolded face turned toward the running-away sister and mother. "Oh."
The girl paid it no mind and ran after the rabbit as fast as the snow allowed her, launching icicle after icicle at the escaping animal. Even Nivalis threw her knife at it a few times, quickly picking it up each time from the depths of the snow. "Kill it! Come... on!" Silvia kept yelling at herself through her teeth as her flat chest heaved with effort, the frozen branches of pine trees slapping her in the face as she ran past. 'How is it so fast?!' the girl screamed in her mind as she launched yet another icicle, only for it to miss by flying in between the fat wrinkles. "Dammit!" she cursed in disbelief, her girlish voice echoing through the quiet forest, returning to her a few times.
The sight of its fluffy behind growing smaller and smaller as it zig-zagged between the trees and snowdrifts, escaping the girl's projectiles one by one, was a disheartening one. As the rabbit got further and further away, with her aim getting worse and worse, Silvia was starting to give up.
But just as her steps began to slow down, her mother's strong hands suddenly swooped her off her feet and cradled her in her arms, carrying her like a princess in a fairy tale. "Hit it, honey! Just once!" Nivalis shouted as she broke into a run, holding her daughter in her arms, her pale blue eyes trained on the white ball of fur in the distance.
The wind whipped at the girl's flushed face as they got faster and faster, her mother's grown-up legs pushing them through the snow at incredible speed. Even in her wildest dreams, Silvia wouldn't have been able to move this fast. She clung to her mother's neck with her left arm and held the last of her icicles in her right, her golden eyes squinting against the wind as she aimed at the rabbit's fatty backside. 'Just once,' Silvia thought to herself, her hands trembling a little, 'Just. Once!'
Whoosh after whoosh, the icicles cut through the air, one after another, each missing its target by a hair. A jump here, a sudden turn there, a little stumble... it was all it took for her super-deadly projectiles to miss. A headache was starting to build behind Silvia's temples, and the world was growing a bit blurry as she spent more and more mana trying to hit the animal. "One. More," she gritted through her teeth as the rabbit got even smaller in the distance. "Stop running, you coward! Fight me like a... like a rabbit!" Silvia screamed at the top of her lungs, launching her very last icicle at the escaping critter. Her eyes squinted hard, and she leaned forward as if it could help an already flying projectile hit any better, her silver hair fluttering in the wind.
She missed. Again. "No!" Silvia squeaked, her next breath full of her mother's hair. A breath after that? Very snowy, as her mother's legs gave up under them, and they both tumbled into the deep, freezing snow face-first. With their faces buried in the powdery whiteness and their butts sticking out, the rabbit had every chance in the world to escape, and escape it did. By the time they got back onto their feet, their faces and hair covered in snow, the animal was long gone, leaving nothing behind but its tracks that the wind was already covering.
— "Ugh..." Silvia groaned as she removed the snow from her face, her golden eyes staring in the direction where the rabbit had run away. She felt her mother's cold, wet hand pat her shoulder, making her turn to look at her. "Sorry," the girl said in a quiet, apologetic whisper, looking up at her snow-covered mother. "Y-you... you look like a s-snowman," she added, snorting and giggling at the sight.
Nivalis sighed before chuckling as well, "You are no better," she muttered under her breath as she began to brush off the snow from her daughter's flushed face and cheeks, then shook the girl's cloak to remove the snow from it. The outline of her petite figure was barely visible beneath all the snow clinging to the dark-green fabric. "I've gotten so terrible at running," she said more to herself than her daughter as she worked, her lips a thin line.
Returning the favor, Silvia brushed off the snow that stuck to her mother's hair and shoulders, then helped to clean her backside. "It's not t-that, you were f-fine," the girl said, giving her mother's thigh a reassuring squeeze, followed by even more reassuring, "Boop, boop" as her small fingers sank into her soft flesh. Pausing to sneeze into the sleeve of her dirty cloak, she added, "It's m-me, my aim was j-just awful." A long, heavy sigh escaped her lips, so heavy that her face almost disappeared in the fog it created.
The two of them stood there for a long moment, sad and miserable as they could only be, surrounded by motionless pines that towered all around, with no rabbit to be seen anywhere. "Well," Nivalis finally said, her lips curved into a tiny, forced smile, "we'll get the next one. Come on, let's follow the tracks, maybe we'll catch up to it later," she murmured, crouching and picking up her knife from the ground before taking her daughter's cold hand into hers, equally cold one.
Looking around in confusion, right before they were about to start walking, Silvia mumbled a quiet, "I think we forgot s-something..." She bit her lower lip as she tried to remember what it was, her mother doing the same thing after her words. They both kept looking around for a while longer, their brows furrowed in deep, thoughtful frowns, before a simultaneous, loud, "Aster!" escaped their mouths. They ran back without a second of hesitation, dragging one another by the hand, stumbling over the snow in their hurry.
"...look, I know it sounds a bit silly, but hear me out..." was the first thing they heard when they neared the place they had left Aster in, after five minutes of relentless running and tumbling through the snow. His voice echoed through the trees, sounding as if he were having a very serious conversation, much to their confusion. "Next time we see a rabbit, just... throw me into the air? Yeah, yeah, before you say anything, just hear me out," he said in a hushed tone, his hands gesturing wildly in front of two pines that were next to each other, each of the exact height as his mother and sister.
His blindfolded head turned from the "Mom tree" to the "Silvia tree" and back again, his voice sounding quite excited. "My fire is super deadly up close, right? So if you just... launch me into the air and towards it, and I just... you know? Go all—" his hands started making all kinds of gestures, shapes, and movements in the air, his fingers wiggling and fists clenching, "woooosh, kaboom, wooooooo, kshhhh!" and many more sounds and words that nobody else knew the meaning of but him. "It's a good idea, right? There's no way a rabbit can escape that," Aster muttered, expecting an answer from the pine-girls. When he got nothing, he sighed heavily and scratched the back of his head, "Wait. I know what you're thinking..."
Behind his back, Nivalis and Silvia just stood, watching their son-brother talk to the trees, not sure whether to laugh, cry, or feel pity for him. It was a strange mix of all of those emotions and feelings. Eventually, after the boy started describing the different ways he could fly through the air to maximize the distance traveled, Nivalis decided to interrupt him and make their presence known, "Sweetie?"
"Ugh, come on! I can totally do that, it's not that—AHHHHHHHHHHH!" Aster screamed in panic, an animalistic kind of it that catapulted him into the air higher than himself, and made his voice shift from a childish-boyish to a girlish shriek and then reach an ultrasonic pitch in the matter of a heartbeat before cracking. He sank deep into the snow as he fell, his legs and arms flailing wildly as he tried to "fight back," for it to look anything but fighting.
Only after a moment of pure terror did he stop and finally find the courage to lift his blindfold slightly, peeking at the two giggling figures standing in front of him with that blurry sight of his. A frown of confusion formed on his youthful face, and without uttering a word, he quickly glanced at the trees behind him, his neck popping from the sudden movement. Then back to the girls, who started laughing even harder. Then back at the trees. Back to the girls. And then at the trees one last time. "Oh."
...
"Why are you not laughing? It's not so funny anymore, huh? Huuuh?" Aster asked in a high-pitched, annoyed tone of voice as he finally shifted his attention to the two, miserable-looking, shivering messes that were his mother and sister. Both of them spent the entire day running after a single overweight rabbit, each time getting nothing but a faceful of cold, wet snow for their troubles. And every walking minute they didn't spend chasing the critter, they spent giggling at his expense. "It was hilarious back outside, and now it's suddenly not funny anymore... I wonder why that is?" he muttered under his breath, squinting his eyes under his blindfold.
The small shelter they huddled in was little more than a hole dug into the side of a hill. The ceiling was a tangle of pine branches, through which the smoke from their small, almost pathetic fire in the middle rose lazily. Light from the snowy forest outside spilled in from the opening behind the boy's back, the whistles of wind occasionally reaching their sensitive pointy ears.
Both Nivalis and Silvia knelt on the cold ground, avoiding their son-brother's eyeless stare by looking anywhere but at him with suppressed smiles on their flushed, sweaty faces. Their bodies shook violently, their long, silver locks of hair plastered to their foreheads and necks, and their hands hidden in their armpits. "I dunno. It's just not funny anymore, I guess..." Silvia muttered, her teeth chattering and her nose running, a slight chuckle in her voice. She then looked at her mom, who was also on the verge of a fit of laughter. 'Thank the gods he can't see us, or he would be throwing snow at our faces,' she thought to herself, signaling her to say something by nodding towards the boy.
Clearing her throat, Nivalis managed a somewhat forced, "W-we won't laugh anymore, h-honey, we're sorry..." almost choking on her own words in the process. However, when she once again remembered him standing in front of two pine trees, arguing and gesturing wildly with his hands, she couldn't stop a loud snort from escaping her mouth, which prompted the same reaction from her daughter and a groan from her son. "We're s-sorry, sweetie, r-really..." she repeated, her blue eyes tearing up.
A long, calming exhale left Aster's nostrils, and he shook his head. "Uh-huh," he said as he crossed his arms and leaned against the cold, icy wall of their little den, not being bothered by the cold in the slightest. "You say that every time you need to get warm, but when we're outside, it's all giggles and snickers again... I dunno if you deserve it," he muttered, his head tilting a bit to the side as if in thought. There was no way he would let them freeze, and they all knew that, so it was just a matter of how long it would take for him to start making that warm mist of his.
Silvia followed with a loud, exaggerated sniffle before repeating after her mother in a much cuter way, "We're sowwy," and then added a little, "pwease?" that sounded like it came from a little kitten, her long eyelashes fluttering against her flushed cheeks as she blinked at him innocently.
Fire kept cracking in the silence that followed, a rather brief one as it didn't take long for Aster to sigh and give up. "Ugh, you're probably doing that silly face right now... Fine, whatever," Aster mumbled, bringing smiles to the two girls. "But this is the last time! The very last one!" he emphasized, pointing a finger at them, which only made the two giggle.
Nivalis muttered a very convincing, "Of-f course!" with a hint of a suppressed smile in her voice. Silvia did the same thing, only adding a little, "Yep," to her mother's words.
"Hmpf!" the boy huffed at such a blatant lie, but raised his hand into the air anyway without a word of argument. A few heartbeats later, a pale-golden mist began to rise from his scarred fingers, spreading throughout the room and growing thicker by the moment.
"Oooooohhhh..." both Silvia and Nivalis moaned in unison when they felt the first tendrils of mist touch their cold skin, making them feel like they stepped into a hot spring. The mist itself didn't warm anything but kept the warmth in, and with the fire nearby, as small as it was, it only took a few moments for the whole den to become almost unbearably hot. Just what the two shivering duo needed. "Thank... you... sweetie..." Nivalis whispered in a weak, breathy voice, her eyes closing in bliss as she pulled her daughter closer by her bony shoulder.
— "Yeeeees," Silvia hummed in agreement, leaning into her mother's soft embrace, her golden eyes closed in the same kind of bliss. For a long moment, the two of them just sat there, pressed against each other in a tight hug, their bodies heating up, their faces flushing more and more by the moment. Their clothes clung to their skin uncomfortably, after all that running and chasing through the snow, but both were so utterly tired that they couldn't care less.
So after a short while, when Aster finished with the spell and shuffled closer and started helping them undress, their limbs moved up on their own to let him do it, eyes staying closed. Silvia's cloak went over her head first, revealing her pale, flat chest to the flickering light of the flame, her pink nipples standing proud. Her long hair immediately clung to her back and shoulders, her hips widened slightly from sitting on her old boots instead of cold ground.
Using her cloak as a makeshift mat, Aster made the girl lie down on top of it, her young, skinny body stretching across it in all its nakedness, her knees pressed all the way up to her chest before spreading wide apart. Her boots dangled in the air and wiggled cutely; her silver hair spilled all around her head.
Nivalis's tunic soon joined the old cloak on the ground, and she was quick to lie down next to her daughter, their skin touching. Her chest was a stark contrast to the girl's flat one, with her two big, soft breasts squishing against each other and jiggling with each of her movements and breaths. Her nipples were just as pink and stood just as proudly, even goosebumps had the exact same pattern on them; the only difference was the size. "Thank you, my love," she murmured as she let him remove her pants as well, his small fingers sliding underneath the waistband before slowly pulling them down her legs, along her soft, milky thighs, then knees, and finally, off her feet.
A mother and daughter lay on the ground with nothing but boots on their feet for a long while, just enjoying the warmth and not caring about anything in the whole wide world, while Aster took care of them by tending to the fire and adding to the mist occasionally. "I can't believe I felt sorry for that rabbit..." Silvia murmured as she stared at the golden-pale mist above her swirl weirdly in the air, trying to return to where Aster commanded it to stay, but occasional gusts of wind from outside and smoke from the fire kept disturbing it. "Ugh... I even thought it was cute! CUTE!" she groaned as she rubbed her face in shame and regret.
"I know the feeling, sweetie," Nivalis whispered in a soft, motherly voice as she reached over and began to rub the girl's flat belly. "How much I wish I had my bow back... There would be no way that fluffy butt could escape us again," the woman muttered wistfully, sighing deeply as she imagined the little critter's head pierced by an arrow. She'd pay all the silver in the world to have a painting of that. "Your father was a bastard and an asshole, but he knew a thing or two about weapons. That bow was something else..." she added, her eyes narrowing at the thought of that man.
Silvia's young, pale body squirmed on the cloak as Aster sat down at her still-open legs, her skin glistening in the light from the flames, her hair all over the place. "I'll buy you a better one, Mom," he muttered with not a hint of humor in his childish voice, his hands finding Silvia's inner thighs. "One day," he added, his palms beginning to slide against her pale, soft skin, all the way to where the thighs met her crotch and back to her knees. When under her knees, the boy pushed them a bit higher and gently parted her legs even further apart, making her let out all kinds of cute noises from having stretched like that, all of them incredibly girly and adorable.
"Sure, sweetie..." Nivalis murmured, smiling at his words as she watched the girl do things her body had long since forgotten how to do.
Wiggling her ankles, Silvia watched her brother hold her by her knees, spreading her wider and wider as he leaned in, her lower lips parting ever so slightly. "Shtop it...!" she squeaked through a giggle, her body jerking and squirming beneath his firm, boyish grip. "You're going to make me pee myself!" the girl shrieked, her legs trying to close, but they were held firmly by his hands. Then, without any warning whatsoever, he did just that, letting her knees close and bump into each other, her pink clit hiding back into the shadows of her hairless, underdeveloped pussy lips. "Ow!"
"Should we call it a day and build something bigger for the night?" Aster asked as he fought his sister's kicking legs, which flew at him in revenge, almost as if she were climbing the imaginary stairs. Despite not seeing a thing, he quickly caught them both and pinned her knees back to her chest with his weight, leaving the girl helpless beneath him. His blindfolded face then turned to his mother, "You both did great today. Just a bit out of luck, I guess..."
Groaning from beneath his entire weight, Silvia muttered a sad, "I was terrible today," between the grunts and winces of pain, her back arching and hips wiggling in her struggles. "Ow!" she yelped, "Get off! You're crushing me!" the girl complained with a face scrunched up in discomfort.
Not paying attention to the two, Nivalis whispered a quiet, "I think we should..." to the fire in front of her, her blue eyes reflecting its flickers. With the days being much shorter in winter, it wouldn't be long before the sun vanished behind the trees once again. They needed to prepare something decent to sleep in —something that wasn't a hole in the ground, on an empty stomach, no less. "Something like what we had last night. It was pretty comfortable," the mother muttered, nodding to herself.
Nodding at her words, Aster added, "We'll try my tactics tomorrow. The flying one you keep laughing about? Pure, fiery annihilation from the air, I tell you. No more of this running and missing business. Or the one where I pretend to be a warm tree—" Aster's voice stopped when the girl beneath him suddenly twisted herself in almost impossible ways, and the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back with her sitting on his chest. They bumped a few times into the snowy walls in the process, his blindfold getting all skewed in the struggle. "Ugh... How did you even do that?" the boy mumbled under her small butt, with her boots pressing into his sides.
Huffing proudly, Silvia adjusted his blindfold to cover his eyes better, then grinned at him, "Big sister magic," she answered, flicking his nose with a finger and giggling as his lips parted in an annoyed snarl. A few more flicks followed, each met with the same snarl and attempt to bite her finger, but with his eyes covered, he didn't stand a chance, so she could flick him all day if she wanted to. "Beep, boop," she went, enjoying his struggles beneath her. Her melodic laughter mixed with his annoyed groans, filling the small space around them.
Then, all of a sudden, her golden eyes caught something utterly strange happening in the corner of her vision. A slight movement, right at the entrance to their little shelter. The moment she turned her head and saw what was at the entrance, she went completely silent, her eyes wide as they could possibly get. 'No freaking way...' she thought as the round, white shape that had eluded them the entire day stared at her with its beady, black eyes, right there, in the middle of the entrance, sitting on its fluffy behind and just staring at her, all plump and round.
Yet Aster kept groaning and squirming beneath her, unaware of her sudden silence. "Shh," the girl tried to shush her struggling brother as she ignited a shitload of mana inside her chest, but that doofus didn't listen, of course. "I said shh!" she hissed through her teeth, and in one swift motion, she slid her naked butt across his chest, over his neck, and up to his mouth, where she planted her young, puffy pussy, all in the matter of a single heartbeat. Her left hand gripped the top of his head to keep him in place, between her parted, hairless lips. "Shhh...!" she went again, this time much quieter, her face scrunched in focus.
Then, her right hand rose into the air and aimed at the fluffy animal that was staring at her with its stupid, round eyes, and violence happened. Even more so, when she felt her brother's teeth bite down into her softest parts.