"Don't linger in front of your own reflection, child, or it will steal your soul."
As a child, Aaron always had the silly little wish that someone would take him away. To be whisked away to a distant land of utopian desires fullfilled.
His father had always told him those desires were dangerous. Never directly, but Aaron had always heard the nagging warnings the paranoid man always gave him about superstitious, of old wives tales muttered only in the last dregs of sunset and fairytale-like stories that had seen war, life, death.
The decrepit old man had been especially obsessed with the Fair Folk. He had forbidden him to call it by their true name, the Sidhe. A few verbal lashings and slaps certainly delivered the message across permanently.
Another way his senior had drilled the lesson of how dangerous the Fair Folk were, was through precautionary children's tales. Constant lines from books hammered into him, alongside cryptic rants and long lectures lasting hours.
"Don't linger in front of your own reflection, child, or it will steal your soul,"
The older Siegel would warn, scowl, scold, all while pointing his finger accusingly. It was as if he could see through Aaron's carefully crafted mask around him, easily find the most minute cracks and flaws and glare deeply at them until he reached the innermost mechanical workings of Aaron's heart. In that heart made out of steel and copper, was the secret wish to belong. A painful childish longing for someone to take him away to a place that felt warmer, that embraced him softly like quilts on a winter day. He would've much preferred it to the icy frigidness of his father.
"Snowqueen," Aaron would silently mutter under his breath. He often thought of the story, reminicing over each line and repeating it until it burned into his mind. It was soothing repetition, one that comforted him during the freezing nights in which his father kept him out in the glistening snow.
One particular time Aaron was locked out, he remembered how numb and red his fingers were, his breath fogging as he struggled to breath in the dry, arid air.
His immune system had always been terrible, worsened by the fact his father seemed to enjoy locking him out the house. What he didn't know was asthma at the time severely plauged him, leaving his younger self wheezing with rattling lungs.
It was as if someone was dragging semi-molten glass shards through his chest even if he took the most shallow of breaths.
Aaron had to find somewhere to shelter. And fast before he became part of the crystalline frost.
Treking away from the woodland mansion, Aaron only looked back once he was at the edge of the forest.
The house was dark, as it usually were in winter, one dimmed, smothered light present in a window on the third floor. Frost-glazed windows shimmered in the dim glow of the moon, icicles having formed upon the many windows, giving the home a resemblance of a prison rather than a place that people raised family in.
During that moment where he stood, he hated, despised, felt like a savage beast being held back from snapping back at his father. He had always made excuses for the cruel man, desperately hoping one day that the older man could be one day be proud of what he did, declare that his previous actions were rough yet justified as he began to love Aaron like a parent would.
But at thirteen, he realised mirror shards of misery passed down from father to son for generations had embedded permanently within the elder Siegel's heart. He had only had been snapped out of one-sided delusion by walking past a frozen puddle, and staring wistfully into it, ignoring his father's lesson. On its reflective surface, Aaron saw the man he hated the most, his chiselled face and marred, red rimmed eyes glaring back at him with raw beastial hate.
It had hurt, and it still did, it caused a nauseous ache, it almost caused those mirror shards to root into his own heart. Even if he could finally let go of the guilt and shame of being a horrible, needy child. Aaron wept bitterly that cold, uncaring night. His innocent self grieving the fact his father didn't want to be saved, didn't want to change his ways.
His sobs reverberated broken and unrestrained, sounding more like a wounded, fearful animal than a human child. His face and eyelashes already being decorated by falling specks of white, lips burning in pain from the arid winter air. He was shaking, shivering as he hugged his knees, his toes stiff and numb in his boots. Aaron had curled himself into a fetal ball hiding within the oak hollow, attempting to shake the droplets of frozen water from his damp hair.
He was rocking back and forth almost violently, a desperate attempt for any peice of comfort he could have. Out here in the dead of night within the chittering forest, no one could hurt him if he was hiding away. But nature didn't coddle its subjects, nor was she soft or gentle.
Nature was just like the Fair Folk. Chaotic, yet symbiotic, predictable yet erratic.
Aaron wanted to laugh, but he found himself too weak to even move his lips. His father oh so desperately wanted to protect his child from the Fair Folk, from the monsters who lurked and lived on the edges of the wild. But the only thing Aaron was in danger of was succumbing to an awfully mundane death from the cold.
He hadn't remembered much from then on. It was a jumbled, blurred, a mess of glacial hands, warm hands, mumblings of children from a boyish voice, and a lyrical language spoken in a baritone voice foreign to Aaron's ears.
Someone had picked him up, a person with hair whiter than the snow, and porcelain-like skin. They appeared to be one with the snow, the resulting child of the unforgiving winter hail and blizzard. Icicles dangled like jewels off the edges of their thick winter cloak, adorning them beautifully like an ornament. What stood out the most was those amethyst eyes, boring into him as if they could penetrate through secrets most dearest through his heart.
That was all he recollected, until everything had became static.
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