@all-cf-me ( ishani x seth )
The morning it began, Ishani panicked. She woke shivering, her sheets stiff with a thin layer of sleet, the mattress beneath her soaked where ice had melted and frozen again. The air around her bit at her skin, and every muscle ached as though she’d slept in a glacier. Doctors assured her that Taru was fine, that the baby hadn’t been harmed, but reassurance did little to ease the exhaustion of carrying a body that felt permanently frozen. To feel halfway human, she bundled herself in gloves and scarves, sipping scalding tea until her throat burned.
The farm was impossible. Where once her hands coaxed life from the soil, now frost spread wherever she lingered too long, leaving leaves brittle and roots drowned in ice. Watching Dodge or others tend her crops—fumbling through trial and error where she once moved with instinct—gutted her. The only warmth she trusted came from within: the small, steady kicks of Taru reminding her she wasn’t completely alone in this cold.
Seth, though, she had kept at a distance. Updates came through clipped messages, grainy pictures, phone calls when she was too tired to argue. Sometimes visits, if she let him. But she couldn’t build their daughter’s crib without the boards icing over, couldn’t even finish the simplest thing without it freezing in her hands. And who else could she call but her baby’s father? Dodge was probably a better answer.
Her lips, tinged permanently blue, pressed into a hard line as she stepped into Taru’s slowly growing room. She was used to her own aura by now, the way the temperature plummeted around her, but still her chest tightened when the small houseplants in the corner shriveled at her presence. Her gaze shifted past them, landing on Seth—and the still-unassembled crib waiting between them. "Don't get your....worms in anything. But make this quick."