#vynter2024

[giselberts]

#vynter2024 🎇vynblr event🎇

hi!! to end 2024 and start 2025 with a bang, here's a little fandom event!

🎄With one prompt for each week of December, create whatever you want to celebrate this end of 2024! Fics, art, edits, mods... For any game of the Vyn universe! Give a crisp piece of meat to the naughty Narathzuls out there, or a pretty dreamflower to the nice Calias :) 🎁Post your creations online with the tag #vynter2024!

❄ Week 1 - Snowfall (dec 1 - dec 7) 🔥Week 2 - Hearth (dec 8 - dec 15) 🌿Week 3 - Mistletoe (dec 15 - dec 25) 🎆Week 4 - Fireworks (dec 26 - dec 31)

(and dw if you're not posting on time or posting everything at once the last week, just have fun!)

[beck-nightengale]

Here it is - my contribution to Week 1 of Vynter.

Bonus Jespar, seconds later:

[sheyri]

Tharaêl's First Snowfall

He's never seen snowflakes, let alone an ice bear.

[giselberts]

Vynter 2024 - Week 3, Mistletoe

"… What are you doing?" Calia asks one cold day, when she sees Jespar in the Chronicum, sitting on the floor in the hallway just before Lexil's desk. He's… fiddling with a fishing pole, adding something at its end.

"Shh, you'll ruin it," Jespar shushes her, his tongue lightly pulled out to the side as he focuses on tying something to the end of the pole, with some red ribbon. Though Calia usually wouldn't care… this did intrigue her. So, she watches on, wondering what the mercenary is doing.

"There. Now, tell me when Firespark is in front of Merrayil's desk." He says, looking up to her with a mischievous glimmer in his eye. Mistletoe? What a strange little man, this Jespar.

Calia can't help but oblige, and walks calmly to a bookshelf, pretending to look through it while keeping an eye on the door. It takes a while, but soon, Constantine walks out, grumbling while patting dust out of his robes. He lets out a few swears, a few more for good measure, before sharply walking to Lexil, slamming his hands down, and grumbling even more about whatever just happened in his study. There's a tiny nod from her, and Jespar springs into action, grinning - was he too old to pull this? yes. was this unusual for him? also yes. was this about to be fun? definitely. And hey, it gave him an excuse to turn down jobs from the Sun Temple in the future, if he had better things to do, or even haggle his pay. "Ah, my apologies, I'm banned from the Chronicum, you'll have to hire someone else for this." "Oh, I would, but… you know how Firespark feels about me. But for a price, I'm willing to put up with him."

"What the-" Constantine stops in his long-winded grumbling and grunting and groaning, the mistletoe hanging right in front of his face.

Jespar recites his last rites. He knows it's over for him, that it's oh so over for him. That tomorrow, there'll be a little tombstone put up for him. Maybe Calia will stop by, drop a flower or call him an idiot, or both. This was nice, while it lasted, this whole living thing. Not quite living, more like surviving, for him at least, but it was… nice.

Jespar swears his ear has been ripped off, and that Calia is saying that it's still there just to be nice to him. He's never seen Constantine do something as… energetic. Lunging at him, picking him up from the ground by the ear, yelling swears and insults he's never heard before, feeling like a little boy getting the scolding of a lifetime, rather than the hardened (yet somewhat jovial) mercenary that he is.

"It's torn-"

"It's still there." Calia cuts him off, putting a bag of ice over his ear.

"I can't feel it," He says, fighting her on it. "Ow!" He immediately yelps - Calia has just tugged on his ear harshly, enough to make him realise that yes, his ear was still here, that Constantine hasn't ripped it off and wasn't currently using it to put a curse on him, or something. At least, he now knows that Lexil and Constantine won't kiss under the mistletoe.

[sheyri]

Snowfall

Most people don't understand why you moved up here. The Frostcliff Mountains are so cold, they say. Only desperate hunters, wild mages and pathless scum live there, they say. Why leave your comfortable life in the south behind, they ask.

But you don't need people around you all the time, and the cold never bothered you. The scenery is beautiful, it's quiet and calm.

Especially on an evening like this, when the snow is falling thick and heavy. Time just seems to stop. No noise is carried through the air, nothing moves. Only the snowflakes, drifting to the ground.

Your past worries are buried under a thick layer of white, like everything else. You exist in the moment, no past, no future. You look out over the land and see peace.

[giselberts]

Vynter 2024 - Week 1, Snowfall

“Shit.”

“Don’t swear.”

It should’ve been expected, after all. Sarnor was far up north, where snow was a constant. But now, they were snowed in, just an hour away from their goal – the Creator’s Temple. So close, yet so far.

Kim removed her heavy armour, letting fall to the floor before kicking it into a corner, pulling one of the thick covers from the bed up on her shoulders and wrapping herself up in it.

“I like seeing the snowfall, it’s so… beautiful.” She let out in an amazed whisper – of course it snowed in the Mountain Monastery, but never such a blizzard like the one that roared outside.

“… You think so?” Gisele raised an eyebrow, joining Kim under her blanket, the two girls sharing it as they look on outside. Kim shifted a bit, pulling Gisele closer to her – one of the advantages of being Aeterna, taller than her friend, was that she got to hold her close perfectly.

They retreated away from the window, Gisele leaving Kim’s comfortable cape to push their two beds together. There, they’d be comfortable on one large bed, rather than two single ones. They both huddled back under the covers, pulling the blankets on their shoulders as they sat facing each other, their legs crossed.

“Ew….” Gisele whispered, poking some not-completely healed wound on her leg, before Kim swatted at her to stop. “Hey! I’m allowed to poke at my own stuff!”

“It’s not going to heal if you keep touching at it! Here, just let me-“ To Kim’s words, Gisele swatted her back.

“How’d you even get it?” Kim asked, moments later, laying in bed as her eyes were riveted to Gisele’s wound, still being poked at.

“Dunno, some arrow or something,” Gisele shrugged. “Hey, you ever made a snowman?” she then asked herself, completely changing the subject.

“What’s that?” Kim replied, her eyes wide with excitement, sensing that it’s something fun.

“You just… roll up big-ass snowballs and stack them to make a guy- have you really never made one? Seriously?”

And so, when the snowfall ended a day later, halfway through their trek to the Creator’s Temple, Gisele stopped Kim, to do three things – first, throwing a snowball at her. Second, falling into powdery snow to make a snow angel and escape Kim’s snowball, and third, making a ‘damn fine’ snowman. “And…. There. A little guy,” Gisele huffed proudly, her hands on her hips after placing two blunt arrows into the snowman to make its arms.

“Hold on,” Kim smiled, taking off her helmet for a moment to put it atop the snowman’s head, and joined her friend into admiring their creation. “Is… that it?”

“Yes, unless you’re curious, like me.”

And Gisele immediately sprung into action, removing the helmet and the arrows, walking behind the snowman to roll it up further, until… she pushed it down the slope of the mountain, the two letting out small ‘oooh’s as the ball got bigger and bigger and… fuck, that was probably an avalanche, right? At least they were here up top, and not down there.

“…. We should go.”

“Yeah, let- let’s just go, Narathzul’s probably already pissed we’re not back.”

[sheyri]

Hearth

Building a good hearth in Enderal requires some creativity. But Loreena made the effort to light four in her single home.

[giselberts]

Vynter 2024 - Week 2, Hearth

"I'm cold." Tharaêl groans out.

"Put more clothes on." Teliora replies, not even lifting her eyes up from her tome. It's the dead of winter, the windows are frosted over, and yet… she's still in her usual linen shirts, while Tharaêl is halfway to becoming a walking icicle.

"I don't want to put more clothes on. Can't I just put more wood into the hearth?"

"Do I look like I'm made of money? No, I'm not going to buy more wood because you've burnt through all of it. Put a damn sweater on."

Unfortunately… Teliora is somewhat right. Tharaêl can barely hold down his job at the stables, and he doesn't even interact with people there, and Teliora is in between jobs for the Temple - money was on the scarce side.

But Teliora has an axe… somewhere around here, and there are plenty of trees he's allowed to cut outside of the city. So, wheelbarrow and axe in hand, a few scrolls of teleportation stuffed in his pocket, he gets to chopping down trees, all while cursing under his breath. It's freezing, there's snow sloshing in his boots, and he's both cold and hot at the same time.

"Fuck this," He grumbles under his breath. Still, there's a few good logs he's cut, enough for a few days.

"Hey," Teliora says, a faint shimmer of magic still floating around her when she appears in the woods, next to him. "You forgot this,"

Tharaêl mutters out a small 'thanks', taking the wool hat she hands him, tucking his ears underneath, reddened by the cold.

"So…" She starts, when he's nearing the end of what he's set out to do. "You know you're gonna have to wait until this dries out, or you'll burning soggy wood, right?"

What.

He stares at her. He stares at the freshly cut logs, covered in a thin layer of frost. He stares back at her. She stares at the logs, then back at him, before disappearing in a flash of magic, an amused look on her face.

Of course, he snaps. Two hours of strenuous work, all for naught - he grumbles and grunts and yells, kicking the tree stump he's been using to cut his logs on, evidently frustrated and tired and cold.

But Teliora isn't entirely cruel - when he comes back to their shared home, their tiny home, she's made soup, and tells him that she's struck a deal with a supplier to get more logs, dry ones, the next day. He groans again, telling her off and angrily grumbles at her all while accepting the bowl of soup as he pulls a stool up to the hearth, where he's finally warm and full.