"I did not!"

Tom skips ahead. 

“Like a baby!” 

Eric sniffs and examines Zanna as they emerge into the light—cool and warm all at once. 

Her skin is cooler than a human's should be. (Does he know what a human's skin is supposed to feel like?) She smells like violets and powder snow.

"Feel... cold," she says.

Eric is nervous. Is she dying? Humans do that sometimes. “Tom?”

"...what, you think I know?" Tom sniffs her more closely. "I think... she's changing? But I don't know how it's supposed to go."

“What? It happened to you!”

"You were born, could you deliver a baby?"

Tom paces furiously.

Zanna opens her mouth and coughs out a puff of bloodstained snow.

"- oh. Of course."

Tom calls a knife into being, a little shard of obsidian, and slices open the crook of his elbow, which drips blood onto the ground. "Father!"

The blood swells upward, bulging and moulding into the rough shape of a person. It becomes a tall, lithe man with bare, snowy skin; deep violet eyes, and long, lilac hair. Wings weave themselves out of light from his back. He smiles cooly down at Tom, “Hello son. I hope you are being interesting?”

Out the corner of his eye, he spots Zanna, wobbling on her feet like a newborn colt. “Oh,” he says. “She’s beautiful.” He sniffs. “And mine.” He looks back at Tom. “Did you find her?”

"I did. But she's dying."

“Oh, can’t have that.” 

The man with the lilac hair scoops Zanna up into his arms. “I don’t need to know your name. I can smell my blood in you. I think I remember your mother. Sweet, beautiful thing.”

Zanna's gaze sharpens a bit. "...you're not... you're him. The one who made me."

He strokes her hair gently. "Yes. Your father. It is very good to meet you."

Zanna makes a face when he calls himself her father, but then she coughs out some more bloody snow.

"I feel... strange," she says.

"It’s magic. It wants to fill your blood. To eat away the rot your mother would could a soul. To make you whole and forever."

"I don't want to die."

"Shh. You don't have to. Not ever. You feel like a dancer. Am I right?"

"...yeah. I dance."

"Then that is how we will guide the magic." He kisses her softly on the forehead. "I'm going to put you down now."

"Alright."

He gently sets Zanna down on her feet, though still keeping a hold of her hands. Slowly, he raises them over her head and spins her.

She looks up at him, and as she twirls, she slowly starts smiling.

"Oh - it's just -"

Then she starts dancing.

It starts as a kind of ballet, but the rules rapidly fall away. Soon she's leaping and spinning and, most of all, having fun - her skin gleams with sweat - her eyes glow, at first just with life and vitality and then more literally.

Sparks start rising from her skin. Hot, bright. Then, all at once, she's on fire.

And she's laughing.

Tom looks delighted.