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Snowstorms are a familiar sight to Jarilo-VI , though they fall ever gentler as the world heals from the Stellaron’s effects. Birds, which had once been thought extinct, sing out joyful, twittering songs. They hop and dance from branch to branch only to flee at the earliest sign of footsteps echoing through the tundra.
And the Snow Plains are silent now. A woman sighs, a warm puff of air escaping her lips. “...Always the cause of fear now, aren’t you, brother?”
A blank patch of snow, a headstone that never withstood the harsh climate smiles back at her. She kneels before it and continues talking. “It’s been a while, you know. Three years since the passage to the Overworld was unsealed– probably five since your death. And here, I have five stems of Marquise for you.
“Of course, I didn’t come here just to be sappy. You of all people don’t deserve that. No, I… came here for my own sake. I’m done with your research notes, dear brother. I studied them, modified them and copied my findings down and… I made significant headway too. Of course, nothing you’ve ever done, or could have done will make up for the pain you caused for so many, you know? But admittedly, your dream of Blizzard Immunity was a good one. I fiddled around with the variables, experimented with new ingredients and components…” With a flourish, the woman– a doctor, evidently, pulls out a little test tube of green fluid.
“Here it is. Nobody was put in harm’s way of course. I refuse to be you, brother.” She bites out, tilting her head upward. “I injected it into myself first. That’s how I’m here with you now. Tested it extensively too, and then I passed the research notes on to the Madam Guardian. It's all up to the Belobog Medical Academy now. They’ll be the ones to garner more volunteers and hammer out the last of the kinks.”
The exquisite blooms are stabbed upright into the snow, a violent shock of purple against pure white. Perhaps one might think they were planted there a long time ago, however impossible it might be. Perhaps that would be the truth one day, once the Snow Plains were conquered. Then, the doctor would purchase clippings of Marquise and Bell Peonies, seeds of Sunshine and First Snow. She would plant them all over this abandoned laboratory and watch the way new life would grow from this barren, barren land.
The true culmination of the dream she and her brother now shared. Certainly, it would be the last of the ridiculous amount of Shield this research has cost her. One day– in the far, far future when the days were longer and the dying sun wouldn’t cut their time short.
For now, it was time for her to go.
“Until next year, Vache,” Natasha chuckles, dusting the snow off her clothes as she stands. “I’ll be back with your next progress report.”