Letty woke at the end of daylight, curled up in snow as soft as cotton.
She sat up and stretched luxuriously, thankful of the dark. The days grew longer and longer the further into the year she lingered, cutting into the hour of the youkai and her favourite time of the day.
Still, a long slumber wasn't all bad, she decided as she sat up to admire the vast glittering slopes of the hillside she had made her bed the previous morning. The first stars were yet to emerge, but even once the sky was in full bloom, it would be but a pale imitation of the sparkling, pure landscape winter had created. She took a deep breath and let the winter without mingle with the winter within.
She savoured the stillness for a moment longer, then adjusted her clothes and stepped nimbly onto the snowbank, comfortable in the knowledge that her element would never betray her.
It was cold, but it could have been colder still. She took a deep breath, and, as she slowly let it go, allowed it to spread chill all around her. The air crackled before stilling once more. This was true winter, where the cold muted sound and dug deep into the bones of the earth.
It was time to enjoy another leisurely stroll around Gensokyo. She meandered along with no one destination in mind, simply enjoying the crisp air and the near silence of her footsteps as she left no prints on the snow, and the sensation of being alive, free from the miserable heat and pollen and the long hibernation she had little choice but to accept. If only all winters could be as long as this one! Given the choice, she would never slumber, and she could never understand her fellow youkai who claimed they grew bored with the season. How could anyone tire of it when each snowflake was a beautiful, unique masterpiece of its own?
With that thought, she relented on the chill she emanated. Though she was firmly of the opinion the cooler the better, too cold and no new snow would fall. A fresh blizzard would be nice: it had been days since the last.
The forest near the hillside was out of sight by the time the fresh, gentle snow began to fall, so light the slightest breeze sent it swirling around her legs and sweeping across the plains. She held out her hands and waited for them to be covered in flakes like the finest lace, admiring them as she moved ahead towards a sparsely wooded area, its trees reformed into nigh-permanent ice sculptures, their wooden hearts only visible in spots where their silvery transformation hadn't been perfected yet.
She enjoyed the gallery, more so because she was allowed to admire it in peace. Not the she wouldn't have loved to share her delight in the winter with others, but both humans and youkai gave her the cold shoulder when she tried to change their minds about the sheer wonder of winter. Only assorted fairies agreed, and there was only so much of Cirno's undying enthusiasm she could take over an extended period of time.
Now that she thought about it, it had been a couple of days since she had last seen Cirno. The fairy had been fluttering near her usual abode, making elaborate snow sculptures and laughing wildly. The long winter had augmented her powers as it had Letty's, and all of it had gone into her head. Before long, she'd be trying something foolish like taking over Gensokyo, a ludicrous fairy dream as preposterous as Letty's wishes for a never-ending winter. Even as she shook her head and tried to rein her in, Letty couldn't help but pity her.
Anyway, Cirno was probably back at Misty Lake, dancing and skating on the frozen surface. The thought made Letty smile. As much as it irked her to be compared to such silly by-products of nature, she couldn't ever truly hate fairies of winter.
The trees thinned out further, and not far ahead she saw the peak of a roof poking out of the snow, the only hint there was a something buried there in the snow, Letty approached, idly wondering which house it was, again.
Then, she saw to her right a snow-encrusted but still visible torii, and remembered.
She paused by the buried shrine, pondering its meaning. She had always been mildly baffled by the sick affection some of her fellow youkai held for the Hakurei shrine maiden — her own encounter with her had been brief and on the painful side — but that didn't mean she bore any particular ill will towards her. Deep down, she still believed that given enough time, anyone could learn to appreciate the true magnificence of her element, Reimu Hakurei included.
Whatever the case, there wasn't a single soul at the submerged shrine. She turned and walked underneath the torii, summoning a fresh wreath of cold around herself as she did so.
She walked down to where the steps to the shrine were buried, like bones of ancient creatures where the sea line had once stood, wondering if any of the stones had cracked underneath the pressure of frost. The notion of trying to follow the now hidden footpath from memory amused her, and so she traipsed along as the wind intensified around her and the snowfall took its first tentative steps towards becoming a respectable blizzard.
By the time the night sky was entirely obscured by a white sheet of clouds, like a reflection of the snow beneath, she was walking across a field dotted by what looked like pretend rocks made out of wood. She tried counting the obscured houses, but quickly gave up due to a lack of interest as the blizzard grew wilder and tried to carry her away with it, a familiar feeling which she welcomed with open arms. It was a pity all of the rest of Gensokyo appeared to be missing it.
"This has gone on for long enough, don't you think?"
Or perhaps not all of it.
The youkai she faced as she turned around was unfamiliar to her. She was dressed lightly in plaid, the long yellow scarf draped across her shoulders being her only concession to the weather. Her open parasol, unharmed by the blustery wind, had gathered a coating of flakes not unlike that on Letty's hands, though the image was somewhat ruined by the much thicker layer of snow gathering at the top of it.
Letty kept her expression level. Though the stranger hadn't made a single threatening move — in fact, she had done nothing but gaze at her with a slight smile — she had an air of confidence that only came to the very powerful and the very foolish. As the woman remained quiet and polite, Letty could wipe out foolishness from the list of options.
She decided the woman meant the blizzard. "It has only just begun."
The stranger took a sidelong step in the direction of the wind. "I don't believe we have been introduced. Yuuka Kazami."
"Letty Whiterock." The name "Yuuka Kazami" rang a bell from Cirno's long ramblings about what she had been up to while Letty had slept through the seasons. She had only listened to them with one ear for the past several decades, but the figure before her was famous enough that she now wondered how she hadn't recognised her from description alone. If nothing else, she was always glad to meet a fellow youkai of nature.
"Charmed. And now that we have been properly introduced..." Yuuka lowered her parasol and shook off the excess snow before replacing it over her head. A few errant snowflakes fell on her head in the interim and clung to her hair like miniature flowers. "I would like to request that you put an end to this winter."
"That's beyond my powers." Letty had been almost flattered being accused of refusing to let winter end in the past, but a repeat after repeat of the same nonsense was irksome.
It didn't help that Yuuka continued on as though she hadn't replied at all. "I begrudge no season and acknowledge that winter has its purpose. However, as much as I loathe doing anything tiresome, looking on while someone meddles with the passage of seasons is something I can only abide for so long."
"I already told you what I have told everyone else who has bothered me over this winter. You have the wrong youkai."
For the first time since meeting her, Yuuka's smile fell a notch. "Can it be that you're not yourself aware of it? Even if you are merely a conduit rather than the source..."
Letty folded her arms, hoping to put an end to the discussion as soon as possible. "I won't lie and pretend I'm not enjoying this. Surely you must feel something similar in the presence of flowers as I do here."
Yuuka nodded softly, but the full brightness of her smile remained like a full moon behind a cloud. "I would never judge a bit of indulgence. But three years of winter is long enough, don't you think?"
Had it really been so long? Letty had been enjoying herself so much it had only felt like months. "Again, I'm not—"
She halted and hesitated. Uncrossing her arms, she brought her rime-covered hand before her eyes. It didn't look any different to her, but when she focused on flexing her fingers, she sensed power and control welling within her, the amount of sheer raw winter which she had always possessed all accounted for and amplified. Tenfold? A hundredfold? She had had so little need of it as of late she honestly could no longer tell.
"My powers may have grown just because the winter has nourished them," she suggested as she lowered her hand.
"That, or you have become a goddess."
A funny thought, that. An attractive one, too. Did people really believe in her ability to produce chill so much that it had made her divine? Surely not.
"Frankly, I do not care about the how," Yuuka continued when she didn't respond, taking another sidelong step, like a wolf circling its prey. "Nor do I care why the self-appointed youkai sages haven't put an end to this nonsense long ago. I especially cannot claim that I care that most of Gensokyo has moved underground to swap a cold Hell for a hot one. All of this affects me very little."
Despite the calm, collected tone, or perhaps even because of them, Yuuka's words gave Letty pause. If it really had been as long as Yuuka claimed — and why would she lie? — why was this the first time someone truly powerful had brought the matter up with her? The grumpy shrine maiden tried to have kicked her teeth in at the first sight of frost in April, but that was the last she had heard of either her or any of the self-appointed guardians of Gensokyo.
"I don't care about their dwindling food and fuel any more than you do, perhaps even less. I don't care about their fears." Yuuka raised an eyebrow. "I suppose I do care a little about where all this immense faith you've gathered comes from. Gensokyo believes in a merciless goddess of eternal winter now, but the belief must have stemmed from somewhere in the first place."
"I can't answer that any more than you can." Naturally, Letty too was curious. If not from Gensokyo, then the belief in winter must have spawned from the outside world, or else another world entirely. She hardly ever thought of such remote places, but now she wondered.
"I suppose you cannot." Yuuka closed her parasol and brandished like a lazily-drawn blade. "But you can answer for depriving me of the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn."
Letty sighed and took a stance. She had known it would come to blows even when Yuuka had been at her most polite, but she had hoped for a bit more time to comprehend what was going on. There was no way the powers that be in Gensokyo would have allowed her to run amuck for three years without so much as a warning.
Unless they were somehow incapable of stopping her.
Yuuka was polite enough to wait for her to be prepared, but there was nothing polite about the ensuing lunge. She was like a bolt of lightning, as though her previous staid movements had all been to conserve energy for this one, powerful motion. Letty did the only thing she could, cooled the air around her till it was so cold it was nearly solid, summoning hundreds jagged specks of ice like tiny knives, and dodged to the side.
The tip of the parasol caught her underneath the ribs.
The blizzard howled.
Letty straightened her back. The struck spot only stung for a few heartbeats more, after which it was as though the attack had never happened. She turned to see Yuuka with her back to her, calm and making no effort to continue the fight, her parasol held only loosely in her hand.
Slowly, Yuuka turned her head back towards her. A trickle of green liquid ran down her cheek where a shard of ice had found its mark just beneath her eye.
"Is that it?" Letty uttered the words more in confusion than as a jeer. The spikes shouldn't have drawn blood even from a fairy. Had the lack of seasonal flowers brought the venerable youkai's powers that low? Or else...
She brought her hand forward and allowed her powers to stretch out, tapping into what had welled within her for so long she had all but forgotten about it. A wave of cold deadly to all mortal creatures who hadn't sought shelter rushed across the villages and towards the woods and mountains.
Happiness bubbled within her. She had already thought her life was as complete as it possibly could be, but the thought she actually held the power to retain the pristine stillness she dreamt of during her long slumbers indefinitely was a new kind of bliss altogether.
She turned back towards Yuuka. "If it is, you'll have to content with winter flowers from now on. I will keep the winter going until everyone in the world understands its beauty."
Unruffled by the wave of cold, Yuuka brought her hand to her bleeding cheek and stared at the verdant stains as though she couldn't quite comprehend what she was seeing.
"I was afraid it would come to this," she finally said as she lowered her hand. "You're more fairy-like in your way of thinking than I hoped, my dear."
"I wouldn't repeat that if were you. "Letty bristled both at the insult and with unforeseen power. They both knew Yuuka's threats were as empty as the graveyard of houses they stood in. "Or do you really wish to challenge me?"
"I see little purpose in that. It has been so long since the last one that people no longer have faith in summer." For one reason or another, Yuuka's smile returned, more serene than ever. "But as much as they believe in a harsh winter, there is something they believe in even more."
"What's that?"
Yuuka's smile moved from Letty to something behind her. "Why, they dream of spring, of course."
Letty turned. Behind her, come over so quietly that this was the first she ever sensed of her, was a fairy clad in the purest white. A cascade of pink petals flowed behind her as she hovered above the snow, her hair billowing gently independent of the tempestuous wind. Her long hair had grown so long it now trailed the ground, melting snow wherever it or the petals landed. Her feathered wings, once modest and proportional, now stretched several times her height, and as Letty stared, grew and grew till they obscured half the horizon, stretching upwards as though intending to pierce the clouds.
The fairy opened her eyes, as green as the long gone meadows, and gave Letty a beatific smile.
"Spring has come!"