The cold must have followed Archie from Khala. It had laid in wait for months hiding in the shade from the late, melting summer, but at the turn of autumn, it rushed forth to snatch the last bit of heat from the year and envelop Ambrosia City in cold winds and morning frost. Sain was a full day's ride north and Archie still had only experienced such a winter once in his eighteen years of growing up there. Snow fell in the darkness of night and melted away later and later each day, first in the morning, then at noon, then just before sunset. Little patches of white persisted in the grooves of the earth like puddles.

And then one week the snow stopped melting at all. The first day started as one of bliss and fresh-powdered snow. The students made snowmen and snow angels and pelted each other with snowballs. They played hard enough to sweat despite the cold, leaving their teeth chattering once they stopped moving. Archie managed better than most with his Khalyan-styled jacket. Oliver tried more than once to steal it, forcing Archie to hide it by stuffing it into his pillowcase at night.

But the novelty of snow faded quickly, and the students were tasked to deal with the reality of such a sudden cold. Quince put them to work harvesting whatever could still be harvested, transplanting growing crops into the greenhouses and fortifying trees that were susceptible to dying in the winter. Blanche handled that last part. No one else could do half of what she did. Even Quince in his Red Jacket that he earned from cultivation admitted that Blanche was just as good as he was when it came to trees. Aubergine came down more than once to supervise the work, but he spent most of his time marveling at Blanche's talent. She worked morning, afternoon, and night, only taking breaks to eat the hot soups that Archie brought her.

He missed her. But he missed a certain version of her. The Blanche from Sain. The Blanche of infinite nourishment and possibilities. He missed that spark. The newness of it. He missed when she was nurturing and carefree. Now she was too busy to be gentle.

"Sutton!" she screamed as she stomped through the greenhouse with a snail pinched between her fingers.

On the other end of the greenhouse, Archie stepped behind Sutton. "You're in trouble now."

Sutton shriveled up in fear until he saw the snail that Blanche held high in the air. He jumped out onto the walkway. "Hey! Be gentle! I don't know how fear affects their flavor!"

Blanche raised the snail even higher. "I told you yesterday to fix your enclosure!"

"And I told you yesterday that it's a work in progress! You should be impressed with how far I've already gotten!"

Sutton motioned to his designated plot of soil. After a month of farming snails out on the forest's edge, Sutton was forced by the cold to bring his snails into the greenhouse. To keep them from roaming around, he had—with considerable help from Benedict and Akando—sectioned off half of his plot with waist-high walls of tightly stacked wooden boards.

"It's called an enclosure, Sutton. You need to enclose it." Blanche pointed from one side of the setup to the other. "Over the top."

"Then how do I get in, Blanche? How do the plants get sunlight, Blanche?" Sutton grabbed Blanche's wrist hard and took the snail gently.

As Sutton awkwardly hurdled into the enclosure, Blanche glared at Archie and flared her arms out in demand of a defense.

Archie shrugged. "It was an accident."

"An accident?" Blanche stuck out her bottom jaw. "This accident just ate all my spinach!"

Sutton set the snail down. "So you like spinach, huh?" he softly cooed.

"Sutton!" Blanche stomped her foot on the ground. "I'm talking to you!"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Is it not obvious? Keep your little creatures—" Blanche stabbed a finger at the enclosure. "—in your own space."

"I'm trying! Look! I soaked coffee grounds in garlic oil and coated the top board with it. And Archie's helping me rough up the top with wood chips!"

Archie smiled and held up his little chisel. Blanche was not amused.

"It's not enough, clearly," she scolded. "They get out, and they always beeline it straight to my stuff."

"That's because you have the best stuff," Archie flattered. If he could get her to laugh—even to just crack a smile—then he could worm his way between the perpetually arguing pair. But Blanche's heavy breath told him that his efforts were not appreciated.

"It's true," Sutton said. He pointed at the soaked top of the boards. "This stuff hurts them. Can even kill them. They must be desperate to get out because they can sense your crops. If you gave me some, maybe they'd stay put."

"Gave you some?" Blanche scoffed. "They'd just multiply until they ate more than I could grow! No way! I'm making this your problem. You fix it. I'm having to help everyone else out, the least you could do is not screw up my stuff."

Archie was glad that Sutton was behind the barrier. If he was still out in the open, Blanche might have tackled him by now.

"I'm working on it, Blanche. Okay? I'm sorry. I'm working on it."

Blanche sighed, glared at Sutton, glared at Archie even harder, and then stomped off.

Archie and Sutton exchanged the looks of two dead men walking. "Why do I feel like I got in more trouble than you?" Archie asked.

"Because you did." Sutton crouched down and examined a cluster of snails sleeping on a board. "Not that you should really take girl advice from me, but I think you might want to apologize before she stews too much. If she gets any madder, she's gonna throw my snails out."

"She won't do that."

Sutton's expression dripped with disbelief. "Go apologize."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Archie grumbled as he walked away. There was no mystery about what he was expected to apologize for, but there were also no feelings of wrongdoing on his part. Still, like a dutiful partner, he swallowed his ire, walked up to Blanche, and spoke softly. "I'm sorry, Blanche."

She fussed over her plants, checking her spinach for damage and other assailants. "You're supposed to be on my side."

"I am on your side."

"Didn't sound like it." Blanche mocked his voice. "It was an accident."

"It was! And why do you think I was over there? I was helping him to try to fix his enclosure. I was doing, Blanche. For you."

"You don't get it." Blanche shook her head. She spotted a bit of mint sticking from the dirt and plucked it. She shook its dirty roots at Archie and erupted. "And this! I told you to keep your mint in a pot! I told you it was going to get everywhere!"

Defeat squeezed a groan out of Archie. He had done everything she said, but it still hadn't been enough—as seemed to always be the case recently. "The roots grew out of the drainage hole. I thought I got it all. I'm sorry."

Blanche held her forehead in a dirty hand and took a deep breath. "No, I'm sorry. You're right. It was just an accident. I've just been…"

Archie crouched down and put his arm around her.

"I've just been so busy. I have to help everyone around here. And Quince out there. And Blue Orchards. And…I feel thin, you know?"

"I know, I know. It's okay." Archie rubbed her back until he got a smile, as feeble as it may have been. "How about tonight you tell everyone else to go screw themselves and we go out for dinner?"

Blanche held Archie's hand. "That sounds nice."

A great big bundle of furskins with wooden fishing rods sticking out stumbled up toward the class as they gathered in the late morning. Early morning class had been perpetually cancelled on account of the freezing cold. Not that it was ever an enjoyable temperature out there for Archie. Blanche shoved her arms into each other's sleeves and leaned hard against him for warmth. Akando rubbed his hands together to produce a mild heat that kept Archie's snot from freezing in his nose.

Quince's voice came out of the bundle of clothes. "Okay, so normally, this time of year is when I teach y'all second-years how to seal fish. But normally, we're not a month into a cold that's frozen the damn lake."

He unraveled a scarf to reveal his face and spat in the snow. "One more winter like this, and I swear to y'all, I'm outta here. I grew up between the Bayuk and the desert. Ain't suited for this here."

The class laughed and felt a little warmer.

"Well, we gotta keep goin', I suppose. When I was a teen, not much younger'n y'all, my pa took me out west. The far west. Whalin' west. Taught me how to do some ice fishing. Now I had Aubergine confirm the lake was frozen thick enough to go out on. Figure I might as well pass along what I suffered to y'all. Come on, now."

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Quince's layered cloaks and robes carved a wide path through the snow that the students followed to the lake. He set one foot tentatively down on the ice, giving it a little weight to test it. Then he stepped forward and WHAM! His feet flew out from under him, and his butt slammed hard on the ice. His fishing rods scattered and slid away. Some students gasped with worry. Others—most—laughed.

Quince laughed too. "I guess that's a good sign that the ice is thick." He tried to push himself up with his hands, but his feet threatened to slide out from under him again if he left all fours.

"Here." Archie conjured a noodle that extended and wrapped gently around Quince's arm, giving the Head Chef something to pull himself up by.

"Thanks," Quince said as he stood. "Everyone be careful."

Barley shuffled out onto the ice first. For as awkward as his little steps were, he never seemed at risk of falling. He scooped up a rod and made his way toward the middle of the lake. "Keep your hips above your feet."

Yarrow and Akando stepped out with ease. Others struggled. Oliver fell.

But Blanche stayed on the snowy bank and shivered. "Head Chef Quince, can I go check on the greenhouse? I'm afraid the cold is going to seep through the ground."

Quince lacked the motility to turn, so he shouted into the wind. "That's fine! You can rejoin us once we catch some fish."

Archie frowned at Blanche. "Aw. It'd be fun."

Blanche shook her head. "Not for me. I want to be warm, and I have work to do."

"But—"

"Be careful out there. If the ice cracks at all, you come in." Blanche squeezed his arm and left for the greenhouse.

Archie watched her walk away as the rest of the class set out onto the lake.

"Uh, Archie?"

Archie turned to see Julienne sitting helplessly on the ice.

"A little help?"

Archie laughed and held out an open palm despite being twenty feet away. "Once upon a time, you thought you were better at pastamancy than me. Surely I'm not the only one who's improved."

Julienne rubbed his hands together until a noodle lengthened out of his palms. He twirled it around once, twice, and whipped it toward Archie. It expanded properly, but Archie had to reach to the side to grab it.

"You're slow to start, and your aim sucks."

"You'll never cook better than me, and you'll never have my hair."

"What's wrong with my hair?" Archie yanked on the noodle.

Julienne stood and wobbled. "It's just like you. Messy and indecisive. You need to straighten it out or curl it up. It's always stuck halfway between the two."

Archie conjured his own noodle. "I could decide to put you flat."

"Fire in the hole!" Quince yelled.

He had planted a jalapeno into a divot in the ice and snapped his fingers to light the stem on fire. He scrambled to get away and fell, sliding belly-down on his furs like a clumsy bear. The jalapeno exploded, leaving a hole in the ice big enough for a person to jump into.

Quince looked around for cracks and found none. "Maybe I should have had y'all wait by the shore," he mumbled. "Oh well! Y'all get a rod and get in here."

Archie stepped onto the ice and made it five steps before one of his legs came out from under him. Julienne flung out another noodle that Archie grabbed, but that did Archie no good and did Julienne even less as they both fell. The hot fire of pain went up from Archie's tailbone, and Julienne held his hand over his mouth.

"I bih my tongue," he said.

Archie groaned and laughed at the same time. "I appreciate the attempt."

Nori slid over as if she had been born on the ice. "You two are embarrassing."

"How are you so good at this?" Archie asked.

"Some of the small northern islands in Uroko are just a mile apart with really shallow water. The ocean freezes between them. We'd take family trips out there and skate between them on the ice."

"You'd skate?"

"On bone, yeah."

"How does that work?" Archie got up, stayed up for just a second, and fell again.

Nori looked at him with contempt. "I hope to never show you. Come on. Keep your weight directly under you."

She waddled over and let him use her arm as a support. Once he was up, she did the same for Julienne. "Hopeless," she muttered.

They shuffled along for a bit. Up ahead, Benedict helped everyone set up their lines as Quince just tried to stay upright. Archie looked back to watch Blanche, which threw his weight off balance. His foot slid, but Nori kept him upright.

"Eyes on your own feet," she scolded. She turned to Julienne and smiled. "Your birthday's coming up. You ready?"

"I'm getting there. But if I fall through the ice, don't bother saving me."

"That's not funny," Nori said.

But Archie laughed. And despite Nori's orders, he turned to look back at Blanche one more time to try to figure out why he felt relieved seeing her walk away.

The sun rose and fell halfway down the overcast sky before Quince called it quits. The class had caught nothing but a single perch and half a dozen cases of the sniffles. The warmth of the indoors called out to the students, and Quince vowed to get Pomona to make them all hot chocolate, prompting a mad dash back to the Academy.

But Archie stayed behind. He wandered and wondered at the edge of the ice, taking occasional looks toward the greenhouse to see Blanche's silhouetted figure working within. The cold had long seeped into his bones, but he could stand to suffer the outdoors more than he could suffer what transpired in his mind.

He thought of Khala and mountains and caves. Of tariaksuq and enukin and yetis. Of the threat of death and starvation and Blanche. Maybe if he went into that greenhouse and told her that they should take a walk and then took her out, far out into the wilderness where they'd be alone but for the most resilient rodents and adventurous birds, out where the sun shone five hours a day and they had to huddle up for warmth. Maybe then everything would make sense again.

It was a funny thing, how everything had become so simple once his body had gone into survival mode. But now, in its comforts and luxuries, everything was so complex. Perhaps the advent of civilization itself was at fault for his struggles. In many ways, his life would be harder without it, but perhaps those struggles were of a more pure soul. But maybe he was spoiled just for having the time to be able to think of such things.

His knuckles turned white inside his gloves. Snot froze in his sad, peach fuzz mustache that he wished would darken one day. Then he'd be a man. And men had things figured out, didn't they? No, that wasn't right. He thought of his father, a man twice his age that was still figuring things out. Would Archie ever feel comfortable? Would it ever end?"

The snowy ground turned gray in the waning light. Laughter echoed down from the lounge. Archie closed his eyes and imagined their conversations, cherishing the dynamic of his classmates. A fear struck him that he might disrupt that wonderful balance. But he had to do what he thought was right for him.

He walked into the greenhouse.

"Hey!" Blanche greeted him. "I'll be done in a second."

She brushed her hair back, smudging dirt on her forehead in the process. Archie always liked that about her. She could doll herself and look pretty or get herself covered in dirt, sweat, and grime and still look pretty. The pang of affection robbed Archie of his breath. He skipped over the preamble he had prepared and dove into his dread.

"When we were talking about the future, you said you wanted to start something new. A new, uh, restaurant or whatever."

"Yeah?"

"Well…I don't know that that works for me."

Blanche tilted her head and smiled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that…" Archie stared at the lake through the glass behind Blanche. He could look anywhere but at her. "Petrichor isn't new. So you wouldn't…that's not something you'd want to do?"

Blanche's lips uncurled into a half-smile. "Not really, no. I'd want it to be something totally new. Something mine."

"I…I don't know that that works for me."

Blanche's smile fully unfolded. "What are you saying?"

"You've felt it, right? That this…might not be right."

Blanche's beautiful red lips parted in the beginnings of a scowl. "You need to be very clear about what you are saying. Right now."

"It's me, Blanche." Archie looked at Blanche for just a split second. It was all he could bear. "I can't help but to think long-term. And it's great now—for the most part. But, if we have these differences…"

"Archie." Blanche's voice matched the full scowl of her face as she tried to dip into Archie's view. "Don't tell me that you're ending this."

"If—if—if it's not gonna be, you know, forever. Then what are we doing?"

"Forever?" Blanche threw her hands out to the side. "Things are working now."

"Yeah, but—"

"How do you think forever happens, Archie? You don't decide what forever is ahead of time. Forever is just a series of nows. You have to have a lot of good nows to have a forever."

"Eventually, it's not going to work…"

"But how do you know that?" Blanche's harsh voice cracked with vulnerability. "That now hasn't happened yet. You might be different by then."

"Blanche, I…"

"You already changed! That's why this works. Last year you couldn't think past your future. And then you learned how to be present. That's when I fell for you, Archie. What happened to that? What happened to a world of possibilities? What happened to wanting to live in Ambrosia City and wanting to be a fighter?"

"I still want that! I want both. I want…I don't know what I want yet. But I can't write off a possible future like that."

"Isn't that what you're doing, though?" Blanche's voice lost its bite. She moved into Archie's view. He turned away but not before seeing the glisten in her eyes. "Aren't you writing off a future with me?"

"Blanche, I…" Archie rubbed his temples. He should have prepared better. Readied a clean break. He had no answers to Blanche's arguments. Anger filled in the gaps. "You didn't come to my fight!"

Blanche recoiled. "What? That's what this is about? Archie, I saw people die. I still see them. Every night when I sleep. I've seen it happen a hundred times. You're breaking up with me because I don't like violence?"

Anger begot anger.

"You don't support me, though! You've never shown any interest in my training. You won't let me talk to you about it. I'm only allowed to exist in the enclosure that you've imagined for me."

"You can't be serious. I—"

Something clicked in Archie. Revelation cut into his voice. "No. That's it. That's what it is. That's what's been bothering me. It's not just the future stuff. It's the now. Now isn't working."

Blanche crossed her arms and waited for an explanation. Archie could finally look at her. He was sure of things.

"Someone gave me advice when we were just starting. He said to meet you at your interests. That was the key. But you never met me at my interests."

"Of course I did."

"No, you didn't. You don't. I think…I don't think you want me, Blanche."

"Of course I want you, Archie. I wouldn't be with you if I didn't want you!"

"We thought we were going to die in that cave. We only had each other. That started us on this path. But I think you were always going to end up with someone, Blanche. You like having a boyfriend. The me of it has nothing to do with it."

Blanche breathed heavily through her nose. They were quiet a bit. Just her heavy breathing and his heavy heart. "Just say it's over and get out."

Archie's mouth flopped open. How had things gone so wrong? How could they ever be good again? "It's…it's over."

Blanche clenched her teeth, the sternness of her jaw contradicting the vulnerability in her eyes. "Now get out."

"Blanche, we can still—"

"Get. Out."

Archie took a deep breath. Had he made the right decision? Even as angry as he was, he couldn't be sure. Was it long deliberation that had driven him here? Or had he mistakenly followed an impulse? It didn't matter. It was done. Over.

"I'm sorry, Blanche," he muttered as he left the greenhouse.

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