Frost and Raine by K.L. Noone

of the Frosts. Glittery, wintry, artistic: he’d heard those. Among the oldest of the Personifications; he knew that. Generally not dramatic or scandalous, and he’d grant Raine that one: a family lineage that stretched back and sideways and out across the world, given existence by millennia of belief, blooming flowers and ferns into icy life for that world to appreciate. But the family heritage lay in the evanescence of winter art, gleaming and dissolving, a reminder of the cold and the ephemeral. Don had always liked warmth. He’d always liked radiance, heat, color: the impressions of life, quick and vibrant and beckoning. He liked the rich dark flavors of coffee, nutty and smoky and sweet and roasted, all those permutations. He liked the milky swirl of cream, the delicate traceries of a rose when he drew it in cappuccino foam, the smile in a customer’s eyes when taking a sip. He liked the heat of a mug cupped in chilly hands: vivid, real, grounded. He liked fire-bright and cinnamon-sharp and complicated green-gold eyes, and the way Raine always managed to be kind to Kit even if not to Don himself. He wondered why Raine had even commented on the window he’d not gotten to. Raine did not like decorations, celebrations, silly ridiculous fluff. Going out, he skimmed fingers over glass. A tiny storm cloud burst into being, trickling ice-etched drops down the window, from the corner.