Private Tales The Firecracker and the Ice queen live in the same box.

[Yuebing Coquelicot]

It was an early morning. No, it was still night. Only just. Yue slowly opened her eyes with a resigned expression as she was pulled from sleep.
She knew what had woken her without stirring from her bed. A whimpering wail broke the silence muttered pleas following incoherent in its wake.
Yue sat up in bed her hair in messy braids, her expression still sharp even groggy as it was, and her silk night clothes rumple.
She turned to pull aside the sheer fabric she had hung about the bunk and climb down as quietly as possible.

It had been this way since the first night. She had been fairly alarmed then and had climbed out of bed in a panic. Only to discovered that there was no rogue assailant, only a case of night terrors. Yue had been initially concerned that she might have attracted some wayward spirit within the college.
She had agonized over whether to wake Svenia Albrecht or not. Ultimately she had decided that shaking the girl awake might be too jarring.
Afterwards Yue had begun quietly Purifying the room when Svenia wasn't there....only to realize that Svenia was definitely not being tormented by some troubled spirit....at least not the kind that Yuebing had the power to exorcise.
Were it one of the other girls from the pagoda Yue might have solved this by climbing into her bed and stroking her hair or humming a lullaby.
They were strangers true but Svenia often gave looks to Yue not too dissimilar to a cat with it's hair raised. She had the feeling that if Svenia woke to Yue standing next to, let alone in her bunk that .....well no she wasn't sure what the girl might do but probably not something good.
Instead she had tried to ignore it.

She had tried....but then she saw what Svenia was capable of. Yue didn't at all like the idea of potentially being fried alive in the middle of the night.
Yet she didn't question. If it happened early in the night she would roll over and summon small spirits of light to ease her mind into a more restful sleep.
If like today it happened close to morning she would rise and quietly go to the desk her corner of the room. She would light a teapot with a bit of magic and steep a blend of mugwort, cinnamon and aged tangerine peel. It was an old recipe to replenish and ward of negative energy.
Yue being the type to not so easily express genuine tenderness played this off with a lie.
Something about how this blend of tea could only be brewed by the pot, and so Sevnia had better have some or it would go to waste.
Despite her insistence that it was a coincidence, whenever Svenia woke from a bad night terror, there was a warm mug of spiced slightly sweet tea waiting.
She would leave the Dornochi style ceramic mug on Svenia's desk and place the pot on the low table she had set up near the window.

When Svenia woke it be the same this morning. Tea waiting for her, and Yue sitting at the low table quietly reading her notes as if she had naturally woken before the sun.

 

[Svenia Albrecht]

Piercing screams ripped the air and sent daggers through her heart. The heart-wrenching pain was only matched by the heat rolling off of the creature in front of her. It grinned at her mockingly, eyes of fire and mouth filled with jagged glass and splintered wood, maw gaping open to let the smoke and the heat from within roll out.

Svenia screamed and struggled against the hands that held her. There were only hands and arms; they gripped her about the shoulders and her hair and arms and legs. The bodies they belonged to were absent.

"They are still in there! Let me go! Let! Me! GO!" She shrieked again. The fire roared its laughter at her struggle as the disembodied appendages pulled her further from the beast. The monster. Her home.

Within the shrieks turned to those of mortal agony, and the girl went absolutely wild to break free. She didn't hear the whispered, etherial words that told her they were already dead and that there was nothing she could do. It didn't matter that they were curses speaking truth.

That was her family in there. That was her whole world, caged in timber and flame, screaming their last as heat and smoke poured from that gaping, laughing maw.

She clawed at what held her, pried at fingers as cold and heartless as the void. With one mighty push of effort and with the sound of her dress ripping, she was free.

Plunged into darkness and heat.

"You can't save them. You can't even save yourself," a voice called to her from all round. It rattled in the back of her head even as it laughed.

But she had to find them. Surging to the stairs, she only heard the crack of shattering timber before a tongue - made of a burning beam - slammed down on the floor.

With her beneath it. Her own shriek of pain, of mortal agony, joined that of her family. "Burn with them, then..."

---

She woke with a start, sweat pouring down her face. She fell trying to scramble to her feet, throwing her torn bed aside and landing awkwardly on her hands and knees. She barely had time to make it to the privy she and Yue shared before she was violently sick for what seemed like an eternity.

The ghost of piercing screams cut through her as she leaned back against the wall, head in her hands. A dream. A nightmare, a variant of the same one she'd had for three years now. Even though she knew it was a dream, she couldn't help the tremble in her hands, or the tears that ran down her face.

Some nights were better than others. Oddly enough, there were fewer bad nights since she had changed rooms. Even if she had been paired with Yuebing Coquelot, a person she had disliked since coming to Elbion. The woman remained distant and aloof of everything. If anything, the troubles with the goblins had made it worse.

No one wanted to be round a loose cannon.

She sat in silence for a time, then rose and washed up. Today would prove to be another fragile day, it seemed.

After scrubbing her face clean, she returned to the main room. She had not grabbed her staff in her haste to avoid vomiting on the floor, and so she hobbled quite acutely, left leg stiff and aching.

It was then that she noted Yue seated at the low table. For a moment she froze, a mixture of mortification and resignation crossing her features. She didn't know what to say or what to do. It was always this way with a roommate after a particularly bad night.

"Good morning," she said after an uncomfortably long wait. The words were roughened by a raw throat and a lack of restful sleep. She said nothing of her embarrassing rush to be sick, to say anything of her panicked state on waking. Instead, she made her slow way to her desk. There, set on its empty surface, was a mug of tea gently steaming.

Svenia stared at it for a long moment, before looking back to Yue with a question in her red-rimmed eyes.

 

[Yuebing Coquelicot]

It was lucky that Yue was well accustomed to all manner of 'roommate noises'. Most of the girls in the pagoda had been raised communally until they entered specialized training or apprenticeship. Yue's case that too had led to life in a temple which had only broadened her tolerance. Though she had to admit the retching noises weren't a pleasant way to start the morning.

Her eyes did not so much as rise from the volume until Svenia Albrecht voiced a greeting.
Slowly Yue's impassive eyes met her roommate's. Her expression was as stoic as ever and far from gentle comfort. Easing the distraught was a skill she had never mastered. She held an inner calm like a stone and an expression nearly just as immovable.
"Good Morning." Yue returned in formality. Her eyes following the girl's slow path to the desk.
The curious look from Svenia was met with only the subtle knitting of Yuebing's eyebrows.
She knew it would be better said 'it will settle your stomach' or 'don't think too deeply about it'.
Instead what came out of her mouth was "It isn't poisoned."

Her eyes turned back to the book and she took a sip from her own mug, "I cannot finish an entire pot on my own...." She lied. "You can let it go cold if it isn't to your liking. It gets thrown out elsewise."
Yue added as if this were as normal as the Gong Fu method of tea brewing, where the first steep is discarded.