When the Great Freeze started, everyone thought that the world was going to end. Crops stopped growing. People stopped going outside. Snow built up. It was a nightmare. Over the first few years of it, people died.

That was thirty thousand years ago.

Violette heard horror stories about the days of old, about her their ancestors had acted so greedily that they brought on an eternal winter. She heard of how people had no idea how they were supposed to stop this winter and how everyone had called this the 'End Times'.

It seemed like most of that panic was for nothing, because humanity had ended up surviving. Crops had started to be grown in magical green houses and people started eating and having babies again and life went on. At some point, people stopped thinking about the 'End Times', or what their ancestors had done to deserve it. But, it was something that intrigued Violette.

It had been that way ever since she was a little kid, she had asked so many questions in school and caused so much trouble that her teachers had temporarily kicked her out at one point. She guessed that she was just an annoying child like that, but all of the disdain against visiting the past just made her even more curious the more that she thought about it.

That led her to today.

Years of schooling in history and the sciences. Both the ancient one of spells and potions, and the one of experiments and concrete answers with easy and simplistic explanations. She was going to earn her agree in Monsterology today, and tomorrow she was going to leave her home to go on an expedition to find the source of this curse.

So many people had called her insane, said that she would never find it and that she just needed to leave it alone. Otherwise she was going to die alone. But, she knew that there was some sort of answer out there. There had to be some sort of answer for everything. Plus, she had some selfish motives of her own.

She was tired of the dead expanse of white all around her and dark skies.

She wanted to see spring for herself. Not just in a book in a crappy picture that she had to squint to see fully, but actually in front of her eyes. She wanted to see the sun and feel warmth on her skin that wasn't from a fire place.

She knew that she could do this. She had so much schooling now, and her teachers were excited about her prospects, so she took their excitement instead of the apprehension and vitriol of her family and friends. "Soon," She told herself, "soon you're going to break this curse and make a name for yourself," Everything in her felt like it was full of fizzing bubbles. She was bouncing off the walls, doing her makeup and humming to herself and thinking about the future.

She was ready to have a good day.

Viktor was not a fan favorite amongst the academy's researchers. To be fair, he did make their jobs a lot harder than it had to be sometimes. But, he was only there to make sure that the young starry eyed adventurers that they employed were not taken advantage of the way that the academy so often wanted to.

He knew that not every body saw it that way though. That's why he was surfing through his four hundredth and second complaint about all of the sanctions he had put on the sponsors of research missions this year. In response, he was telling everyone the same thing.

He was not going to be bullied into lifting rules that kept people from dying.

No matter how much money was thrown his way or how many angry letters he got with death threats from overzealous academics and scientists. He rolled his eyes as he wrote the same thing on another letter.

There were so many that he would have to waid through today, but he had no idea how much of them he would be able to get to because he was going to be part of the graduating ceremony today.

Viktor sighed, a migraine pounding his head. Sometimes, he questioned his life choices.

Another letter.

This one reading:

Dear Vicktor,

*I am not sure who you managed to piss off this time, but I just got a threatening message in my inbox saying that if I don't get you to lift the ban on breeding dragons, they're going to kill my entire family. As you know, I've already told you to stop making rules that are so inflammatory to some people. I understand why you made this decision as dragon breeding has gotten humanity in trouble before, but perhaps you could write a letter to this man where you very politely explain your position.

[Adress enclosed.]

Signed,

The Dean*

Vicktor rolled his eyes. He knew that there was no way that reasoning with people like this would help anything, putting restrictions on what an academic could study and go see was something that made a certain subset of the community very pissy.

"Ugh." He muttered to himself. He plucked out a piece of parchment paper and rolled his eyes, trying his best to formulate the most dimplomatic type of response possible. Considering the mood that he was in, he would consider that quite the feat of his writing career. Because if he was being completely honest, he didn't really give a damn. He hated having to placate people because they were pissed that he had morals.

He scribbled out a response to this person and shoved it in an envelope. He would seal it later. He so desperately wanted to get out of this office. It was stuffy and smelled of petrichor and he was losing his patience.

He needed a cup of coffee before the graduation ceremony today. He knew that he was expected to be on his best behavior there as well.