1. prologue

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.

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