The Knights of Grimm - Act 4 - Whispers of Arkhonex

Chapter 61 - The Winter Maiden

Then

Life was always so simple for Coco when she was a child.

She was beside her sister, Razma Adel, the little sister that she could not save from the Grimm, the death that always drove her to be better. Their stories were always different, but it always seemed like it started the same way. With them losing someone they loved, and like most of them? For Coco it was her mother, her father was a Huntsman and died a very long time ago, when his girlfriend was unknowingly pregnant. But her sister was fathered by another, who never stayed around.

The Adel Family... for all their beauty... were abandoned, constantly.

Alone.

Coco held her mother's hand, tears streamed down her cheeks from her eyes, whilst her little sister was too young to really understand what was happening. Coco must have been eight years old when this happened, her cold body laid on the bed. Taken from sickness, the smallest yet most powerful killer on all of Remnant. Something that could not be seen... could not be stopped.

"Coco? Coco why isn't momma waking up?" Razma whimpered as she gently shook their death mother. Coco's mother was a very beautiful woman, but her once long locks of chocolate brown hair had fallen out a long time ago, for the disease that slowly killed her made her hair fall from her head. Coco sniffled, lifting her head and wiping the tears from her big eyes, turning to her sister. Her eyes were a different colour to hers, they were blue unlike her dark brown ones, and she had blonde hair. She took more after her father, a handsome man who gave his wife a child and ran off when it suited him.

She still had never seen his face since.

Coco turned to Razma with a gentle smile on her face, holding her hands affectionately. "Mom... she is gone Raz." Coco answered softly as her voice broke. They found her this way, they never got to say goodbye, she just went to sleep and never woke up as the disease took her from this plain and to the next.

"W-Where is she? She's here..." Razma stammered, but Coco held her head, making her look into her eyes gently with a kind smile.

"She's... not alive anymore, sis. She died... last night." Coco told her, and Razma's eyes widened with horror. She was young, not as educated as her sister was due to her lack of experience, but she knew what death was. Razma's tears flowed down her cheeks like they did for her sister, and she held her mother, sobbing down into her chest.

"Mommy! Please wake up! Please!" She begged her, but Coco held her hand as she heard the car pulling up outside of their house. Coco had already called the hospital for them to take their mother away, and the doorbell rang... she nearly missed it, zoned out from her grief. But she rubbed the tears from her eyes, and stood up. She walked away from her sister and opened the door, seeing the Carers who have come to take their mother away. Behind them she could see the black bag being opened so then they could take her to the morgue.

Coco held Razma close, covering her eyes so she did not have to see the strangers carry their mother out of the house, but Coco watched it all. She felt like she had to, because she had bad blood in her... and because of that? She was used to seeing all the bad in the world. She looked at herself in the reflection, and she gasped from what she saw staring at her. There was an icy looking woman staring back at her in the reflection, she looked just like her mother. She had her hands held over her lap with a loving smile, snow trailed from her hair, as she looked at her. Coco looked at her hand again, but then noticed the reflection of the Woman of Ice moved in the same way.

Who... Who are you?

The woman did not answer, she just looked at her mother's body again, and they were zipping the black bag up, taking her away from the house so she could be buried. Some of the carers walked over to the sisters, and they crouched down. "Honey? There is a safe place we can take you." The Carer said, Coco was always a bright one, and she caught on immediately.