(Tegan POV)
Tegan waited until the Moss-Badger healer finished sorting her bundles before speaking.
It wasn't politeness. It was instinct. Interrupting someone while they worked with medicine was a good way to get on their bad side.
The room smelled of crushed roots and damp stone. Warm, but only just. The walls had been smoothed by hands, not tools, and the shelves were carved directly into the rock. Bundles hung from bone hooks—leaves, bark, thin strips of something fibrous she didn't recognise.
Finally, the healer set one bundle aside and turned.
"What medicine do you use in winter?" Tegan asked.
"Winter?" The healer questioned.
"The cold season that's approaching."
The healer—older than she looked, fur hair at the temples—didn't answer immediately. She sat, folding her hands in her lap, head angled back slightly, not in fear but in thought.
"What is gathered before the first frost?," Tegan continued gently, "what must be dried, fermented and infused? and what do you keep because you cannot gather again?"
The silence stretched longer than was comfortable. That told Tegan everything.
"We treat whitefreeze wounds," the healer said at last.
"We treat hunger," she paused. "We do not treat whitefreeze sickness."
The words landed like stone. Tegan didn't react openly, she kept her face smooth, attentive, and professional. Inside, something cold slid down her spine.
"Please explain," she said.
The healer exhaled slowly.
"Most herbs go dormant," she said. "Some lose potency, some change, roots that strengthen in summer rot from the inside when frozen too long or leaves that calm spirits turn bitter and agitate them."
Remembering the ability she saw when entering the room, of the glowing hands passing over a wounded patient and healing them.
"What about your healing abilities?" Tegan asked, already suspecting the answer.
The healer's mouth tightened.
"It worsens illness."
That made Tegan still.
"Whitefreeze suppresses some abilities," the healer continued, "and enrages others. Healing runes draw from ambient divine energy but during whitefreeze, there is little surface energy, so the rune draws from elsewhere."
She tapped her own chest.
"From the patient."
Tegan's fingers curled once, slowly, against her thigh.
"You don't heal them," the healer said quietly. "You burn what warmth remains."
Tegan realized. Shock, hypothermia and metabolic collapse. Just some associated illnesses. Different words but the same outcome.
"What does 'whitefreeze illness' mean here?" Tegan asked.
The healer did not soften her voice.
"Frost-lung," she said. "Breathing mana-cold air damages the chest. Wheezing, blue lips or sudden collapse after exertion."
Tegan pictured it instantly. Pulmonary edema, bronchospasm, energy depletion layered on top.
"Stone Sleep," the healer continued. "They slow in motion, emotions dull, thoughts drag. It's often mistaken for sadness but the body is shutting down to survive."
Metabolic suppression, thyroid crash and Starvation response. Tegan diagnosed it instantly.
"White Fever," she said next. "A fever without heat, skin cold to touch, shaking without stops. It is often fatal in elders and children."
Septic shock without warmth, vasoconstriction and organ failure.
"And Spirit Drift," the healer finished. "During long nights, minds detach. They wander, forget names and often forget to eat."
Tegan sighed, Depression, dissociation and cognitive decline accelerated by malnutrition and cold.
The healer spoke as if listing her groceries.
"This is normal for whitefreeze mortality," she said.
Tegan inhaled slowly through her nose.
"And rune healing fails because—" she began.
"It accelerates healing," the healer said. "Too much, too fast. The body cannot sustain it. It breaks the body's inner balance."
"You push them past the point of recovery," Tegan murmured.
"Yes."
The healer studied her more closely now. "You understand."
"I do," Tegan said. "For now, It means you're letting people die that don't have to. We try to protect people from the weather first, then treat the illness."
The healer didn't bristle. She simply said, "Tell me how you fight whitefreeze itself."
Tegan straightened slightly.
"Insulated housing," she said. "Layered bedding, calorie-dense food—fat, not just volume. Steam breathing, infection isolation. Scheduled warmth checks, hydration even when cold suppresses thirst. There are other methods and we take targeted responses to each illness. "
The healer's ears twitched sharply.
"You really fight the season," she said, incredulous.
"We have to," Tegan replied. "Because if we don't, the weakest go first."
A pause.
"And here," the healer said, voice low, "that is considered natural."
Tegan held her gaze.
"Who dies first?" she asked.
The healer didn't hesitate.
"Elders, children under ten, the wounded, the grieving and those without strong faith bonds."
The last one confused Tegan. Faith as an insulation, belief as metabolic support. She swallowed.
Medicinal herbs were brought out next. Not with hope—almost with apology.
"Ember-leaf. Keep extremities warm, do nothing for organs. Root-bark tea. Slowed coughing, but doesn't stop it. Sleep-moss. Dangerous if overused, suppressed panic and also suppressed breathing."
Tegan felt her heart clench and release each time a herb was introduced and the following treatment explained. The researchers should be able to find correct dosages, just not in time for this year.
"They ease dying," the healer said flatly. "But they do not stop it."
That was the moment it fully settled. Whitefreeze wasn't an obstacle here, it was a natural filter.
"Tell me about childbirth," Tegan said quietly, changing direction before the weight crushed her.
The healer's posture eased a fraction.
"We haven't had your kind around here before," she said. "But beastfolk births are quick, divine energy reinforces bone and tissue during adolescence so children heal quicker." She paused. "They also scar deeper."
Emotionally, Tegan supplied.
"They suffer quietly," the healer said, as if reading her mind.
"Yes," Tegan agreed.
Silence sat between them. Not hostile or malicious but a shared understanding of what each clan faces.
Then Tegan asked the question she'd been circling.
"Has anyone ever survived whitefreeze sickness?"
The healer met her eyes.
"Rarely," she said. "When they do… it changes them."
Tegan wrote that down.
"Tell me how," she said.
"Later," the healer replied. "If it happens."
That was fair. They exchanged knowledge next—not goods.
Tegan offered data sharing, observation and research notes and otherworld medical practices.
The healer offered herbal drying instructions and three emergency herbs; One fever-suppression root, a frost-resistant plant root, and a slow-healing salve plant.
They agreed to watch whitefreeze together. Not to defeat it but to gather information and try to understand it.
As Tegan stood to leave, the healer studied her for a long moment.
"If you truly mean to defy whitefreeze," she said, "someone will pay its price."
She stepped closer.
"You will be the one who decides who lives… and who is remembered."
The weight settled deep in Tegan's bones and she did not look away.
"I will challenge it. To face the future."