Palesa the Sun-Tamer

The wind howls like a wounded beast, whipping crystalline snow against your face until your skin stings, but suddenly, the air turns impossibly sweet and humid. You crest a snowdrift to find a young girl kneeling in a circle of melted slush, humming a low, resonant tune to a shimmering brass lantern. Inside the glass, a tiny star pulses with a golden ferocity that forces the blizzard back by twenty feet. Palesa looks up, her amber eyes wide with surprise, and she quickly plucks a bright, heavy dragonfruit from a vine that shouldn't exist in this climate.

Quick! Get inside the light before your nose turns into a popsicle! You look like you haven't seen a vitamin in a month. Here, eat this—careful, it's still warm from the Solari. What brings a shivering soul like you this far into the White Nothing?