Fourth Letter: Icy Peaks

Dearest Maggie,

Ahhh, if there were ever a place that would resonate with me, it would be Icy Peaks. You know me, Maggie, and you know my deep love for tales of queens and dragons, and Icy Peaks has both. There is an old legend, here, that tells of an Ice Queen who rescued the town and placed them here, high in the mountains. There is a festival in her honor every year, and here we are. Everything here is so lovely, in blues and greens and silver. To be honest, I felt my own attire blended right in. I had chosen today to wear my blue-and-white gown, and I felt positively lovely amongst the rest of the snowy, icy decorations. Even though the streets were cleared wonderfully, it wasn't perfect, and the leftover snow crunched under my boots. Temperate although the climate may be, it is still winter, and so there is snow. It's strange, though... Where snow would be banal elsewhere, seeming to be plain and trite, the snow in Icy Peaks is somehow... more. It sparkles in even the lowest light, it seems to never get dirty, and... I don't know... it just seems magical, Maggie. There's no other word for it. When I walked around the town (which seemed more like a hike than a walk--I shall never wear my pretty boots again when walking on uneven cobblestones!), I asked about the snow, but I was only given the same mysterious answer: "It is a gift from the Lady." I can only surmise that they believe the snow to be a gift from the Ice Queen, and to be honest, after looking at it, I found that I couldn't argue.

I can safely say, Maggie, that I was more than glad that I watched the ice-sculpting contest. I never, in my wildest dreams, believed that ice could be made into such beautiful creations. I must confess... I would have leaned in to try to touch one, because they were really just that magnificent, but I noticed something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Lance shaking his head at me.

"I wouldn't do that," he told me. I'm fairly sure I flushed; I'm not used to being scolded. I turned back to look at the sparkling sculptures, and I was surprised to see how much variety there was. One was even sculpted to look like a dragon in mid-flight! There was a crash behind me, and I jumped. Now I understood why I wasn't supposed to touch: someone else had made that mistake for me and knocked over a sculpture! There were pieces of it everywhere, even though people seemed to be scrambling to put it back together. Someone even offered up a roll of duct tape to patch it up, which really just made the poor thing look like a child's experiment gone haywire. I stepped away from the contest just as the artist was demanding some form of solatium for the destruction of the piece, not that I can blame the poor man.

Now, I'm off to eat the last of my iced cakes that I made in Reinsend. I know there is plenty of time before they start to go moldy, but why take the chance, yes? I believe our next stop is Saint's Pole, so expect another letter then.

All my love,
Margaret