"The snow fall from last night has surprised many. Forecasters had not been expecting quite such a heavy fall, possibly the heaviest in eight years. Anyone planning to travel today would be well advised to be cautious. The train service from Phoenixbrook is, however, uninterrupted and will operate as normal. Relevant measures have also been taken to ensure the three Phoenixbrook bridges are safe to journey across."

The snow continued to fall steadily through most of the night. Around 2 am, the wind seemed to intensify, creating a blizzard and causing the snow to pile up in drifts in many areas of Aredria. The noise of the wind had woken Eliki, who had considered himself extremely fortunate to be safe and warm indoors on such a night. He had stoked the fire for a while till it was up to full strength again, then drifted back to sleep.

Around 8 am, he woke again, blinking and looking around briefly, propping himself up on one elbow as he momentarily wondered where he was. It didn't take long to figure it out, but the twins rarely slept downstairs. However, on these rare occasions when it snowed in Aredria, there was an atmosphere of comfort and safety to be found from curling up in front of a blazing log fire - something they didn't have the luxury of if they had retired to their individual bedrooms upstairs.

Eliki rubbed his eyes, waited for his sight to stop blurring, then glanced across at the window. Good. The snow was no longer falling and the sky was a brilliant blue. No sign of Leana either, but the smell of something cooking drifting in from the kitchen gave him a pretty good idea of where she was. Eliki stood up and stretched, instantly wishing that he hadn't as a pop emanated from both knees.

"Ow!"

A muffled question floated down the hall from the kitchen. Eliki rubbed the back of his neck, pulling his t-shirt back down - it had ridden right up while he had been asleep - then ambled down the hall to the kitchen, where Leana was busy shuffling a couple of eggs around in a frying pan.

She looked up and grinned. "Morning, sleepy!"

"Morning sis," Eliki replied, curling his tail around Leana's tail. "Feeling any better?"

Leana purred quietly, keeping a watchful eye on the nearby toast under the grill. "Yeah, I think so. I woke up about half an hour ago, but aside from that I think I slept right the way through."

Eliki flipped the toast off the grill onto two sky-blue plates. He knew that if Leana had anything to do with it, the toast would be burned to a cinder, so he buttered them quickly before she had chance to steal them back. He looked towards the window. "So, what's the damage?"

"It must have snowed for a good few hours after we went to sleep, but I'm sure we've had worse. I'd guess most of the traffic is going to have a rough time out there though. Looks like it may be quicker, and safer, to walk it this time."

Eliki shivered. Leana scooped the eggs onto the toast before unceremoniously dumping the frying pan into the sink.

"There, that's all done," she chimed, "Bring those through, and I'll fetch in a couple of cups of tea."

Eliki headed back to the main room, levering the door open with a foot paw and balancing the plates carefully in case their precious cargo made a desperate bid for freedom across the carpet. Luckily, as Leana's luggage bag suddenly scooted across the floor with help from her foot, nearly knocking him over, Eliki had already managed to place the plates down on the small round table. Leana then shoved her other bag across the floor into the room, before placing two cups of tea alongside the toast.

"Right, time to feed our faces, then we can get some of these presents unwrapped."

A short time later, as Eliki stirred his tea - Leana had a talent for making it taste far stronger than you would give two teabags credit for - Leana unburdened herself of news from their mother, Koreen.

Two years before the twin's birth, Koreen had formed a band called Nightlights, in which she played synthesizers. The five-piece band had never really had phenomenal success, but successfully built up a large following nonetheless across Aredria and one or two other countries. Originally a synthpop band, their music had developed over the years into something far more complex, ambient and difficult to categorise. A number of newer bands cited Nightlights as being the main inspiration and influence behind their own music.

Once the twins grew up and left university, Koreen had moved abroad to a country called Ritore with the rest of the band. There were many reasons for this move, one of which was that it simply made things far, far easier for the band as a whole. Naturally, Eliki and Leana were more than welcome to move abroad with her. However they had both decided Phoenixbrook was their home and felt unable to leave. When Koreen left, it hadn't been a decision she'd made lightly. She made a point of visiting the twins often, and Leana visited Koreen now and again when she had the time and the resources available, though Eliki's fear of flying prevented him from doing the same. Considering the distances involved, such visits, often as they were, never quite seemed often enough, and Eliki wished more than anything that one day she would return to Phoenixbrook permanently.

Leana cheerfully reported the news from Koreen, including mentions of the awards ceremony that Nightlights had been invited to. They were considered almost guaranteed winners of "Best Album Of 2027" for their most recent recording, "Watch Words." Darker than anything they had released before, it had also been considered their best album to date. Koreen and the others were decidedly unimpressed, however, with the glitz, back slapping and hypocrisy that went with such ceremonies, and were weighing up those feelings against the much needed and valuable publicity such a live appearance would bring. Either way she had promised to email them, whatever the outcome, with the band's decision.

Leana gave a disapproving look as Eliki accidentally slurped his tea loudly. She rummaged in the luggage searching out the gifts Koreen had asked her to take to Eliki. The smaller of the two was an unusual bracelet of small blue stones, which glowed from deep within - an electric-blue light from tiny sparks that danced around inside the stones. The other gift was a strangely gothic clockwork toy resembling a small carousel, but with dragons instead of horses. Eliki admired it, wondering how such a small clockwork motor could power the carousel, music box and somehow light up the dozens of small bulbs at the same time.

"Okay," he said eventually, "What's the best way to pass on the cheery news?"

Leana steepled her fingers, using them to rest her chin on. "Well, I still think I should get in contact with the mayor, but it's a total waste of time either of us trying to get through to Jarret directly. The only person he'll listen to is his sister, and since you get on far better with Ailee than I do…"

Eliki nodded, sighing a little. "Point taken. Okay, I'll give her a call and arrange to meet somewhere. Andrina isn't opening the stall today so there won't be any great rush to get back again."

Leana grinned as she headed for the door. "Lucky you! I'm expected in at The Bookshelf this afternoon. It's just as well I recover from jetlag so quickly."

"Awwww," Eliki called out to her. "Maybe I'll pop in a bit later then, to keep you company and we can have a chat about how things went."

As Eliki attempted to call Ailee on the phone, Leana retorted, "You'd better hope the boss doesn't decide to pay an unexpected visit then. You can just imagine Kalia rambling on. 'Come on woman, less chatter and more work. By the Goddess, these books won't stack themselves on the shelves will they? Har har har!'"

The last laugh was delivered in an exaggerated deep voice. Eliki just grinned and shook his head, relieved that Leana had quietened down as Ailee finally answered the phone.

As expected, the amount of traffic on the way to the bridge was minimal, and what little there was, seemed to be struggling to make much progress. Leana was more than capable of driving, and they had a car, left to them by Koreen, tucked away in the garage beneath the house. With the snow, it was quicker to walk. Quicker, but not necessarily more comfortable. As it was, it didn't seem to take anywhere near as long as they expected to reach the Market Square.

Eliki had arranged to meet Ailee at the Bridge Café, a place the twins and Andrina had visited many times over the years. Leana, however, had further to travel to reach the mayor's office. It meant journeying across the bridge to the town hall, near the train station, but at least the bridge had a decent monorail service, which would save some legwork.

They said their goodbyes and Eliki took a deep breath as he pushed the café door open. A little bell tinkled. Would Ailee be there already? Eliki seemed almost relieved that she hadn't arrived before him. It meant he had time to sit down and attempt to gather his thoughts. First, and most importantly though…

"Hiya, Paula!"

The wolf girl behind the counter jumped a little and smiled. "Heya, kitty. I hope you've got a very good reason for being out and about in this rotten weather. It took me ages to get here."

"Ah… I'm supposed to be meeting Ailee, otherwise believe me, I'd sooner have stayed at home. It's pretty rough out there. It'll take ages for that lot to melt. Could I have one of those hot chocolates with the sugar crystals please?"

"Sure," she replied, "Go and park your butt and I'll bring it over."

Paula had been in charge of the Bridge Café for nearly ten years. Before that, her parents ran it, but when they retired they had left it in Paula's more than capable paws. Being so close to the tourist attraction of the bridge, as well as within five minutes walk from the market, it meant that the fairly secluded café was never short of customers. It also helped that the view of the bridge from the many windows was spectacular. On a day like this, the chance to escape the snow was a nice extra bonus. Around the walls were photos of different Phoenixbrook scenes from decades ago. To Eliki, it felt a bit like traveling back in time looking at all those photos. It also seemed strange to him, wondering what had happened to the people in the photos, if any of the children in the oldest photos were still alive, and what they were doing now. One photo in particular stood out though - a photo from roughly forty years ago showing the market fountain, and seated by it was a little snowkitten girl. Koreen. She always seemed to look so distant and lonely in that photo, but it was difficult to pinpoint exactly why.

Eliki sat at the table in the far corner, furthest from the door. Owing to the weather and the time of day, there were not that many other people in the café. A very tall, thin male otter sat a few tables away, two cups of tea in front of him. Three teenage cats sat closest to the door, discussing Jerra Featherstone's new film, while two rabbits were on the table across the other side of the café from Eliki, gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, an unfinished donut sitting on the table between them.

Eliki sighed and looked out the window. The red quilted seats were extremely comfortable and the view of the bridge, sparkling under its layers of snow, was very impressive. But his mind was on other things. Meeting Ailee like this always made him nervous. Much less so than if he had been meeting Jarret, admittedly, but even so. Ailee had a temper and at times could be unpredictable. She was usually friendlier to Eliki - indeed they had once been much more than friends while at university - but that nervousness still remained.

Paula placed the mug of chocolate down in front of him and Eliki sorted out a small mountain of change to pay for it, before returning to his dutiful watch of the bridge. He almost jumped out his fur when, a few minutes later, a pair of light brown paws slapped down on the table.

"Eliki Snowkitten, it has taken me far longer to get here than I hoped. On foot and bloody freezing. It's evil outside right now, so this had better be of the utmost importance."

In front of him stood Ailee, glaring down though thankfully not as angrily as she sounded. As she flung her coat onto the back of the nearby chair, Eliki noted she was wearing a tight dark purple t-shirt and a short tie-dye blue skirt.

"Dressed for the weather, hmm?"

Ailee gave him The Look, before sitting down. "Jarret is out doing some research so I can't be away from the club for too long."

For a moment Eliki watched the multi-coloured sugar crystals sinking slowly below the surface of his drink, still too hot, before rubbing the back of his ear, telling her, "Okay, I'll get right to the point. Leana went to Ritore to visit our mum, and while she was there she did some background checking into a few worrying rumours. There were a few other things she checked into along the way, but either way it seems the rumours are true."

"So much for right to the point, "Ailee mused.

It was Eliki's turn to shoot an unamused look across the table. "Ailee… the Elysia have regrouped."

That was met with shocked silence. These were words nobody, especially not a snowkitten, ever wanted to hear again.