The power of the Lady of the Frozen Lake can be felt on the breeze long before the air turns to frost and the ground to ice. In the shelter of Macalania Forest, Yuna puts her cheek to the crystal bark of one of the great trees and the glittering facets of its surface prick tears from her eyes. Beneath her skin the bark is unexpectedly warm, belying the whisper of superstition and myth with the pulsing hum of reality. The trees here sing softly, a background drone that she couldn't pinpoint until she closed her eyes and listened with just her heart.

Gathered amongst the trees her guardians lounge like great cats, watchful and waiting on her. She can feel their need like a physical pain in her veins, dragging on her blood like they will steal away every last part of her still strong enough to carry on.

She wishes she were stronger.

oOo

In the reflected light of the temple lanterns, she can see the traceries of veins in the clear crystal of the woman's flesh and for a moment before she solidifies into reality, the thought passes through Yuna's head that this is a creature made solely of light and glass.

Yuna is somewhere halfway between the Temple's Fayth and the world of the Lady, three degrees of existence up and four to the side. In this place there is nothing but the winter silence and the light of a weak morning sun making the curve of a goddess' body quicksilver and liquid.

And she is a goddess.

Yuna is on her knees in the snow, and it's cold, so very cold, but she doesn't heed the wet that creeps into the folds of her skirts, or the chill of the morning air. She looks up into the perfect gaze of winter given form and face and she is humbled again by someone else's strength.

Shiva looks down on her and in her eyes is a thousand years of being alone and being strong and being what needs to be. She is beauty and potency, might and stark, primordial femininity, and there is no doubt in Yuna's mind, no query, even though it be blasphemy against Yevon, that she is in the presence of a goddess.

There may have been a choice, a moment of reckoning, but if there was then Yuna does not know it. She looks up into the eyes of everything she wants to be - strong, capable, alone, with might enough to send the darkness fleeing before her - and she knows that this woman embodies the kind of strength she wants to possess and which she knows she will never have.

She is on her knees and the Lady stands over her, proud and defiant and thoughtful.

In the winter silence, Shiva reaches out her hand and Yuna takes it.

oOo

Later, she buys a potion from the Travel Agency and rubs it into the frost burns on her palm. She is careful not to let her guardians see, and careful also to remind herself that this is to be a lesson learnt.

Slipping what remains of the potion back into the folds of her obi, she seats herself at the window and sips the tea that Kimahri has brought her. Outside, it is snowing again.

oOo

The first time she summons Shiva in battle is on the great sighing emptiness of the Calm Lands. The summoning brings with it the scent of Macalania that she hadn't even realised she knew, all stillness and silence and brittle perfection. Her guardians draw back, pulling in close together warily, all save Sir Auron who has seen all this before and for whom nothing holds its magic anymore.

Shiva descends like an angel of portent from some time long past when the world was much, much younger. Yuna watches her and feels her heart swell with an emotion that crests with the shattering of the goddess's crystals. She catches her discarded cloak and holds it over her arm, the prickle of ice crystals caught in the weave turning to water against her skin.

There is a moment of long hesitation before Yuna realises that they are still waiting. The half turn of the goddess's head and the glimpse of her eye behind her braids reminds her suddenly that everything is waiting on her. Captured by the beauty of her power, Yuna has forgotten that she still holds command. She nods, once, and the barest of smiles touches Shiva's lips.

The fiends they are fighting, giant cat creatures with flames in their eyes and beneath their claws, have stumbled to their feet with the arrival of the aeon. Yuna sees the apprehension in their eyes, and watches as they scatter and crumble beneath the kiss of Shiva's element.

It is over before the echoes of the ice magic can fully fade and as she passes the aeon her cloak, Yuna looks up into the other's eyes and wishes that she was clever enough to think of something worthwhile to say.

Shiva reaches out a slender hand to take her cloak, and then she is gone, back into the aether, and Yuna is left with her guardians at her back and the last of the ice melting at her feet.

oOo

The first time she summons Shiva outside of battle is at the foot of Mt Gagazet. The others are sleeping and Sir Auron is on guard. He watches her leave the camp but does not try to stop her. "Do not go out of earshot," he says, and she wonders if it is because he has seen all this before that he lets her go. Did her father do this too, all those years ago?

Not like this, she thinks. Not for this.

She makes her way to the edge of the gorge and looks down into the mist that swirls along the edges, creeping up the cliffs like an animal and obscuring the bottom far below.

When she calls for her, the mist rises alongside the power of the summoning, making the air glitter with ice. Shiva coalesces from the darkness, carrying her own light with her, her body luminescent in the night. She takes her cloak from one shoulder and with a careless flick of her wrist wraps it around her summoner's arms. Yuna holds the cloak closed and doesn't mind the chill of the ice melting against her skin.

In the darkness the aeon dances and the light of her body turns the mist to something otherworldly and fey. Yuna watches the tread of her feet, the sway of her arms and her hips, and the fall of her braids like a veil behind which she moves. The goddess dances in time to the chime of her anklets and the clink of the chains in her hair and the mists flow around her with the rise of the beat.

She dances long into the night until morning creeps across the sky and the new day chases away the mist back into the sea. Yuna stands to return the silver cloak and bows as the aeon lifts it from her fingers.

She watches her fade back into the otherworld, following the mist out into the ocean, until she is left standing alone on the cliff top. Later, Tidus comes to find her, and when he asks about the snow that has fallen across the green, green grass, Yuna simply smiles and tells him that in Gagazet it always snows.

oOo

The last time she summons Shiva, the aeon does not offer her cloak.

In her head the aeons are whispering, all of them. Begging, pleading, cajoling and praying. Invading her thoughts with their desperate heart-breaking need. Once perhaps, she would have wept for them. Now she stands tall and strikes them down, one by one.

As they die, they thank her in their whispering, otherworldly voices. Yuna blesses them and ends their existence in the same breath. The Lady of the Frozen Lake has no words for her, but she offers a small, unreadable smile there at the end, and as she fades her cloak slips to the deck of the airship. Then she is gone to the stars with all the rest and Yu Yevon approaches, fat and parasitic. Yuna turns her attention to the monster that has poisoned her world for decades, and when she strikes him down he doesn't rise again.

Later, when her dance is over and the last of the pyreflies has faded, she thinks to walk the deck and pick up the cloak that her goddess dropped. She searches for some time, but the deck is small and the cloak is gone. All that remains is the sheen of water across metal, and the fading scent of winter.

Yuna holds her staff close to her heart and looks out across Spira. She is strong, capable; the darkness has fled before her and now she is alone. At her feet are the last traces of that beautiful cloak and she supposes that must be okay, because now...now she no longer needs it.