Snow Maidens

ChatGPT Prompt:

Write a short story about a young orphan who discovers they have a magical power they never knew existed. Describe how they learn to control their power and what challenges they face along the way.

Here is the link to the first article which talks about my AI experiment:

Valeina grew up in a home with many sisters. They towered over her in their black and white robes with smiles as stern as stone. She was a petite 10 year old with bushy brown hair and eyebrows. Her days were spent hauling around snow, carrying buckets much larger than herself, and cleaning hallways filled with shelves of books. For as long as she could remember, this life and this everlasting winter was all she had ever known.

All the girls slept in the same room, each with their own twin-sized bed. Most of them used to share one, but their home was growing evermore empty with each passing day. By now, it was only Valeina and Lily living there, the rest had gone one by one. Their house was made out of white wood that reminded Valeina of chicken feathers. The roof was a dirt-red with a single tower, and a statue of the Ice Majesty at the very tip. She wondered what was in that tower, the window was always open so there must’ve been someone in there. Every time the girls asked the sisters about it, they always said it wasn’t a place for children. They tried to climb up a few times, but the roof was too slippery from all the snow.

During a midwinter’s night, a chilling wind slithered through the window of the girl’s room. It crept along the floorboards and slid under the covers. Valeina was experiencing the worst of it. Her blanket and clothes were the thinnest of them all, handed down from one girl to the next.

I would do anything to get out of this, she thought.

Bumps broke across her skin as her eyes dulled at the ceiling. With every minute, she felt herself getting colder, her breath expelling larger, until she felt absolutely nothing. She was weightless, drifting aimlessly through the darkness, but something felt strange. Where had the winter’s wind gone?

As she opened her eyes, she was still looking up at the ceiling.

Valeina rolled onto her side, “Ah!” She screamed, pushing herself away as she knocked a book off the nightstand.

A figure that resembled her was lying on her bed. Valeina looked down and realized she hadn’t fallen on the ground but was hovering through the air. She glanced over at Lily who hadn’t woken up to her scream or to the sound of the fallen book.

She eyed her body up and down, her skin was as pale as paper. “Am I dead?” She asked.

Valeina reached out, but her hand passed right through.

Well, if I am dead. She thought, looking at her translucent hand. I might as well make the most of it.

She flew through the walls and out into the winter’s night.

Surrounded by fields of ice as far as the eyes could see, she soared through the night sky as it showered with glimmers of white. She looked out to the snow-cloaked hills and noticed an odd structure in the distance.

“I’ve never seen that before,” she said.

Valeina took off and reached what looked like a small hut. It was buried beneath a mountain of frost.

“Good thing I don’t need to dig to get in,” she smiled.

As she entered, there were broken plates, silverware, and glass scattered across the floor. She hovered through the other rooms and didn’t find much besides a broken frame on the ground. Valeina flipped it over to find an old photograph of a man and woman holding a child. In the picture, the man had a large bushy mustache and wore blue overalls with black boots. Suddenly, something pulled on her hard. She looked back but didn’t see anything. Before she could get a better look at the photograph, she was sent hurtling back to her body and sprung out of bed.

“Leina, are you okay?” Someone asked.

Valeina looked over to see Lily lying beside her.

“You didn’t look so good. So, I thought I’d come over to help keep you warm.”

Lily was only 10 years old, and the closest thing Valeina had to a sister. They often spent their days playing with Lily’s long red hair braiding it into different weaves and patterns. As young as she was, she was much more observant than any of the other girls and always knew when something was wrong whether they told her or not.

“I’m okay,” Valeina replied.

She looked down at her hands and wondered, was it all a dream?

Day after day she couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened was something more, something real. After dark, she would try to recreate the moment. She laid there while Lily slept next to her trying to force her other self to come out.

Night after night, she failed.

What’s different?

“You’re acting different,” Lily whispered.

Valeina tightened up and looked at her, “I am?”

“Why are you keeping secrets?”

“I’m — I’m not.”

“You’re lying,” said Lily. “You said, you wouldn’t lie to me!”

“Alright alright,” Valeina replied. “I’ll tell you, if you keep your voice down. Got it?”

Lily nodded.

After Valeina told her what had happened that night, Lily tilted her head and gave her a dazed look.

“What?” Valeina asked.

“Prove it,” Lily responded.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

Lily held up a unicorn-shaped eraser. “I’m going to put this in the middle of the nightstand. If it moves onto the ground, I’ll believe you.”

“But, I don’t know how I did it last time.”

“Well, what’s different now?”

“I don’t know, I just remember looking up at the ceiling and being really cold.”

“Hm,” Lily thought. “Maybe, if I don’t sleep next to you then it’ll work.”

“Maybe,” Valeina replied. “Okay, I’m going to try it again. If the eraser moves you can wake me up. If not, wake me up in an hour.”

“Got it.”

Valeina laid down wrapped in her thin sheets. Without Lily’s warmth, she could feel the winter’s wind slowly crawling up her skin. The bed underneath started slipping away until she was floating again. When Valeina opened her eyes, she looked over to see her sleeping self and Lily sitting on another bed beside her.

“I did it!” She shouted, flying around the room. “Lily you were right! You — . Oh, right. You can’t hear me.”

Valeina hovered over to the nightstand. She placed her finger on the eraser and pushed it across the wood surface until it fell onto the floor.

Lily’s eyes grew to the size of a clementine. She rushed over to Valeina, covering her in layers of extra sheets. Valeina’s pasty skin slowly turned back to a light bronze, and she woke up.

The two girls spent the night talking about this strange ability. Where she could go, who she could be, what she could do, but the one thing they both realized was that Valeina could now go up to the tower.

A wooden creak appeared. With every step the sound grew louder and closer to the girl’s room.

The head maiden, Nora, appeared in the unlit doorway. Her white hood and sharp eyes flickering in the darkness. “Come,” she said, “It is time.”

She grabbed Valeina’s arm and pulled her out of the room.

“Wait!” Lily cried, “Where are you taking her?”

“Go back to bed, now!” She glared, taking Valeina out of the room.

Valeina didn’t say a word to the head maiden. She knew better than to question her authority and figured she was being punished for keeping Lily up past their bedtime. They walked through the halls and stopped in front of one of the bookshelves.

Valeina looked up at her and said, “Forgive me, head maiden. Please, I won’t do it again.”

Nora didn’t respond.

A shifting sound hummed before them, and the shelves opened revealing a rising stairway.

The head maiden pulled her along as the entrance shut behind them. When they reached the top, Valeina was greeted by the other sisters standing on each side of the room. They began chanting something Valeina couldn’t understand. Candles ignited around them exposing a large ice statue at the very end of where they stood. It was a carving of a woman with wings of a falcon and snowflakes surrounding her hair in the shape of a crown. But, along the bottom of it were sculptures of black frost-rot hands reaching out for something.

Valeina’s voice shook. “What’s going on?”

The head maiden held up Valeina’s arm with her right hand and raised a crystal knife with her left.

“We offer this tribute unsullied and bare. May the winter burn long, the cold, the despair. By the Savior’s grace, her majesty reigns, through dusk and dawn shall the snow remain.” Nora proclaimed, slicing Valeina’s arm.

Valeina screamed, tears streaming down her face as the head maiden threw her across the room. She slammed into one of the frozen hands, and turned back to see the man in the picture and all the other little girls who she thought had left their home. Each figure was covered in a dark frost blacker than burnt soot. The head maiden continued approaching her. She raised her arms up to protect herself, but before the maiden reached her, she felt a cold breath on her neck.

Ice began consuming her flesh inching over her body bit by bit. She could no longer move. All she could feel now was the cold slowly taking over. Valeina looked out to the window and felt herself become weightless. The frost had swallowed her whole.

The head maiden gave her a grim smile and knelt down in front of the statue. “Bless us with the Ice’s Grace,” she prayed.

“I think something’s wrong,” said one of the sisters.

Nora looked up to see Valeina’s frost-rot body not black but white, bright as a light from a distant star.

“What is going on!” She demanded.

Valeina hovered above them. She wiped the tears from her eyes and flew back into the girl’s room to see Lily lying on the bed. The unicorn eraser was back on the nightstand again and she pushed it over.

Lily jumped out of bed, “Leina are you there?”

Valeina flipped over the eraser again.

“You are! What’s going on?” She whispered.

Valeina dug her fingers into the wooden surface of the nightstand. It made a screeching sound as she wrote, RUN.

A shifting hum appeared down the hallway. Valeina began writing the same word again and again.

“Okay, Leina.” Lily said, “I trust you.”

Lily grabbed her coat, jumped over the window, and ran out into the winter’s night with Valeina right beside her.

Note: I will be sending this entire short story to ChatGPT and will ask it to critique my work based on it’s definition of a great writer. I will be asking it what was done well and what needs improvement, and will be publishing my findings in another article. I will be posting the link to that next week down below: