(Artist's note: these paintings are in progress still.) In the high meadows, where spring and winter meet like old friends hesitating at a doorway, two finches made their home. Tiny things, really—smaller than a whisper slipping past your lips—but crowned in petals of dusk-pink so vivid you’d swear the sky had dripped its last rose of evening onto their heads. I know their names are Sima and Élio, though the valley creatures just call them the Rosy-Crowned Hearts.

Each dawn they’d wake together in a nest woven of grass and moss, tucked into a gnarled juniper clinging to a cliff’s rim. I can still see the snow patches far below, stubborn as old promises, and the brave little wildflowers poking through. The finches would hop twig to twig, offering their duet to the waking world: “Here we are… we’re alive… we still believe in morning.” Short breaths of song, but somehow enough to stir the whole meadow.

Seasons passed in that gentle rhythm—gather seeds, bob heads at noon, snuggle close when the light slid behind rocky peaks. Their love felt enormous, given their size: a fierce assurance that come storm or deep freeze, they’d face it side by side.

Then came that autumn when a shadow swept in. A cold prince—eyes like frozen lakes, words sharp as icicles—declared joy forbidden. Trees stiffened to marble; leaves turned to crystal; even the river forgot how to laugh. It was in the first frozen morning that Sima felt Élio’s small heart tremble next to hers. From their perch they peered down at a valley turned to silver stone, and knew escape meant losing everything they loved.

“If we fly away,” Élio whispered, breath pluming in the cold air, “we’ll lose this place—our home.”

Sima nodded, feathers rustling like a sigh. “We’ll stay. We’ll find warmth in our song.”

So, they sang. To the river, that it might remember laughter. To the trees, that their roots would soften. Each sunrise, their tiny notes wove through the hush so clear that even the sleepiest deer might stir.

The prince heard them, of course. He sharpened an icy blade and flung it down, shattering frost shards near a granite boulder. A tremor rattled the finches’ little frames, but the silence lasted only a heartbeat. Then Sima ruffled her feathers, Élio trilled back, and their melody rose stronger—cutting through the frozen stillness like a knife of light.

Word reached the mountain—a giant forgotten by the world, riddled with ancient magic buried deep beneath its snowcapped crown. Days later, the earth itself seemed to breathe. Snow cracked, rivers rippled back to song, trees shivered and split their frost shells to reveal living wood. One oak exhaled a single green leaf, tentative but alive. And in that chorus of revival, the valley remembered itself.

The prince stormed down from his ice palace, sword raised, but the ground heaved into blossom at his feet—roses of dusk-pink unfurling through stone. His sword shattered; he staggered, robes falling away to reveal the vulnerability beneath his frosted guise. Sima and Élio watched from their branch, offering a final duet—a fragile promise that love, even in the tiniest hearts, can thaw the hardest curse.

After that, the valley found balance: fierce winters and generous springs weaving together like threads. Wherever the Rosy-Crowned Hearts flew, petals drifted in their wake. Deer returned, fox kits tumbled through grass, hawks soared on winds scented with new bloom. And every morning, the finches sang—not from fear, but gratitude. Their anthem became the valley’s heartbeat, a reminder that love, once kindled, can never be snuffed.

Years later, travelers still speak of pink blossoms springing from rock or rivers laughing through last snows. They whisper of two tiny birds whose crowns outshone the darkest night—and how, if you listen at dawn, you’ll hear the softest two-part song, small as a breath but as fierce as a storm.

This ends the first chapter of the story of Sima and Élio, the first tale in The Avian Chronicles. To read the next three chapters please sign up here.