Ariana looked out the window in boredom. The silvery glass showed nothing but puffy pink clouds, blue skies, and sparkling dew glistening on the window pane.

She sighed. There was only one event she wanted to see today.

"Maybe Riya will come home today." She said hopefully, looking over at the empty seat near her.

Ariana's friend had had a terrible accident over the weekend, though no one told Ariana what. Riya was still in the town infirmary it seemed, and Ariana hadn't heard from her since.

"Pssst!" A voice behind her called.

Ariana rolled her eyes. It was just Turgut. He was annoying. 

She ignored him.

But he wouldn't stop.

"Hey!"

She internally groaned, before turning round with a bored expression.

Turgut grinned. "Is she okay, then? Riya?"

Next to the brown-haired boy were his friends, Siam and Hisham, who copied Turgut's grins, albeit more ominously. They couldn't look friendly if their life depended on it.

"Yes. She is." Ariana replied monotonously.

There was a reason she stayed away from troublesome people like the kid behind her. Everyone knew who'd put out the festive lights that had taken the whole school weeks to hook around the school. 

Turgut lived in the poor, rough part of town, with just his father and older sister. Mischief and snappy retorts were in abundant supply wherever he went. 

She could bet he didn't know what a rose was.

Ariana turned back to face the front.

The teacher was explaining some mathematics at the front of the class.

Outside, the snow continued falling, and the wind whipped it.

---

Ariana ate quietly at lunch. Having lived eleven years of life, she knew she was young. But she was also old. She understood everything her elders did or said, so in her mind, she was as grown up as any of them.

Whatever life had to throw at them, she was ready for the same.

She had never sat alone at lunchtime before. Riya was always there too, chatting away, about some dress or accessory or friend or house she'd visited. It could get repetitive, but Ariana liked that. She like the constancy of it. She could always rely on Riya to be the same, and not change. Change was not good. Especially in people. Even if they changed for the better, it unnerved Ariana. Why did people, and things, have to change?

It reminded her of the rose tree.

She frowned and thought of something else quickly.

---

When she got home, Ariana handed her backpack to a maid and ran through the marbled halls, footsteps pattering. She was looking for the green door.

There it was. Its oiled glossy look, silver doorknob, stained glass window inset.

She rushed towards it, turned the doorknob, and careened into the wet wall of pouring rain.

Growing up, Ariana's father had been stationed in a desert camp. It rained a handful of times a year, but when it did, it pelted bucketloads. The occasion was so rare that Ariana's mother let her leave the house to be under the open sky, with an umbrella and coat. There she'd just stand and soak up the air of the freshened earth, and marvel as the furious water bullets fell harmlessly on her infant fingers. 

Happy memories. Ever since then, rain was a sign. Riya was scared of rain, she always thought thunderstorms would follow. But to Ariana it was a whole different story.

Eyes steeled to pick out her target in the dripping, vibrant coloured garden, Ariana's eyes widened and then narrowed again in triumph. 'Got you.'

She ran towards it, then knelt down, and plucked a flower off it.

The rose tree.

Ariana frowned. This time its bloomed buds were white.

She preferred lilac.

'Can't you turn lilac, just for a moment? Please?' she asked plaintively.

The roses stubbornly kept their colour.

Ariana stood up straight, stomped her feet, made a face, and hurried off.

Crazy plant.

---

Over time, as Ariana grew up, she'd come regularly over to the rose tree. On her thirteenth birthday, she decorated it in ribbons, tied in a bow around each stalk. 

When she was fourteen, she planted other rose trees around it to keep it company, thinking it was lonely.

When she was fifteen, she took some of its stalks and replanted them around the garden. New rose plants bloomed. But they died soon after, buds turning oddly black.

In some ways, the rose tree was like her. It defied logic, all attempts by people to understand it.It behaved differently to how it was expected to, and that drew Ariana to it, moth to a flame. Or rather, a student moth to its master moth. 

But the rose tree wouldn't be understood, even by one of its own. 

Then the day came when Ariana's family moved away. She was seventeen then. 

It was their last day, and Ariana begged for the rose tree to come with them. Her mother agreed, and the plant was uprooted. 

But lo and behold, on leaving the earth, its stalks and rosebuds swiftly turned grey and then blank, and a whispering, whistling sound left them before they drooped and looked, to all, lifeless and dead.

Ariana knew exactly what it meant.

"I can't leave, mother." She stated resolutely. "I belong here, not in some marshland we're heading to. Not in a place I know nothing about."

"But darling, you loved the desert before! What's to say you won't love this place?"

"Not this time." She replied, adamant. "I cannot, will not, go."

After many a persuasive attempt, Ariana's mother insisted we could not, would not go either. But Ariana's father wasn't willing to leave his family behind this time.

"Is it about the rose tree, dearest?" He asked one night, having overheard that particular whispered story off a servant

She said nothing, and her father understood.

"I can get us another one? There are flowers that grow in every clime."

"But I grow in this one." She responded quietly.

"No." He put his hand over her hand. "We are humans. We grow wherever we choose to plant our roots."

"Then why did it die?" She asked quietly, looking up at him, unnervingly expressionless. 

"The rose tree was born and raised in that soil. Without it, the plant assumed it would die. So it gave up. That is the essence of death. Your body gives up, or your spirit does. I have seen both, many times."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "But you know better. Don't make the same mistake."

Thirty years later, Ariana looked over her balcony at her garden, hand under her chin.

There it was, her pride and joy. After years, it had taken root.

It was a garden made of ice, but in a small spot of earth, a rose tree had managed to grow, its colours switching teasingly in the wind as it danced.