The Far-Flung Fortress might be a cold place, but ever since Aeric was thoroughly chewed out for freezing Sirene's whiskers off, it rarely gets too far below freezing. But there is food that needs to be preserved, and magical reagents that become quickly unstable if you even think about warmer places near them. For this reason keeping an ice mage like Hope around has proved quite useful. She keeps things safe in the clan's humongous cold storage, and can even be used by larger dragons as an air conditioner in warmer weather.

Not that she's particularly satisfied with her role. Sure, she's good at it, and it isn't particularly strenuous, but Hope is the sort of dragon who craves the companionship of others. Unfortunately, making sure the cold storage doesn't defrost is a full-time job, as she has to stick around to channel ice magic or it'll stop working. Her friends, while nice, aren't Ice dragons and as such don't particularly relish spending their free time in a freezer. So Hope spends much of her time stuck in a cold room, with nothing but frozen poultry and the unnerving stuff that Arcane mages like to keep around for experiments for company.

In order to survive the tedium, she's taken up a hobby. And with so much free time on her claws, that hobby's taken over most of the cold room. Hope collects flowers, many of which come from Rhys's garden. The ones that don't are exceptionally rare, brought to this clan from the farthest reaches of Sornieth. After arranging the flowers in the perfect position, she coats them in a thin veneer of ice, immaculately preserving them forever. Half of the freezer is filled with her beautiful frozen garden, with objects long-forgotten in storage serving as unique statues and marking pathways. Very few dragons will ever get to see her creation, for she is only willing to admit fae into the garden, and even then only if they can be trusted to be very careful. Anyone larger is just far too clumsy to be permitted near such delicate art. An imperial sneezing on the other side of the room could shatter everything, for Arcanist's sake!

The fae banned from the garden include Runescorch, who once carried a bag of loose fireworks into the freezer with him, and Math, who immediately tried to set up a secret numbers radio station under a frozen rosebush. They didn't break anything, but Hope got annoyed with the constant stream of coded messages. Est is banned too, but Hope feels bad about that one. Apparently Est can be frozen solid, as she found out when they getting quite sluggish during their first tour, so it's for their own safety.

---

As her duty takes up most of her time, Hope has learned to make the short periods where she can leave things unattended count. She multitasks better than a spiral, holding conversations with three separate dragons while filling out an order form for new flowers from Corathan. Of course, spirals are notoriously bad at multitasking, getting distracted and forgetting what they were doing multiple times in the same breath. Hope has ordered fluorite instead of flowers on multiple occasions, and half the clan is under the impression that she's promised them an eventual tour of her garden.

Those blunders pale in comparison to the time she fell into one of Belanoir's potions while trying to snatch a rare flower the skydancer was using as a reagent. (She wasn't supposed to be in there, but asking permission would have taken too much time.) When Belanoir finally returned to her lair, she mockingly shook her head and let the fae simmer a while longer. Even later, when she got around to fishing Hope out of the cauldron, the two discovered Sornieth's night sky drawn out across Hope's body. Belanoir complained about her potion to help astronomers see the actual night sky being ruined, while Hope quickly flew back to the freezer that had been melting in her absence.

It's possible that Hope's accidentally magical patterning might change to match the current position of the stars in the sky. She hasn't really felt like letting somebody stare at her long enough to figure that out though, and the thin layer of crisp frost that always covers her wings makes it impossible to tell at a glance.

---

Hope and Ourea get along well, as they're both ice fae. Of course, as Hope is near constantly busy, they wouldn't normally get much time to speak. So Ourea stores some of her sculptures in the freezer to give herself an excuse to go visit her friend. It definitely helps Hope shake off some of that loneliness, and she always sends Ourea back with some frozen flower leis to decorate her statues with as thanks.