Natsumi was hot. Sure, the Kelpi'suti'corn loved a hot bath as much as the next spa-loving creature, but the hot days in the middle of summer? Those could go drown themselves in the deepest and coldest sea. Thus, she'd been forced to abandon her beloved hot springs and go looking for something colder. She sighed in irritation, tossing her short, curly mane.
Problem was, Natsumi didn't generally need to cool off, and the cooler waterways downstream or upstream of the hot springs were generally adequate to cooling her off. Unfortunately, the weather had gotten hotter than usual, and the presence of every other overheated creature in the vicinity was, she swore, heating up the water. So the local rivers were off the table, and even her parents had decamped to the mountains until it cooled down a bit. Her brother had gone with, leaving Natsumi on her own to try to find some cold spring or lake or something, after having stubbornly insisted that the heat streak had to break sometime soon.
Thus, she was traveling on her own in the mountains above her favorite hot spring. Had been all day. Now, she was hot, tired, thirsty, sweaty, and in dire need of a bath, any bath would do. And by the sulfurous itching at her nose...
Natsumi picked up the pace along the narrow, winding trail. Sulfur could mean one of a variety of different rents in the Earth's surface, sometimes volcanic, sometimes merely geothermal. And if it was geothermal, she could snag a bath, even if it was hot.
She picked up her pace, shivering with anticipation under the layers of grime and sweat. Even taking a hot bath on a hot day was better than continuing to toil uphill like this.
As she came around the bend in the trail to where the sulfur seemed strongest, she picked up the barest thread of another scent. Thin. Icy. Natsumi's heart leaped. Ice? Could it be a glacier, or something? It looked like this area didn't get a lot of sunlight, and it did feel a little cooler up here--
Well. It wasn't a glacier.
What it was was a series of pools, some steaming, others not. Approaching the steaming ones, Natsumi's nose was immediately clogged with sulfur, but, as she nosed the waterline of the pools without steam...
There. The faint, but clear scent of ice, combined with the faintest whiff of cold air hanging just above the surface. The Kelpi'suti'corn grinned. These pools were cold, perhaps holding some of the last of the spring snowmelt. Natsumi submerged herself in the icy waters of the pool, almost crying out for how cold it was, and how it so immediately depressed her body temperature. Ducking entirely below the water, she stayed submerged for a few minutes, letting the snowmelt gently wash away the dirt and sweat of the road, before rising again, feeling almost a sharp twinge of pain.
So cooold. But, given the weather, the sort of thing that made a hot spring dip seem appealing again. And nothing seemed to live too close to these pools. Natsumi smiled. She could go home once the weather started to break. But, for now, she was perfectly content to spend the rest of the hotter parts of summer here, where she had access to snowmelt ponds and geothermal hot springs. Natsumi sighed, swimming along the surface of the pond, and promised herself, once she went home, she was taking her brother up here, and then, maybe, they'd figure out how to start their own spa up here, with access to both hot water, and cold.