She wears her pajamas when her dress is in the wash.

Cinder learns this the winter morning she sees Ruby shivering her way back from the transit tower, her slippers soaked and caked with the snow that gave instead of crunching beneath her feet.

Her nose and cheeks are red and her lips tremble, kissed by jack frost.

Halfway through knitting the sweater, one of deep red with golden threads that shone like tinsel woven within, she tells herself she isn’t doing this for any reason in particular.

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” She reiterates to Emerald and Mercury, when they ask about it. They lower their heads towards one another to gossip, and Cinder finishes the sweater.

It is four nights later when she spots Ruby, shaking in her pajamas as she taps something on her scroll with great haste, looking about her in front of the tower; is she meeting someone? It doesn’t matter. Cinder slips behind her and puts it over her head; her lack of expectation leaves her arms stuck and Cinder wraps an arm around the squealing girl and gently covers her eyes with the other hand, embracing her.

“Keep warm,” Cinder warns her, and the girl stills, perhaps soothed by her voice, or stirred by memory: she won’t know. “The fabric is special, Ruby. Keep warm.”

No matter what this world will do to someone like you, as it did me.

She hugs her tighter, briefly, and disappears quickly, watching from afar.

Cinder knows what it’s like to be cold. She knew it so well that she was compelled to forsake it completely.

It wasn’t her fault that this lively, foolhardy girl had reminded her.

Ruby soon learns that the sweater is glowing, its threads resonating with the heat from each speck of dust woven in.

The gold shining within the mirror of her silver eyes is something akin to a treasure.