Out in the Cold: Part 3

Part III: Out of Touch

The next day came.  With no budge in the snowstorm, Ephalys was convinced that she had hallucinated the very concept of the sun.  No matter how her amber eyes searched the thick clouds, there was only that bleak white-gray that blotted out the sky.  She sighed, arms about her in a feeble and awkward hug.  A drab blanket had been draped over her shoulders, tucked about the crook of her elbow to keep in the warmth.

It was scary, the way the cold pressed against her.  A biting, familiar feeling; it drowned out any semblance of courage she had left in her heart and filled her with a quiet fear.  Though outwardly, her demeanor had not changed, she felt her anxiety like pinpricks upon her skin.  Each jab was a half-inch deeper than the last, crueler and crueler until she felt like she was going to explode.     

“Does it ever stop snowing here?” she asked the figure, impatiently huffing. 

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?!  Don’t you live here?”

The figure smiled.  Delicately between two fingers, they picked up a plate, holding it up to the gentle firelight’s glow.  “I have lived in many places.  Some with snow.  Others with darkness.”

“You’re really good at not answering questions,” Ephalys sighed, rubbing her forehead.

“Sometimes, you don’t need answers.”

“What kind of mentality is that?”

“One where you embrace whimsy and the fact that you’ll never know the answer to everything.”

Ephalys fired off a scowl at the figure, pushing her untamed olive bangs back.  Exasperated, she tore herself away from the window.  Three steps were taken before her hip bumped against something—roughly, too, causing a disgruntled growl to emit from the depths of her throat.  The table was always in the way, its rustic wood supporting nothing save for the remnants of her broken weapon.  Her eyes slowly moved to where her glaive sat, still in shameful pieces.  It burned her pride to look at each pathetic shard.  Something about the sight reeked of failed promises and heartache. 

She wished she could will the glaive back together.  But it, like many things, were beyond a state of repair.  At least for the time being.

Ephalys could almost taste memories coming back.  Stronger hands guiding hers, telling her how to plant the tip of the glaive into her target.  The light through the forest had made little sunbeams that warmed her face when she passed through them.  She could hear the sound of a fey’s wings buzzing as it flew by her, sparks of magic tickling her nose.  Nostalgia beckoned her and she would not have minded sinking into that feeling.  The frigid limbo she found herself in had removed her from everything but its touch pained her in ways she didn’t care to think about.  She did not want to remember but there were parts she yearned for still.  The enchanted forests, the feeling of the sun, the smell of the arcane…

At the cusp of that reverie, she lifted her eyes and saw him on the far side of the cold glass.  Every bit of him was like a ghost, a relic from a life that was no longer hers.  Colorless hair, colorless eyes… She knew that face so well.  And for a moment, she wanted to believe.  She wanted to believe in him.  She wanted to believe that everything before could never have been real. 

Everything from before.

His palm slammed the glass.

The scream that came from her mouth did not feel like her own.

And then he was gone.

“Ephalys…?” asked the figure, the nonchalance notably absent in their voice.

When her vision had stopped blurring, she realized she had fallen onto the cabin floor.  With the blanket sprawled around her, the wintery air nipped at her shoulders.  She stared at where he had been.

“It’s fine.”

She lied a lot.  She wanted to believe she was good at it.  But in that moment, her voice was so tight with residual fear that it shook.  Her fingers found purchase in the ratty cloth of that blanket before she hoisted it over her shoulders.

“I’m fine.”

---

She was not fine.  As moths drew to the lethal touch of fire, she kept gravitating towards that same window.  In her peripherals, she thought she saw him again.  But every time Ephalys looked, he was not there.  There was just silence and the storm.  Madness drove a stake into her cranium; her head ached and it felt infected with eerie, untamed thoughts.  Her hands wanted to fling open that door and search for him.  There was a call into the wilds and her legs wanted to chase it, to run back to where she felt she had belonged all this time. 

Despite it all, a wiser part of her knew he had not been real.  Even if he had felt real to her.  It was just a waking nightmare.  A lingering regret.

But her fear was real.  Her longing was real.  And she didn’t know what to do about that.

A day passed and Ephalys’s restlessness had reached its zenith.  Every day, the cabin felt stuffy but on that day in particular, it felt exceedingly small.  She thought she was going to go insane from staring at those wooden walls.  Her eyes already knew every groove and curve in each plank’s pattern and so she occupied herself by furiously pacing about in front of the hearth. 

“Need more wood for the fire?” Ephalys asked the stranger.

“We have plenty already.”

She frowned at that.

“Alright.  What’s for dinner?”

“Soup.”

“We had soup for the last few days…”

“Well, not much else here.  Unless you want this unopened can of beans.”

“Unopened can of beans?  How’d you get that?”

“I don’t remember.”

Ephalys’s arms crossed over her chest.  At least they had given an answer this time, even if it was unsatisfying.  But that did not help her situation at all.

“… Is there anything I can do?”

From behind their hood, the figure’s eyes gleamed with a particular yet indescribable emotion.  They tapped their chin with a forefinger. 

“Perhaps a bit of meditation?”

“Something that doesn’t involve thinking?”

“Well, if you want something more than soup or beans, then perhaps you could go scavenge something up for dinner,” the figure said with a shrug.  “Though where you could find more food, I am not sure.  But in the past, people surely gathered in forests such as the one outside, right?  Although I suppose you could happen upon another barghest if you go…”

“I’ll take my chances,” Ephalys said, reaching for the table to grab the head of her glaive.  Even if it was broken, the sharp tip could still be used to defend herself.

As she opened the front door, a gust of wind tore through, blowing directly into her face.  Squinting, she pushed her way through, struggling to shut the door behind her.  The feeling of the cold against her skin put a fear back into her body but she gritted her teeth and forced each angry step forward.  An invisible pressure leaned against the back of her nape and she felt the eyes of the stranger follow her as she plunged into the wintery woods. 

Crunch, crunch, crunch.  The snow had miraculously not piled up high even after days of endless downpour but it still was a battle to trudge through.  Ephalys nestled her chin further into her scarf.  She asked herself what she could possibly hope to find in the storm, if there was even life to hunt out here.  But then she remembered the barghests and remembered that they had to eat something from somewhere.  If there was something to sustain them then odds were that there was something to sustain her and her enigmatic savior.  She just needed to find out what that was.

As she walked against the whistling wind, she swore it was saying things to her.  Branches creaked and groaned.  Not a single soul made a noise but she could hear them.  They were phantoms and she was haunted by them, each step more numbed than the last. 

“… an expedition unlike any other…!”

“Look inside.  And Know.”

“Another report… another fragment lost… the Entropy will continue to claim lives if we don’t find it soon…”

“That Spark…”

“… Won’t you come with me?  To the End of the World…?”

Ephalys ran, not caring if every barghest in the woods heard her.  Glaive head clutched in one hand, she sprinted until she could not hear the words anymore.  Heartbeat pounding in her ears, she bent over, breathing heavily until she realized she could hear more than just the sounds of her own gasps.

He stood a few yards away, the bleak white of his eyes and hair melding in with the building whiteout around them.  The expression he wore was cutting, picking her apart bit by bit.  Ever so slightly, the very corners of his mouth turned upward. 

“You don’t belong here.  You know that… don’t you?”

The sound of his voice paralyzed her.  He began his slow approach, the royal blue fabric of his overcoat flapping in the wind. 

“It could have been easy.  Simple, even.  All you needed to do was not be so selfish.”

 The way her hand pressed into the metal of the glaive’s head made her palm ache.  She could not move but she knew she needed to.  His hand found her throat in the span of a blink, the feeling of his palm like a lifeless chill.   

“Who do you think you are?  Really.  You’re nothing without the ones who supported you.  The ones you discarded.”

Each word was spoken with a rush of an exhale, a winter’s breath upon her face.  It was all so freezing; where their skin touched was so cold that it burned and she forgot how to breathe.

“You tore everything apart.  And now you’re alone.  Are you happy?  Is your stupid fucking sense of self-righteousness fulfilled?”

It was then that she remembered the glaive head.  She could strike him down.  She could end this.  But every bit of her felt like it moved in oozing layers of molasses; slowed painfully to a near standstill.  Ephalys tried to fight through it, lifting her arm as his venomous words hissed out in tandem with the firm squeeze of his hand on her windpipe. 

“Everything that’s happening is your fault.”

Tears flaked her eyelashes like sparks of cold starlight.  Her arms were unmoving.

“You did this to yourself.”

Everything went dark for a long moment.  How much time passed before Ephalys opened her eyes again was unknown even to her.  But soon enough, she found herself staring upwards at the dead boughs of the forest trees and heavy gray clouds further above.  The wet of the snow seeped into her clothes and she gave a sigh before wincing.  As Ephalys forced herself upright, she looked for him.  Her hand made a slow, uneasy journey to the base of her neck, checking it over with a few tender caresses.  Then she gathered her feet under her, hoisting herself up.

He was nowhere to be found and she could not tell if she felt relieved or depressed.

Dusting off the snow from her pants and coat, Ephalys grimaced at the way the wetness of her attire touched her skin.  She needed to find a place to dry them and quickly.  But there was nowhere to go but back to the cabin… it felt like a walk of shame at this point.  She had found nothing on her venture and she could already see the figure’s smug smile as she came back empty-handed.

But a hit to her pride was better than freezing to death and so Ephalys began to trudge back…

It caught her eye then, almost hidden in the white flurries and just beyond the winding curves of a creek.  She squinted, not sure if she believed what she was seeing.  Something large sat between the gray tree trunks in the distance, its dark hue contrasting heavily against the snowfall. 

Another cabin?

She supposed she had not noticed it when she had been running through the woods.  Doubts still flooded her mind as she walked towards it, stumbling from exhaustion.  It was only when her hands touched the front door’s handle that she realized it was not a mirage in the midst of the ill weather; it was perhaps a miracle and nothing less.  With her skin feeling borderline numb from the screeching wind, she told herself there was no sense in being shy.  It was either live or die at this point.

“Hello?” she called out hoarsely.

A single bang of her fist into the door caused it to swing inwards.  Ephalys watched it creak open, inviting her into a dormant, dark entryway.  On a normal day, she would have turned and left that cabin in an instant.  But despite the unease that crept up the back of her spine, she knew she had little in terms of options. 

“Hello?” she repeated and when there was no answer but the sound of the storm building overhead, she decided to step inside.