On the back of a toad the size of a rge building, Denholm crouched on his knees, holding onto a rubbery wart to keep himself from falling. With each lumbering footstep the translucent echo of the massive creature took, its back shifted between leaning left or right, forcing Denholm to lean the opposite way lest he be tossed off. Echo floated beside him, humming something that exuded the same feeling as a calm winter day. The depth of the snow must have been twenty whole feet and now came up to just barely below the level where he road on the toads back, meaning drifts of it occasionally washed past Denholm, making his task of staying put all the more difficult. At the very least, it had finally stopped blizzarding, now falling soft and sparse like he was used to from back in the Gde, and with each passing minute, the clouds grew thinner and brighter.

  “Are you sure this is the way those adventurers went?” Denholm asked, and then was forced to shield his eyes as a poof of powdered snow fell over him.

  “We are following their path as of now. As long as I keep my focus on their echoes, I will not lose them.”

  Denholm supposed that made enough sense. Their echoes would be submerged far too deep in the snow for him to see, certainly. He would just have to trust her.

  “I find it interesting that their path took them exactly the same way as this toad,” she said. “I wonder if they were tracking it, or perhaps it was the other way around.”

  Denholm looked up at her. “Is it possible they already died, these adventurers? What if we’re just tracking ghosts?”

  Her greenish face turned towards him. “Like I said before, unknown outcomes make for interesting stories. Certainty leads to meaninglessness. Take it from someone whose life was once complete stasis, existing purely as a cog in a rger, divine machine.” Her gaze returned forward, scanning out across the never-ending wastend of white in front of them.

  Back in the Gde, Denholm would have agreed with her wholeheartedly. After seeing everything he had since then–after everything he had done since then–he wasn’t convinced she was right about that. But hindsight, he had come to learn, was just as meaningless as she cimed certainty was. There was no going back now. Reflexively, Denholm looked behind them, but of course, all he saw was a toad-sized trench stretching away into the horizon where their warty traveling companion had pushed the snow aside like it was nothing.

  Despite having spent the whole night before warming up and drying his clothes by the fire she conjured, by midday, Denholm was shivering like a leaf. This method of travel was far faster and easier than walking would have been even if there wasn’t all this snow, but being exposed to the frigid air with regur bouts of snow washing over him was no joke.

  “I-think-I’m-getting-too-cold.” Denholm’s teeth jittered between every word.

  “The people we are following will have to set up camp soon. We must have covered almost as much as they could in a full day of walking by now. There will be another fire we can use there, I am sure,” she replied.

  True to her word, in less than an hour, the toad came to a halt. “Their camp is very close. Time to get off,” she said.

  Denholm slid down the back of the toad, which was easy since the echo seemed to be completely frozen in time, thanks to her. Once he was on the bare ground, the toad evaporated into glittering green smoke that wisped away into nothingness within seconds.

  After they found the second camp and she conjured the echo of the fire that the adventurers had burned there, it took Denholm the entire rest of the day to warm up again. And since Echo said he would get cold far more quickly if they tried traveling at night, they both agreed it was too dangerous. They would have to proceed in the morning. He hadn’t put much thought into food until, all of a sudden, his stomach started grumbling and refused to stop. Somehow, it had taken actually hearing that to realise just how hungry he was. He was still more or less starving.

  In response to his stomach voicing its demands, Echo surprised him. She reached inside her tunic and pulled out a sack that was semi-transparent, made from the same material as most of her echoes. “I was waiting for you to ask. And as far as I’m concerned, you just did.”

  “What’s in there?” Denholm asked.

  “Food.”

  “When did you get that?” As far as he remembered, she had been by his side all day while they travelled.

  “When you weren’t looking.” Her greenish lips curled, giving the faintest impression of amusement.

  “How?!”

  “I noticed the echo of a squirrel going back and forth from the same spot so many times I could hardly tell the echoes apart. I gged behind to check, and the squirrel must have died before he could take advantage of his own efforts because his stash was untouched. You were too focussed on the way ahead to see me go back and pick it up.”

  Huh, he supposed riding a toad bigger than his family home through a never-ending expanse of snow had been quite the consuming experience. Still, he found it more unsettling than he would like to admit that she was capable of slipping away without him noticing so easily. She glided around the fire in that same unnerving way she always did, held out the sack towards Denholm, and nodded to him. He caught the sack in two cupped hands, which immediately dissolved, leaving a heaping pile of raw nuts there. They were still warm from her touch.

  “You can eat them raw,” she said as she floated back over to the other side of the fire. “Nuts and truffles won’t do forever, but it should get us through the winter.”

  “How long will winter st?” he asked between bites. The nuts were really quite good. Much better than the truffle.

  “Time goes as it pleases,” she replied.

  Denholm paused chewing, and she must have found his expression amusing because her humming quickened for a moment, turning into a sound that resembled ughter.

  After gorging himself, Denholm curled up next to the blue fme, lying on his side. She sat on the other side, blue fire light dancing across her too-perfect features. It was a setting that felt oddly familiar, even though this was only the second time the two of them had found themselves in such a situation. Night overtook them soon enough, but Denholm found it much harder to fall asleep this time. Thoughts pgued him, and without the patter of the fist-sized snowfkes falling in droves, it was too quiet. He cracked his eyes open, only to see her exactly where she had been, face impassive and body motionless. She had no need for rest. Or if she did, she didn’t show it. Denholm rolled over onto his back, gazing up at the clear sky full of stars.

  “We could make it twice as far each day if I didn’t get so cold so easily,” Denholm said. “If I had known the Darkwood could get so cold, I would have brought a whole lot more clothes.”

  It took a few seconds for her humming to change in rhythm before she responded. Maybe she was able to doze off after all, or something like it. “Let me think on that over night. In the morning, I might just have a better idea,” she said.

  Denholm turned his head to look at her. She smiled at him, and he could have sworn she was getting better at that. The expression looked more human than it had st time.

  Denholm’s sleep was pgued by maddening eyes that were vertical instead of horizontal and white masked faces endlessly ughing at him.

  In the morning, she resummoned the toad’s echo since she cimed its track was still following that of the adventurers for as far as her awareness extended ahead. Denholm took his pce again, straddling that familiar wart, squinting against the reflected light from all the endless white around them. Before the toad started moving, however, she reminded him about their conversation st night. “It’s even colder than yesterday. But I think I came up with an idea after our talk st night.”

  Denholm looked up at her, floating in front of him. His mind was still groggy, so he had forgotten. Now that she mentioned it, though, he was already starting to shiver before they’d even begun. She was right. He wouldn’t st very long if they kept on the same as yesterday.

  “If you’re going to turn me into an echo so I can’t feel anything, please don’t.”

  “Nothing so intrusive,” she said, and then she started to float closer, and closer, and closer, until Denholm’s confused face was only inches from hers.

  He opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, but his words froze in his throat as her nose touched his. From there, her entire face began to invert until it perfectly overid his. He could see out through her eyes, though there was a faint green haze over everything. Her body followed suit next, unravelling like she was made from a bundle of flower petals, which then began wrapping around him until he was entirely covered in it. Then, too suddenly for his liking, everything cinched tight around him, conforming to his body, causing him to flinch in surprise.

  “Uh!” Denholm stammered. “I’m not sure I like this! You’re not eating me, are you?” When Denholm held up his hand in front of him, it was entirely covered by her greenish white substance. Not quite flesh-textured, but also not fabric either. It felt as if his entire body was enveloped in one giant glove made from… whatever this stuff was. When he looked down at himself, he became aware that, in addition to being coated in pale, green, goddess stuff, he was draped in the same thick, dark green hooded tunic she had been wearing back when she was in her humanoid form. “Am I wearing you?”

  “You wanted to be warmer,” she replied, her voice sounding like it came from inside his own head.

  Huh. She was right.

  It was very warm in here. Maybe too warm.

  “Are you sure you’re not eating me?” Denholm asked, squirming.

  The toad lurched forward without warning. Denholm only barely snatched hold of the wart and stabilized himself rather than topple off.

  “Hey! You did that on purpose!” Denholm screamed, pointing at her face, which was also his face.

  Thanks to her face being literally attached to his, he could actually feel her smiling in response to his strife. It was… a unique experience.