This deep into the season, the snow had more wings, blanketing the lower regions of the Akana Mountains with feathers of white, clinging to the once-green trees, fingers of ice reaching, reaching, reaching. This was not the newly fallen snow, but snow which simply existed, and had always existed, stretching and growing, shifting down the slopes, expanding like a flower in a bright, turquoise dawn. The lakes were frozen, and the wind whistled sharp and high across the sheet ice, missing the ripples it once kissed along the water’s surface, yearning still to place them, its sorrow turning to knives. Grief made it the pulsing heartbeat of a corpse, weeping mournfully in strong gusts, wielding the snow like blades, then dying down, and gently gathering the downy white into childlike curls, a yearning mockery of gentler times. Fae stood in a copse of conifers, ice growing from her whiskers like rock-sugar candy, half as sweet but still as rough on the mouth. Her breath puffed in warm clouds, small, rapid things, to keep her lungs moving, circulating blood and heat through the important parts of her body. Widely traveled and widely learned, her experience was a cushion against the harsh elements, a buffer softly built over time, and pain, refined like a fine art, a woven blanket of knowledge shrugged across her shoulders, bundled up against the crown of her head, tucked behind her ears. She had turned the snow-blanketed pine boughs into protection against the wind, tucking into a cozy nook between their grand, rough trunks; she had carved a round furrow into the ground, clearing out the flammable pinecones, and kicking snow over the roots, where the sap leeched and gathered between heaves of growth, a bloody, cloying wound, packed with a frosty styptic to prevent an explosion of flames, fueled by the lungs of the earth and her powerful, lamenting breath, hands of the wind wanting to grasp at the fire and draw it up tight, strings tugged to seal in her pain, and burn it away. A small flame crackled beside her feet, bordered by piled soil, warming her extremities and lightening the deep dark of her protective alcove, casting dancing light across her chest, picking up the ember-warm of her pelt and lightening it, casting her a deep, burnished gold, even in the darksome evening. The world outside was cast a pale lavender in the sinking sun, the night made brighter by the natural reflection of the snow, ground glowing with an impossible magic. The fire popped and whistled, a duet with the wind, sparks escaping the main body like errant thoughts, impossible to control but ultimately living a brief, futile life, failing to alleviate the encroaching darkness. A less experienced traveler might take the starless night as a poor omen, missing their inspiring light, or their more practical habit to point the way. But Fae knew thick clouds meant trapped warmth, a blanket for the firmament. A soft coating of new powder-snow graced the old, packed layer like dusted sugar, fallen from equally white, fluffy clouds. They had sombered to a melancholy gray over the course of the day, water gathered and held close but too frigid to drop. Fae knew how to read the weather, even when it shifted dialects. She knew the weight of the air and the short future of mercurial seasons. So she felt and heard the new rustling in the woods nearby; a large, indelicate body passing, a deeper crunch of the snow, a heavier rustle of the boughs. Pine needles skittered across the ground, knocked free with some force, as these had clung on thus far through the worst of the winds. She lifted her head and stepped away from the flame, quieting the fire’s song in her ears. They strained into the darkness, trying to decipher the steps, the weight of the shifting space. Not a deer; too heavy, and deer didn’t disturb the branches as much, unless they were in flight, spurred by a hurried fear, and these steps were too slow. Not a bear; either; their steps were splayed, more of a verbal hush in the snow. Something substantial, still. Not low bodied like a wolverine, and wolves and cougars were silent, or near to, and sometimes even got the drop on her. She couldn’t gamble a guess; a rarity, for her. She’d spent so much time out in these trees, in the untamed wild, that there was little she could not grasp. It piqued her curiosity-- perhaps unfortunately, even dangerously so. Despite the snow having ceased hours ago, and the cushion of cloud-cover, it was still frigid in the world beyond her haven, and it would be foolish to go traipsing around into the darkening night. Still. Her brain grew tendrils, filigree of wonder, which caught the wind and blew away, eventually to land and sprout saplings; whether they would bear fruit of discovery, or regret, was yet to be discovered. Full of acceptance of her foolhardy nature, and perhaps spurred by her pride, Fairytale pressed through the walls of her secret shelter, and into the world beyond. Snow reached up to the middle of her forearms, nearly to her chest-- deep, hardpacked stuff, the lightest layer clinging as dust to her pelt. Snorting in irritation, she stepped close to the trees, where the roots flung the earth skyward and made the steps lighter. She moved to where she’d heard the sound last, casting around for signs of what had passed, visibility increased by the bright snow where the light peeled through the thinner firs. Branches had been knocked askance, broken into sharp points, smashed by something large and graceless; there were heavy, deep bores in the ground, from a weighty step; the track at the bottom was difficult to decipher, but it suggested something cloven. In any case, there was a very obvious trail to follow. A few yards ahead the tracks began to change; they became less determinate but more clear, snow pushed with the front of a leg as the source began to tire. The gouges continued on past the treeline, into the open ground at the base of the mountain. Fae heaved a sigh, realizing she would have to decide exactly how stupid she wanted to be, here; following tracks through the woods, where there was a ceiling of safety and it was difficult to be approached without notice, was one thing; walking past the safety of the treeline into the vengeful wind in deep snow at night was another. She should just stop here, peacefully accept she would not solve this mystery, and turn back. Her breath puffed out in front of her, a warm reminder of the life she should try to protect… but also as an arrow. She ducked under the treeline and stepped into the world beyond. She immediately put her shoulders up into the wind, missing her cozy fire and damning her insistent curiosity in equal measure. Sighing and shaking her head, she tried to focus on what her instincts told her, a mental protection against the elements trying to pry their frigid fingers into her armor: Her intuition told her she was not alone, but there was no prickle of fear, and not the innate, hair-raising streak of nerves that put her back up when something was watching her. Whatever-- or whoever-- else was out here hadn’t noticed her yet. There was no malicious heaviness to the air, nor a crackle of magic. Fae huffed and ducked her head close to the earth, under the worst of the whistling wind, trying to listen for anything: footsteps, breathing, speaking-- --there. Above. The whoosh-beat-whoosh-beat of wings. Not a griffin, hippogriff, or roc: the tracks are wrong; and judging by the sound of the air being pushed, and the rustling on the downbeat, these wings have feathers, so not a dragon or any of their cousins. Fae tips her head up and squints into the night. The crown of the mountain reaches up beyond the treeline, and even the bank of clouds. Whatever it is, it is rising, rising, rising, and disappearing into the night. With shivering skin and numbing limbs, Fae resigns to her fate, allowing this mystery to remain unsolved. She turns to leave-- and then feels it: A deep vibration. A rumble, like thunder, but continuous, growing and growing and growing. The heavy snow shifts in blocks. Turning to look at the mountain, she is hit face-first with the fast, frigid air heralding the disaster in its wake. An avalanche, a billowed crown of snow and ice, tons of violent energy released from the slow, building momentum peeling away from the width of the mountain like a blooming flower. Even though she has nowhere to go and the snow is bearing down on top of her, she doesn’t panic. She can’t run, the snow is too deep, but she turns at a diagonal and starts to cut uphill, trying to get higher and out of the path of the careening elements.The thick, heavy, snow means the avalanche can’t move as fast, lowering the danger, and panic uses up oxygen. She’ll have to jump, have to move upwards, have to hope her innate compass can point up in addition to the four cardinal directions-- --just before the snow hits, something else appears before her; black specks that she believes, at first, are spewn debris, flex and flare in the air. Shapes of snow pause at the tip of their billow, freezing in place; there is a yellow gleam against the white, and then the roar of the avalanche is around them. Fairytale spends thirty solid seconds staring up, up, up, as the snow hits whatever is in front of her and splits around it, cleaved like flesh; but in the rush of wind and the deafening noise, it feels like minutes. Even though the cold stings her eyes and steals her breath, she has the opportunity to realize-- --it’s another Veilhorn. One with snowy feathers and broad wings, and a black muzzle that grits in effort before pitching forward and crushing itself to Fae, pressing her down and down and down. This Veilhorn shields her body from the torrent, but their sacrifice might kill them both; Fae struggles to breath in even measure, fighting against the dirge of panic racing through her lungs, trying to kick out and press the stranger up, and off. The silence that follows is deafening. Fae is stuck with the warmth of the stranger’s breath in her face, sure they’re covered in feet of snow, two lives now siphoning barely enough oxygen for one. The stranger’s forehead is pressed to the snow beside Fae’s head; before Fae can snap for them to rise, they groan, and flex their legs, and their wings, and, with great effort, they rise, up and up and up, pressing into the snow, parting it like a spring shoot punching through winter’s final grasp, and with a final heave, they throw their head back, tossing away an indeterminate thickness of snow, branching antlers stabbing at the clouded sky. Freezing oxygen rushes in, stinging Fae’s nostrils, burning down her lungs; her front legs curl up into her chest-- and she can’t stop staring. The stranger who protected her shakes their head, snow falling from their feathers, and opens their mouth in a fanged grin, teeth flashing, reflecting the light from the snow, an eternal ouroboros of dangerous ignition. “Whoo! Nothing like a little inclement weather to get the heartrate up.” They beat their wings and lift off, pivoting on their hind legs. The snow, deeper now that a metric ton of it has been deposited around them, beautiful elemental refuse, and their chest doesn’t clear the drift, causing them to wedge themselves awkwardly into it. Their gaze glances from snow, to Fae, back to snow, and back to Fae, and they smile again and say, “When did that get there?” The spell is broken. Fae snorts a laugh and wiggles around on her back, clearing enough room to roll over and curl her legs underneath her. “Thanks.” “No problem!” The stranger beats their wings to pull themselves up and out of the drift, pivots again, and falls into another drift; this time, their abdomen plunges into the snow, front legs free in the air. “Oops, this again.” “You’re too tall for this,” Fae says, standing. “You have to go back to where the snow stopped. You’ll be able to move easier there.” “Oh, good idea.” They shimmy a little, side to side, succeeding in doing nothing but wedging themselves deeper. “Um… where is that, exactly?” A confusion so thick it almost brings Fae’s eyes to a cross strikes her, and she tosses her head. “Um, that way? The way… all the snow went?” “Oh, right! The snow! Ugh, hate that stuff.” Three beats of powerful wings, and the stranger stumbles forward into Fae’s space, hitting her with a thick shoulder, and almost knocking her over. “Oh, cr-- sorry, sorry.” “It’s-- it’s okay.” White feathers smacked Fae in the face, and she shook her head, as the stranger stood next to her for the first time; the top of Fae’s ears barely cleared their shoulder. She swallowed. “Uh, I can-- do you have anywhere to go? It’s dangerous out here, on the side of the mountain.” “Yeah, I kinda got that by the avalanche.” The stranger was now doing some intricate acrobatics to avoid touching Fae, front legs crossed, body curved in a tight ‘C’, one wing balanced over the smaller woman like a canopy. “Which, I might have called, by accident.” Fae stared. “What? Why?” “Well, I was trying to get to the top of the mountain, because I’m horribly lost-- you may have gathered that-- but the wind was too strong and I crashed into the mountain.” Fae wondered, briefly, if she should be angry at that-- that this individual, with their inexperience, their clumsiness, their carelessness, but her own life at risk. But then they protected her, at great risk-- almost damning both of them to a grisly, hypoxic death, of course, but still. Fae had never been… good, with other people. That’s why she liked it out here, alone. Mundane life bored her; she loved a thrill, and a challenge. The avalanche had… kind of been a nice break from the normal? It certainly had been thrilling. And this individual clearly needed help. This individual, who was looking at them expectedly, with their bright, sunbeam eyes… “Look, just-- just come with me,” Fae said, turning towards the trees. “We’ll find somewhere safe for the night, and tomorrow I’ll help you get wherever it is you need to go.” “Great!” The winged Veilhorn stumbled forward, almost crashing into the snow for a third time, their voice a ripple on the wind. “My name is Mo-- well, it’s Mourning but that’s really serious and I’m, like, definitely not that, but whatever; hey, what’s your name, I never caught it…”