The sun was blotted out into glowing polka dots among achromatic clouds that freed a million blackened snowflakes into the hair of a fellowship of four. It speckled them like ash or the shedding of necrotic skin. It stumbled down onto their bodies like a sludge or dew. As the dew transuded unhurried through the holes in their clothes and dries their skin, they grew bored, and so talked like small things.

  “… there I am, in the backseat of a cab with my head out the window while birds sang just for me. Winter has been so long. I remember the heat of that day. So that, John Mason, is The Weather. Do you follow?” John Mason began to speak, but at the sounding out of that first word, he was met with a sharp jab to the stomach. “Nice to meet you. Call me Wicker.” John Mason sputtered, before trying again.

  “What’s to say you didn’t thwart some small vengeance on my part. I’m not stupid, fucker,”

  “Wicker,”

  “Wicker,” John Mason enunciated back.

  “Now what were you saying Mason?” Wicker said. Winter burns blue in his field of green.

  “That I jest. That this is ‘The Weather,’” Mason said. He flows between the whiles seeking the further untold.

  “Not mine,”

  “How so?” His first utterance arrived as his voice is muted; his incomplete shadow lengthens between them as the obscured sun rests overhead.

  “The birds don’t sing if I say.” The boy attached himself to Wicker’s hand, as to prevent him from walking any further.

  “And who decides that birds need to sing?” Wicker pushed him away, and he stumbled backward. Mason caught him before he collapsed into the black snow. “I’d just like to know,” he said as Mason turned him around.

  “Look. New. Just shut up. Figure it out yourself. Be an adult. You won’t die acting your age,” Mason said as he let go. New let himself collapse into the snow. He sprawled himself out into a caricature of human extension. The way the snow compressed against his spindly body gave him elation. For a second, he pushed even more of his weight into the snow as Mason and Wicker simply walked on.

  “I’m not dealing with this. Get up,” she said.

  “Say my name,”

  “Get up.” She had nearly approached him.

  “Say it, Mae,”

  In a single swift motion, she pulled him out of the snow with both hands and threw him forward, leaving him stumbling ahead to stay upright. Finally finding his balance, New began walking backwards.

  “Mae, there’s dust on your clothes and you’re screaming,”

  “You don’t remember, huh? It’s the now, you’ve had time to learn,”

  “I remember fine—”

  “That’s not the point. You know this.” Brighton massaged her nasal bridge.

  “Mae Brighton. Do you remember my name,” he said, giddy.

  “Keep up. You’re a deaf schoolchild begging for a better radio,” Brighton walked past him, dissolving with her stride as she pursues the looming forest. There is the faintest sense in each step that the previous one acted in falsehood. There’s nothing solid back there. She would repeat to justify her delusion. Moving forward, and twisted out of shape, she retained a sort of egocentricity as she was left alone with her silence and the thoughts between. That justification she too grasped as its own little delusion. This, of course, was for naught; it strengthened it as she stretched and flattened that phrase to a trivial mental trick meant to keep her moving forward. And thus she may neglect whatever chases her.

  The four reached the edge of a sparse forest of ash colored wood, thriving their best with a lack of life and an emanation recalling the memory of a smoking pipe. The separation of each tree and the bending of their branches mimicked a party of introverts staging a silence in unison. The trees were wary of each other as they were the sun. Their branches bent in a strange downward way, like the skeleton of an umbrella.

  They went forward until they found a clearing that was reasonably obscured from the snowy plains. All but Mason took out a hatchet, and began hacking off small branches properly caked in the ash color and standing below eye level. As they worked, Mason took out a piece of sheet metal and placed it at the center of the clearing. He then collected rocks from the surrounding area to hold down and form a perimeter around the piece of metal. Last, he took out and gently handled a bag of dirt, deftly pouring the proper amount onto the metal. Having finished his task, Mason took out a journal, and planned to write about the forest until his friends had gathered a proper amount of wood. However, he struggled to find or even hallucinate something new in these woods. So he grew bored, and simply stared at an excerpt from an earlier entry.

  We have successfully hunted this inhuman humanoid. It is laid out on the forest floor with arrows protruding from its every side. Its as if it releases its grip on life, losing the cling it seemed to learn as a baby. Its as if it gives in, and is begging for death. We, the children, the counterpoint, the devil’s advocate, seem to torture it for a little while. When it can take no more, the rest leave. But I stay. I clutch its jaw, mouthing out a soliloquy about how it deserves it and the hunters have done it a great service. In its dying breath, its as if its speaking in resentment to myself. That night, we roast it, then eat it and it tastes like chicken. And I seem to be in a cycle. I am a snake, so I too will taste like chicken after the blood and fire. That night, I vomit into the river knowing I’ll starve for at least the next day. I failed though. I found its remains in my shit.

  New sat by the foggy Mason as he waited for Brighton and Wicker to bring the last few sticks. Bored, he preemptively pulled out a rusting, gilded lighter poorly imitating a carved heart. He opened and clicked, setting it ablaze. Perhaps it was presented to the common folk as “the burning passion of love” or some other trite. He closed, opened, and lit it a couple more times. For a sweet few seconds, he played, before being startled by the clatter of wood. He dropped it, but fortunately it was closed prior.

  She slapped him, and began grilling him. Explaining something or other about how he should be more careful and that he could’ve killed them all. He fidgeted with the lighter as she spoke; it did not go unnoticed.

  “You’re deaf,”

  “I’ll be careful. It’s my lighter anyway,”

  “It’s our lives,” She snatched it out of his hands as Wicker placed the last piece of wood in the makeshift fireplace. She held it to the skinny stick that was angled up higher than the others and had a less pronounced shade of gray. She lit it, and the spark ran down the stick, growing larger as it fell, before bursting into flames having collided with the pyramid of sticks. As Brighton looked down at the fire, she so too looked between the two curves at the top of the heart-shaped lighter. She saw a flame burning like the meridian of campfires, fueled by the expanse of black snow that made it necessary, and framed within the shape of a romantic. She was to remember that final day, expecting fire as snow began to fall in billions of small deaths. Silent, she placed the lighter in her sack.

  “New.” She didn’t give him time to respond, preemptively signaling for his attention with a gentle tap to his shoulder. “I’ll be keeping this tucked away for the time being. I’m sorry.”

  “You think I’ll kill you all? Fair enough. I’ll just steal it back anyways,”

  “No, no. I’ll look away now. I’ll feel the warmth of the fire, and expect a weight to be freed from my heart like my sack has been emptied,” she said, turning around. Again, she looked into the fire, while doing her best to blur the snow beneath it. Thus, so too there was a delusion forced upon the trees; Aspens twisting and dying in the cold, an ending to those distant photos.

  She felt a rustling in her sack. A chance faint smile in the same vein as a need to vomit. She felt the curves of his carved heart catch within the fabric. A slight rip, followed by a weightless emptiness, and the vanishing of touch. The fire blurred too, and she was filled up with a white noise of white snow. She did not sleep, and so began to investigate this white noise, and realized she hardly remembers the last time she saw white snow. She is filled with her past, made passive as she is made indifferent to it.

  She remembered finding that child buried under a pillow fort in an abandoned apartment. She was a child herself. Her Mae, and him the old name of New. He laid asleep, drowning in his own tears and droll. She stood tired, holding a machete with both her hands. In her right hand, there was a light fluffiness. A thoughtless thought hammered into her by her mother and teachers. A desire to do good that she could not place. She could easily take him in, help him, so he may help her. A mutually beneficial rightness in the image of others. In her left hand, she felt a darkness. A non-understanding understanding. An accumulation of small deaths that kills the culture at large and the morality found within relationships. She understood her mother was dead, and she’d never hear her teachers again. So why did their voices matter now? This part of her decided that she could simply not be bothered to take care of the boy. That a single disparate strike would be easier than a lifetime of mutual assurance.

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  But still, she called him boy. Whether she liked it or not, the culture of her community, and the relationships created as such had engendered morality deep inside her shadow so it may take shape. And despite hating her shadow, she could not deny that hers was much the same as any one in the aggregation of shadows. Now, she could not comprehend this, nor explain it. But still, she froze.

  The boy shifted, and Mae came to the conclusion that she wanted to kill him. Not for either hand, but because she froze, and she was too young to return any sense of thawed normalcy. Still, she fantasized. You deserve yourself. Those words rang within her head.

  “Ah, there you are. Did you find anything?” Those words rang without. She scrambled to kill and hide the boy before Wicker saw him. And I’ll return from my trip beyond, to see you standing on the beach. Then we’ll both appear aimless to our old, sightless selves. She’d say she wanted to thaw, but that she couldn’t be bothered with the effort. Either way, she slowed. By the time she stood above him, Wicker was already gazing upon her. Again, she froze.

  “Can you hear me now!” he shouted. Mae nearly shushed him. “Am I alone in my silent efforts? Or will you turn, and run at me with that machete that you clearly shouldn’t be holding. Gimme Mae.” She placed the machete in a makeshift sheath, letting go with both hands. It’s a precious thing we lost.

  “Maybe I will. So shut it. And call me Brighton. That’s the last name,” Brighton said. She took the carved heart lighter from her sack, and lit up the empty air. The boy revealed himself to Wicker in a glow, and then a groggy blink. “What should we do with him?” She shut off the lighter.

  “Why not nothing,”

  “What a loss. I don’t think he’s older than me, and he’s in a pillow fort. Another body wouldn’t be a bad thing,”

  “So you trust him immediately, but not us,”

  “Obviously. Its a lonely child. How’s he going to betray us? What’s he going to do? Call his parents?”

  “Fine.” She lightly shook the child. Then gently put the lighter in his hands with both of hers. She held it there in a spherical cradle. As his eyes were once narrow, they shot open into a sort of broadness. They were unremarkable.

  “We’re going to take care of you. What’s your name?” He froze for a second, before opening his mouth and letting out successive muted rasps. “It’s alright. I’m going to call you New. Call me Brighton,” she said. She let go of the lighter. Then lit it, leaving the glow in his hands. “This is yours now. So what do you say, will you come with?”

  “Okay Brighton,” the boy said. It came from him in a soft staccato. With the glowing lighter still in his clutch, he attempted to free himself from his woolen bindings. He did this carefully, and yet he never closed that heart. There were several times in which Brighton became sure he would would drop it upon his blanket and burst into flames like the horizon as the sun took to sleep. But slow, he began pulling himself out. There was an absurd stupidity to it all, and thus, both prospects excited Brighton.

  A little while later, she found herself walking with New, down the stairwell to the black snow. She found herself so removed from that conflict. From the lighter to the person who had gifted it to her. From the thousand mini deaths that fell outside the windows, and the thousand mini deaths which held that machete in both hands. From the boredom of absurdity, to the excitement as it stoked flames in entropy. From hating to see him die, to wanting to strike him til’ he slows. So where was she? Where, I do not know. Rather, she was where she wasn’t. A negative space in conflict with the world she perceived. Let us say she stood atop the course sand of a beach as the tide flows in slowly and washes her skin. Let us say she felt the sun’s glow pass through her as she waits for a friend. That the beach is the only thing there, and that death is a precious thing she lost.

  Worst comes to worst, an indeterminate amount of time later, she was still at that beach. She was split into the new and the old. And she followed the new by virtue of that fact that it is the new, and there is no difference otherwise. So once again, she saw New playing with that lighter. She is reminded of the danger inherent to that, so she escapes her trance to the present day. But this play has long since been the status quo, so she is caught in a trance.

  Mason began writing. New simply stared out into the expanse. While Wickers looked with him, but paced back and forth, stammering out words as he passes by Mae. The thing in the distance now moved close. And so he touched Mae’s shoulder.

  “Yes,”

  “Look in the near distance. A personless shadow. It approaches rather than ignores,” he said. Mae pushed the trance away, letting the forest come into full view. Sure enough, she saw a shadow in the image of a girl, walking among the trees bent like a cradle. She moved in a strange, floaty and staggered motion. Not quite walking, but swaying.

  “I assume that’s new. Can’t say I’ve been paying much attention to them,” she said.

  “Why, Of co—”

  “Very new. And I can say the same for myself,” Mason said.

  “You sure? You look at them like second lovers,”

  “But I know nothing. So my attention is cheap,”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Don’t think so. Pretty sure we can kill it if so,”

  “Should I get it a snack?”

  “Could be fun,” he said. So she took some jerky from her pack and holds it out like she’s coaxing a dog. The shadow girl stilled for a second, then improved her posture. Then she slumped and her immaterial legs seemed to slither across the remaining distance. She took then ate it with her side facing the fellowship. She swallowed it whole like a drawing or a cartoon. So Mason continued writing. Mae stroked its head before turning it away. Her skin felt recognizably human, despite the having the perfection of a doll’s porcelain skin.

  “Sorry. I’m not really in the mood. Will someone else humor Mason? New?” She said. At this, New closed the lighter and placed it in his back pocket. The shadow approached him, and he simply stared. In response, the shadow lightened two areas of her head to create the illusion of eyes. Then she returned darkness, before quickly returning brightness to create a sort of static blinking. It stared at New for a second, as New stared back. The shadow outstretched its arms, beckoning for a simple hug. To which New couldn’t figure what else to do but oblige.

  She let go, before walking up to Wicker, while New paced around them. She initiated a handshake to which Wicker passionately returned.

  “For having no sense of person, your people sure are polite.” It nodded.

  “Go on. Please, talk,” he said. It stared blankly. Wicker laughed.

  “Ah, ha ha ha. Its like reading a blank book. Or, as I’m feeling quite flawless today, a book that simply goes over my head.” It remained.

  “See, I say that because you remind me of something. You don’t remember the last natural winter, do you? Specifically the ending? Of course not. You’re a personless shadow, and on account of not seeing your kind prior, I can assume you were born then.” It twitched ever so slightly.

  “I may not believe in a caring universe. But it sure has a sense of humor, especially when it comes to the appreciators of the finer things in life,”

  “Yes, nothing… I remember that first day. I had trapped myself in my father’s study after he left to investigate. Prior, I had been sneaking in late at night to read a certain short book from his collection. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.” He paused.

  “I do not know why I expected applause. Anyway, I was far too young. I had even begun to idolize The Underground Man. Imagine That! Ha!”

  “So here I was, reading this narrator’s, we’ll say excessive monologue, near the window of my father’s study, as I watched him die a horrible death. So, naturally, I begin to mimic the character as I watched. In my head, I began a long-winded rant processing this trauma as an intellectual process, or rather a literary one. I became obsessed and isolated like The Underground Man because I saw nothing better. You decide between the two processes, and that will be me. I am me because of books like you approaching me at the wrong time. Perhaps this is the right time. You are very polite, you know. I can see that.”

  So the shadow walked away from him. And Wicker was left slumping, thinking to himself about how nobody gets him. Then immediately hated himself for it.

  The fellowship watches as she began drawing lines in snow. First, she created a circle with a spiral-like pattern within. Then, she created a significant hole in the center, before filling out everything but that hole with a slight film of shadow. Then she closed up that circle, and drew a line from a random point on the outside. She walks away, further creating that line, and filling it out with the shadow film. She went a fair distance, before stopping to wave to the fellowship, which of course they all returned. Then she walked out into the expanse, becoming invisible as she crossed the threshold. Mason, having been waiting patiently, handed his journal off to New.

  “New, I want you to share this discovery with me. I don’t think I could properly record this in solitary. I need a witness to my observations. Write as a I talk, and we will both be men of revelation,” So he walked to the center, standing in it, then kneeling to get a proper look, as it had grown dark. To see, New fished around for his lighter, but found it gone. He panicked for a second, but realized he implicitly promised Mason.

  “It’s remarkable. Like a rune. Perhaps a language. This, this is wonderful. In the years since, they must’ve developed a culture. And the residue she left within… I can’t feel the snow. I feel nothing. Like a barrier of negative space. They’re so much more than we gave them credit for,” New tried his best to write, but as he composed his words atop the page, he feared it must be scribbles.

  “Look at how my flashlight shines against the barrier. It retreats, and I feel the black snow. Now I am rendered vulnerable to the black snow. Vulnerable as a child. Vulnerable to its dryness and mutability—”

  A single flame shifted through the line in the snow. Forward like a train atop a track on bloody snow. It reached the spiral as Mason turned the flashlight away from the barrier and towards his face. It illuminated a great smile, then a frown of disappointment, as he witnessed New’s lightless scribbling. The flame reached the center, and in a puff of black smoke, the circle lit. It did not end quietly, but rather with a toxic burst. A sudden collapse in the pure matter of air, and all contained within. At one point, you could say there was matter there. But what does that matter now that everything within that circle became redefined? As black smoke and a strange light far up as may be perceived. A gust ran through the area, parting the black smoke and revealing a nothingness where Mason stood.

  It is no use to show the reactions of Mae and Wicker then. It was nothing new. New, on the other hand, used that light to look at his writing. As expected, his words were reduced to scribbles. Then he flipped through, and began reading. He read until he felt satisfied. Then, like Mason, he wrote.