Jonah had dealt with snow, he had lived in a town named for it. The actual snow there was minimal, ice on the ground that usually melted, a shiver to the winds that raced across the dusty landscape. True snow and winter wonder was a neighboring town where the trees hadn't been clear cut because they made good firewood.

This weather, it wasn’t snow, it was specifically mist. It came from clouds of water vapor, but transformed in the air to be mists from the ether. Dandruff-like flakes covered an inch or two of the ground, crackling under their feet, but also sighing. The gods had wandered too long among the elves that walked the earth, the landscape still required pieces of their presence to live. As the pine needed fire for part of its life cycle, the flora here needed the mists of prayers and dreams. So besides the wind there came the murmured bits of speech in the shrouding mists. They were cold because most prayers were desperate pleas, hopes for a better life. The headphones Jonah wore blocked out most of it, and he wished he could realistically block out it all. Even though there weren't full sentences or directed lines, it was still unsettling to him.

Diana was no better, he saw, harvesting pine cones from the Sentinel Pine, which now was nearly her height. Aiko and her kept glancing about the fleece world around them. Outside of maybe a few feet nothing could be seen. The wind would blow, icing their bare skin around their eyes, the scenery would peek out from the white cotton world, then the mists would cover it up again. The poplar and heather were frozen solid, the latter under a thin sheet of what appeared to be bubbled candy ice.

This was too much strain on his eyes and if they couldn’t see normally, the freeze wasn’t going to help. They didn’t have anything resembling goggles in the hotel, at least not where the hosts were willing to go. The city was used to just grinding to a halt during this weather. Jonah reasoned that Niae probably had some, but he could do without waiting for them to deliver it.

He had made a screw, that meant he could make just about anything using the supplies he already had. Accessing the Earthen internet, he looked up models for 3D printing. It would take a lot of processing power, but he figured he had enough. He found snow goggles easily enough, literally anything could be printed. Oddly, any time he selected something with a price tag, it just auto completed. He wasn’t sure if that was his power or the Machinist had simply designed it that way. There was no use trying to have legal battles between worlds over small things like that.

He had a lot of plastic in him, a scary amount. Viewing the model made his heart race and gave him a headache. He hoped the care package, whenever it got to him, included more processing power. Or could he just think harder?

Diana was at him, patting his cheeks. She signed, Are you okay? Thank God she remembered some of it.

Yes, he replied.

Out of his hand came springing a pair of goggles for him. Another race of the heart and there was a smaller one for her. They didn’t have a band around him, he wasn’t sure if he had cloth to use. Did plastic alone count? No use giving himself another headache. These goggles had hooks on their side, fastening them to their headphones.

Holding it in her mittens carefully, Diana looked at him in amazement. She signed, Thank you, Thank you, several times. Then watching him, she fitted them on. They were rough, raw plastic on his face domed to fit, the slight discomfort was far better than wind chill in the eyes. Up on her toes, Diana touched hers to his, a smile in her eyes.

She gathered up the bag of pinecones, each one laced with blue crystal. Through hand signs, Jonah asked how many. She understood, not exactly knowing the proper way to give the number. He showed her and she confirmed that they had seven now. She had him take off his headphone for a moment.

“Do you not wish to speak?” she asked loudly.

The wind came rushing into his ear along with the whispered prayers.

Ahhh sheee… Oh Corpine… ana heeee oh, kanna…

Please, mend this body of your design…

Ell eh, mortal, form.

He could tell his translator was trying, but he wanted it to stop.

The grimace on his face confirmed it for her and they both put their headphones and goggles right again. She gestured for his screen, but he spelled out and gestured that it was too cold and her gloves wouldn’t work on it. Looking to the pine cones and then the tiger, she pointed to them and then the direction of the back door.

For some reason he feared he might regret, Jonah shook his head. The mists could easily be dangerous, but he couldn’t do all this and back out now. He had felt the return to form in that tent. Even though he wasn’t alone, there was a beautiful woman beside him, he was back in that house. That pit he had left through a death on Earth. Diana was ready to rush out and brave the storm. They had warded themselves against instant death, but not danger all together. From her tale of facing the others in the park, there was plenty that could still go wrong. He had glimpses of the war, the horrors from the Ash Makers and Hera alike. There were good reasons to fear the opposite army, the people the sources hated.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Jonah pointed bravely away, nodding.

Diana agreed. She signed for More, something Jonah had only done for her once before.

More what?

She did random signs.

He pointed to the door.

No.

He had shown her some of the alphabet, one of the movies had a deaf character. So now she requested them in letters, granted she only knew a couple. After a few minutes in the mists, she knew, Go, Stop, Down, What? and Where? These were all rather obvious signs, but it helped her extend her alphabet and vocabulary. At least he had something useful to teach her, not just Earth slang and movie story structure.

They headed out of the alley, Diana tapping her staff. This was a chance to learn Why? for her, since Jonah didn’t understand. She explained that it helped her to see. They should have really had a strategy meeting, but after the wards settled, had a sudden urgency. It didn’t bother Jonah, he could just search for the appropriate sign.

He followed her, the tiger in front of their single file, its paws breaking the iced ether flakes. There was nothing to really see in the city and little to hear. He should have some kind of detection, Diana wasn’t too sure of hers, stopping it several times to look around and continue on for hundreds of feet. While doing it she had to close her eyes, though she appeared brave, she must have felt something like his anxiety.

The Ash Makers could be out in this and they weren’t sure how they could navigate in something this thick and, to them, inherently dangerous. Were they out now? Were Jonah and Diana alone in this giant city?

Kalyah could see in the dark, she had enhanced strength, she could hear better than most, and had a dwarven endurance. So far as the other blessings of a dwarf, she was lacking. She didn’t have the kinship to crafting elements, the inherent magic that made creation a martial art among her mother’s people. The dwarves could mold earth, stone, gems, raw metal and processed, and even wood without making the pacts of a Druid or using the other sources like trained casters. It was a mark of pride for a master dwarven craftsman to make creations without the use of tools.

Her mother had made her a signet ring of Corpine by hand to see her daughter off. Or rather, she had made one for her son. Her smooth faced and thick legged son who looked into the mirror and hated what he saw. In body shape he was her kind, in skin and features he was the form of his father. The ring was resized for her eventually, trapped under her heavy mitten now. Of all people, the dwarven crafter wasn’t the one to throw a fit. The woman that made her wasn’t upset by her being remade by another.

Only able to stare at the ground of Alp'a Linn, the murals of precious metals and stones, Kalyah was reminded of her mother. Under her hand woven mittens was the ring, and below her many layers was a locket of the two women together. There, next to her heart was her mother alone with her.

In a bag thrown over her shoulder, Kalyah had sketchings of her success. The sailors and smugglers, though they were really one in the same, had started off tight lipped. In the afterglow, they eased up. What anyone knew and what they had written down was quite different. High elves had fantastic memories, but others had to scribble reminders of the sewage pathways. So in starting with the harbormaster, a High elf, she had to work her way down. The elegant and eight foot tall man was a gentle lover, and the leader of the smuggling operation, but he had a suspicious mind, storing all the records within it. She couldn’t give any more suspicions to the man, so she moved on from him.

His subordinates were not so gentle and constantly working on ships, under the thumb of a crafty man, had given them issues to work out. She found that they weren’t interested in traditional worship, rather one of the Goddess’s few exceptions. The wandering Chained god had many faithful on the docks, and the mists that secluded the workers gave them the perfect opportunity. It was only providence then that a tiny Pixie elf was throwing herself at them. Kalyah wasn’t going to tell Diana or Jonah what she had done in order to get extremely detailed maps of the entire underground, she had been healed of it all. She wasn’t against the practice of the Chained god, but she had her fill for at least a decade or so. The god whose mantra was, “Love through struggle and passion through pain,” just wasn’t appealing to her generally. The aftercare of the gruff sailors, both male and female, was at least top notch. All that she had acquired from them was guarded by confidence and safewords.

Her experience made her think of Lucy a lot, who was the submissive to the cruel Angelina. The “Hero” only observed the complete rituals of the Chained god out of fear of retribution. Lucy, that poor slaved quartermaster, said that Angelina wasn’t that kind of a cuddler. The demonkin woman had been a prostitute when the Pirate had picked her up, hopeless and lost, given a chance to use her memory and analytical mind for good. Instead of just planning out the meals of a crummy brothel and transforming for money, she could be working for a legendary Hero. Kalyah missed her red skinned lover most of all. She loved the rest of the crew dearly, she knew they could find their way if they could leave. The ship they had boarded was from a much different world than the one they weren’t allowed to return to now.

Kalyah couldn’t think of them, she had to work with her present crew, her Trio. Niae had sent a message down to the docks that Diana and Jonah were planning on leaving their room and venturing into the mists. She wasn’t racing, she couldn’t in this weather, but she had to return. She had done as much as she could now. On the wind she heard old prayers from possibly long dead lips and added her own to them.

By the time she got to the hotel and went up the elevator, they were already gone. If only it hadn't taken so long to find suitable clothes for the weather. So Kalyah waited by the back door. She tuned in her watching wards, seeing Jonah and Diana’s steady heart beats from a distance. She thumbed the Corpine ring on her forefinger, as she often did while nervous. Oh momma, she thought, you’d love these two tall humans, I hope you can meet them and Lucy one day. If Diana’s plan worked, if the Witch was shown for her evil ways, then all her friends would be freed.