I felt myself hatch.

My impact into the Shard known as Platformia had been thankfully softened by landing in a snow drift. How long I nestled in that compact powder of white darkness, I cannot say. My understanding of flight through air, through space, and back into air had taken a toll on my mind, which raced to keep up with what had happened. Even so, it slowed under the chilling damp permeating my fur and seeping directly into my bones. Kicking with my back legs, I realized with horror that they cut through the encasing powder as though it were liquid. It must be confessed that I panicked then—flailed in those suffocating depths until my front legs found purchase against a root, and pulled with all my strength. Snow embraced me on both sides, held me down like a lid. It crunched as I emerged out of the top, a crisp frozen skein giving way to a rush of welcome air that filled my lungs.

I shook and ejected clinging ice from my fur; however, what I was not able to escape was the sensation of having been birthed into a world of ruthless cold.

I could see. Or at least, I thought I could, but my first impression was that something had happened to my eyes, because everything was white. Undisturbed snow covered all—trees, hills, stones—softening the contours of a rustic but alien landscape just as Commander Zideo’s stolen blanket obscures the shape of my dog bed in Airy Zone.

What I could not see was any sign of my human. I detected no trace of his scent, heard no sound of his voice or the sounds of his movement. (All dogs can read the signature sounds of their humans’ movements.)

Being primarily preoccupied with the thrill of interacting with humans, dogs are not overly concerned with deities or greater questions of existence and creation. To a dog, religion is a moot point. But, as human readers may gather from this narrative, we could produce some of the greatest philosophers and thinkers that Airy Zone has ever known if we could get over our fixation with our own humans. But it’s just so darn gratifying to hear the words “good dog” that I think it quite unlikely that canine-kind will ever produce any theologians of note.

That said, it only took me one glance to consider what creative force made this world. In Airy Zone, things progressed naturally from one place to the next. A hill led to the bottom of a hill, which led to the beginning of another. Yards stood next to yards and did not interfere with one another. One could detect a sensible hand at work. There was a feeling of gradient.

Here in Platformia, I could see instantly that all was thrown together as hastily as my human packed for a trip the night before (and, let’s face it, the morning of). Here was a cluster of elms, snow slipping from their grasping branches like crooked fingers.

In their midst, two bald palm trees frowned—you heard me—their shriveled fronds dangling like tendrils. Only a few feet away stood a flourishing fir. Frozen ponds sat as still as death, undisturbed by the breeze-borne powder flecking its ripples, permanently in stasis. Glacial slabs dotted a landscape like forgotten bricks of frost titans. Cliffs dropped suddenly, snow disappearing into imperceptible black. I knew I was fortunate to have landed where I did, and not plummet into unknown depths. I crossed my paws in hopes Zideo had been as lucky.

Mounds of snow, some false hills that collapsed beneath my paws, lorded over more substantial downs. A frozen river whose source I could not discern opened out into a frozen waterfall. Its rapid foam was completely still, individual orbs of ice halted in midair, apparently too frozen to obey gravity. I shivered from the moisture in my own damp fur, but also at the idea of being carried in that lethal wet. Woof, indeed.

How were these things within a few steps of one another? But in truth I have not yet told the strangest aspect of all, which strains my simple canine vocabulary to relate.

I will call it a hillock with nothing beneath it, as though its maker began from the top and became distracted by the time she reached the bottom. A thick-trunked tree suspending a pillow of snow, perhaps maple, plunged its gnarled roots through the skirt of white, which gave way to brown mud. The roots emerged from the bottom of the floating thing, creepers that waved in the breeze. Nothing connected it with the land around it. Nothing disturbed it and nothing fell off of it, except the occasional flecks of snow slipping from the maple boughs.

Beside it there was a big muddy stone, peculiarly flat on top, as though piled on top of its invisible brethren, a single step for the curious. It floated just as silently and motionlessly as the hillock.

It was strangely inviting. I accepted, leaping up onto the stone to see if it would topple beneath my weight. It stood just as sturdily the ground below. I proceeded to the hillock, and relieved myself against the elm. I think my reasoning was that, should the wind pick up, it might carry my scent to Commander Zideo—although the thought of him following his nose back to me was a longshot. Then again, I was standing on a floating hill, atop a lumpy, miniature planet body, so maybe all bets were off.

I scanned the surrounding area for any indication of Zideo and to get a look at the area. More hills floated in the air, often in groups. They shared the stone step’s feature of flatness on top. I was on a mountainside, or floating a few feet above it to be more precise, and across a snowy gap, another rose above me, towering under a regal white mantle and lined with trees dense enough to be considered a woodland. Based on a sheer animal hunch (and those should never be ignored), I revised my previous impression: this land may have been thrown together, but it also wanted to be explored. Indeed, wherever I looked, although the terrain looked inhospitable, features of the land stood out suddenly to me. The path plotted itself in my mind. The thought was intrusive and maddening at first, as though someone was yelling something in my ear I didn’t want to hear or think about.

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My eyes adjusted quickly to the light of this place, which felt like the suffuse illumination of morning before the sun makes its appearance. They quickly alighted on a depression in the snow, a long ways off, in the shadow of a copse of dissimilar trees.

It was roughly human-shaped.

The moment I decided to go check it out, a few things occurred to me: First, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get there, as the drifts of snow and thick, thorny scrub barred my path; Second, not it wouldn’t—because the path to that destination was suddenly very clear to me. I could cross the snow drifts by hopping across a series of firm stones protruding from the snow conspicuously, and there was a ridge I could adhere to in order to get through the brambles. Beyond them, a sturdy log stretched across a gap—one wrong step would mean a nasty fall, but the trunk looked sturdy enough. One thing led naturally to the next, my mind constantly sifting obstacles and solutions. Indeed, it suddenly seemed like the only way to go and the only thing to do. It would require a little bit of work, but I was rather on the athletic side, all told. Raising my body temperature with exercise could only be a good thing; and besides, it was the only lead I had on my human, and I would have followed him through much worse than snow and thorns. (And I have since.)

I set out, my breath coming out in visible puffs of steam, thick and white like the marshmallowy and aesthetically pleasing clouds rolling slowly above. The temperature might have been ticking upward, marginally, and although the ambient light was brightening, I still saw no sun. Did the Shards share the same sun as the Screenwilds? If so, why was there any light at all?

By the time I reached the human-shaped depression in the snow, it was empty. It was also much too large to have been Commander Zideo’s, even after being filled in with snowflakes for however long. It was clearly DuChamp’s shape, as there was no mistaking the shoulder width and his big ol’ head. A cast of his exceedingly lumpy face had formed at the moment of his impact, and the mustache crater was a dead giveaway. There were footprints leading away into the hills, but they seemed much too small. The right foot was dragging a bit, the right indentations noticeably (to me, a dog) longer than the left. DuChamp was a strangely proportioned video game character anyway, and it was possible that he had been hurt and acquired a limp as he fell to the Shard, so I did not think much more of it at the time. Rather, I got started following the footprints, trotting swiftly a few feet away in hopes of finding him before the falling snow obliterated my only link to Zideo, tenuous though it may be.

I followed them through otherwise pristine snow, across an icy bridge. Given that we all arrived by the same means—namely, a great big ballista—it did not seem likely that he could have gotten here much before me. Certainly, we had spread out on approach, the drag affecting each of our bodies in different ways, but I saw no explanation for DuChamp having such a head start on me. Perhaps I had taken longer to get back on my feet when I landed in the snowdrift.

The footprints curled around the mountain, toward a ridge that faced another, taller mountain across a scenic valley of snow-topped trees and floating hillocks. I smelled distant smoke, and was thinking about how that could be a good thing and a bad thing when I heard a sneeze to my right. The limping footprints lead to an overhang, the mouth of a cave. Climbing up to the lip, I was surprised to see none other than Helmgarth sitting on a rock within, shivering miserably.

“It’s you… hah,” he said, rubbing his arms with his palms. He limped over to the mouth of the cave. “Look.” He pointed with his cane to a plume of smoke on the tree-lined ridge across the valley. I had heard that in some parts of the world outside of Airy Zone, people light fires for fun inside their homes, although I could not imagine such a thing. Certainly Lisa had the good sense to have her recreational flames outdoors. This did not look recreational. This too was a hunch. Still, I found I desired nothing more than to be near that heat—well, one thing more. (Finding Zideo.) (Obviously.)

Reading my thoughts, Helmgarth said, “I’ll bet that’s warm.” We both stood there, coveting that heat, his eyes quite literally green. Had they always been so?

“Listen,” he said, coming to some sort of decision. He pointed his crystal topped cane at my face—a little close, and I took a step back. “You’ll be looking for your master, I’m sure. He’ll be heading there.” He flicked his wrist and pointed the cane at the flames on the other mountain. “You go there and wait for him. I’ll go find help.”

I wasn’t picking up the scent of leather and sweat on him that I had so disliked before. Nor could I smell any of the supplies in his pack—the jerky, the potions, nothing. Perhaps the cold snow was interfering. I got closer to Helmgarth and sniffed at his boots, but he swiped the cane through the air, causing me to leap back out of the way. “Sorry, hah,” he said. “No time! I’ll be there as soon as this leg will allow me.”

I’d been perfectly happy to walk with him, but now I feared his pique. Perhaps the experience in the Ludic Grotto had changed him… or maybe he was just irritable from being cold and wet. Either way, I deducted one Dog Point from Helmgarth. He had a point thought—Zideo would be as desperate to get warm as I would, and was likely to head that way. My head and tail low, I reluctantly made my way back out into the cold.

I followed a trail I did not know was there until I was paying attention to it. Icy stones rose to one side as I found a natural crossing that lead to the other mountainside, where an equally array of trees huddled together in patches, few like one another. My trail seemed so obvious, so natural to me, that I felt comfortable enough to pick up speed.

Perhaps Zideo was already there. Perhaps he needed my help!

I really started hoofing it, reacting to obstacles reflexively the moment they came into view: I hopped over roots and across frozen streams, I slid beneath low-hanging floating hillocks and stones. I even ran briefly across a wall—sideways, using my forward momentum—to cross a particularly wide and frosty-looking slush puddle. It was as though the Shard was throwing the obstacles at me one by one. I found myself in a sort of flow state, which was interrupted spectacularly when I tripped over a penguin.