“So, ah, where we going?” Meri asked after slipping on a patch of ice for the seventeenth time. Why had she ever wanted to see snow?

“To find shelter for the night.” Sen looked up at the sky. Meri looked too, but she had no idea what she was looking for. “It’s going to be cold. We’ll have to keep moving until we find somewhere we can stay warm.”

“Stay warm? How about get warm?” The giant cloak she’d thought was so warm before wasn’t helping much now. And she’d almost lost her fingers to the cold taking pictures. She should have grabbed a pair of gloves. Yuck. For some reason dead person gloves felt so much more wrong than a dead person cloak.

Sen didn’t comment, just kept forging onward. Did anything rile that girl up? Actually, she hoped she never saw that. She was scary enough when she was calm. Now that Meri knew Sen’s whole world thing was true, what did that mean about the bracelet? It had to be something significant, or whoever had forced her to wear it wouldn’t have pierced it into her flesh.

“What kind of shelter are we looking for? Got something in mind?” Meri asked.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Sen answered.

“Wonderful,” Meri muttered, kicking at a snow drift. This was possibly the dumbest thing she’d ever done, and that was saying a lot.

Would Sen take her back to the portal now, if she asked? She studied Sen’s back as the girl marched on, no sign of being tired at all, even with all the stiffness she’d noticed before.

Probably not. Whatever mission she seemed to be on, it was important to her. Meri, not so important. She didn’t seem to care about people much. Which just made this even more stupid. If she died here, her mom would never find out what had happened to her.

“Selfish, selfish, Meri,” she muttered to herself under her breath.

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“What?” Sen asked.

“Nothing,” Meri said.

Trudging through the snow was getting old fast. No wonder everyone complained about it, except at Christmas. She thought about kicking another pile, but just couldn’t get up enough energy.

It seemed like forever, but finally Sen paused. “Wait here.” She took off.

Meri squinted after her, but didn’t really see anything. If Sen left her here, she’d die, no doubt. Hopefully Sen wasn’t just getting tired of her and decided she wasn’t keeping up well enough. Meri moved up to where Sen had been standing when she said it and squinted through the trees. There, barely visible, a small shack of some kind.

Yes! Maybe they could spend the night there.

Unless Sen had already used this chance to abandon her. Sen didn’t really seem like the loyal type. Why was she letting her tag along when it was obviously not great for her? It wasn’t like she was going to be any help or anything.

She shifted her backpack to a different position and shoved down the urge to pull out her camera. She already had plenty of pictures of the trees. She didn’t need one of some random shack that could have been anywhere on Earth. The bag weighed her down, the exhaustion of the day deep in her bones. Maybe her emergency gear wasn’t worth it. But it was getting dark.

Dropping the bag on the ground for a moment, she felt around until she found her flashlight. How long was she going to be here? How much battery should she be saving? Was millions of dollars and fame enough to risk her life like this?

Oh yeah. The things she could do for her mom…

“It’s empty.”

Meri let out a little shriek and tumbled over backward into a snow bank. She just caught Sen rolling her eyes before reaching down and dragging her to her feet. She didn’t say a thing about Meri’s clumsiness, just turned and headed back for the shack, keeping an eye out the whole time. She shoved open the door and motioned for Meri to go ahead of her.

Meri checked out the tiny hut as she stepped through the door. Tiny was an understatement. But it was already significantly warmer in here without the wind. Body heat and hopefully a fire in the tiny firepit would help, a lot.

Sen dropped a little bag at her feet. She nodded toward a stack of wood along the far wall. “See what you can do about a fire. I’m going to find us something to eat.”

And, just like that, she was gone. Meri shoved past a small table to rush after her and yell out into the dark, “I brought granola!” but there wasn’t an answer.

At least this would give her a chance to make a quick entry with her camera. Everything that happened over the next couple days was going in a log. She wouldn’t forget a thing.