"Please let me eat her!" says the shadow lizard. Its voice seems to slither through the snow, and I don't know if you've ever heard a shadow speak, but it's like a whisper that licks your ears from the inside of your mouth.

The woman shakes her staff at it. "Does the poor thing look like an evil spirit to you?"

I'm freezing my ass off. But I agree. I'm not an evil spirit. At least, I'm pretty sure I'm not. I don't think I've ever done anything evil. But I did just... everything flashes. My morning: three classes in a row. Sitting there daydreaming about nothing. The long shift at the boba shop. The crowded subway ride home. The ransacked apartment. The mirror. Jia's mirror, and the knife in my hands, and the world rending into itself and spitting me out.

Don't bad things only happen to bad people?

“It could be possessed,” says the lizard. It's still flicking its tongue at me, eyeing me like it desperately wants me to be its next meal.

Shaking her head, the woman moves swiftly, gliding across the snow to close the gap. Even though I have a knife, I'm shivering too much to make any use of it. My insides feel twisted like a soaked towel. I'm too weak to protest. She grabs my face.

Her fingertips dig so hard into my jaws that I swear my teeth will pop out. And I know she's not at all intimidated. I let the knife slip out of my hand. If she's some kind of witch of the woods or something and wants to eat me, then by all means. Put me out of my misery. I'm too overwhelmed to even recoil at her touch.

She brings her wrinkled face close. Her brows furrow. Her cloudy breath smells like pickles. Her eyes are intense silver orbs that see me. I might as well be naked, my skull split open, each part of my brain dissected and on display like one of those diagrams in a psychology textbook. My every thought is spread for her to inspect.

"Are you an evil spirit?" she asks calmly, almost casually, like she's not staring into the deepest recesses of my soul.

I try to shake my head, but she's holding me too tight. "No," I say, my voice whisper-quiet. I can't look away, even as I'm a shivering mess. The cold seeps into my bones. But there's something else. Something strange. A thought that isn't quite my own, a question surfacing from my subconscious like some deep-sea creature anxious for air.

The shadow lizard hisses, and the thought gets lost. Its forked tongue feels slimy against my forehead, and I hyper-focus on my face. I feel the woman's hand squeezing my skull. I feel the lizard licking me. And to be honest, I don't freak out like I normally would. Their touch is warm, and now that she's standing right over me, it's not as cold. Her silver hair seems to shine under the starlight.

She releases me and straightens up. The question in my head vanishes. So does the fleeting warmth. My jaws ache.

"See?" she says to the lizard. "Told you. Now get back!" She thwacks it with her staff, and the creature shudders back into her shadow.

I watch it go, following it into the ground like water poured from a pitcher into a puddle. I realize the woman's not wearing any footwear. Her feet are as dark as her shadow, and I get the distinct feeling she's wearing her shadow.

"You fell from the sky," she says, so matter-of-fact that I believe her more than the memory of falling from the sky. "From that." She points upward, where a pink wisp of light, like an aftershock from the aurora, stretches loosely before fading away.

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For an instant, I think I glimpse the city skyline again, but then the light's gone, and all that's left are the countless stars.

I almost feel like I'm in trouble. Like I have to explain myself. "I... I was just-t-t home," I tell her through chattering teeth. "And then..." But how do you tell someone a mirror ate you? Then again, there's a lizard in her shadow. Maybe she’d understand.

The woman presses her lips tight. "That means the creature I sensed is still out there." She rubs her face with her free hand, then looks around, glaring at every snow-covered tree before fixing that glare back on me. It makes me shudder. "Are you going to cause any trouble?" she finally asks.

I shake my head no, teeth chattering loudly as I rub my exposed arms, cursing the short-sleeved uniform.

"And I assume you have nowhere to go?" She says it like she's talking to herself more than anything. "And if I don't find that spirit, it would be vexatious... alright." She yanks off her cloak, revealing a skintight darkness shifting all over her surprisingly muscular form, and drapes the cloak over my shoulders.

I'm so grateful for the warmth, I don't even care that she might be some crazy old witch who probably wants to eat me. "Thank you," I manage to say, but it comes out as a sigh of relief. My breath forms a large cloud drifting away from my lips. "But aren't you gonna be cold now?"

She turns and points with her shadow-covered arm, indicating the direction she'd come from. "Go this way for about fifteen minutes till you reach the grasslands. It's storming so careful not to get lost, but it'll at least give you cover. My house is on the cliff. Look for the lighthouse. Don't fall off."

Thawing out, I look at her face. She's not ancient old, but she's old. Her silver hair is wild and trailing behind her in curling streams. She's brown, but her shadow covers her up to the neck and makes her appear darker. I stare for a second at how it cups her breasts and her hips, and I'm jealous of how strong she looks. How effortlessly womanly and graceful she looks. How her body seems naturally powerful, a stark contrast to my limp form.

"Are you listening?" she asks, and I meet her eyes and this time I do flinch. She repeats what she'd said, then kneels and grabs the knife. She pushes the handle into my hands. "You might need this," she says. Her breath clouds around her frowning face. "It's a strong spirit, so I have to get to it quick before it hurts anyone. But there are other things out here, so just be careful and move quickly."

With that, she turns and leaves, like she doesn't really care if I survive or not. I watch her go, holding the warm cloak tightly and clutching the knife. Her shadows hug her like a skintight suit. She walks without disturbing the snow at all. She walks on top of the snow, and there aren't any footprints left behind. I watch till I lose sight of her between the trees.

Something howls in the distance. Then a bird calls like the hoo-ooh of an owl, except there's a third extended oooooh that sounds like a ghost. I feel like I'm being watched. Something out there is observing me. Hunting me. Shivering, this time not from the cold, I rush off in the direction the woman indicated.

I trudge through the snow, kicking things up messily, the cloak dragging heavily. I'm nowhere near as graceful as she'd been. I don't even know what I'm going to do. None of what she said made sense. It's storming outside the woods? But it's snowing here... and I have to look out for a lighthouse? Why would there be a lighthouse in the woods? I've never even seen a lighthouse in person before.

And what was all that about evil spirits? And that lizard thing that wanted to eat me? The more I try to make sense of it, the more questions I have, and all I want to do is lie down somewhere and not think. But all around me is snow, cold and pristine and beautiful. It muffles my sounds. It captures starlight and illuminates the way.

The woods stretch in every direction, looking the same no matter how far I go, and it's like some scene out of a Hallmark movie. I figure if I keep going in a straight line, it’ll be fine.

But I can’t help but think about how she’d put the knife in my hands and told me to be careful. Another bird call sounds. I shudder and try to focus, even as my legs burn from the effort of walking through heavy snow.

I’ll look for the lighthouse. That’s the goal for now. That’s what I'll focus on. It’s just like how I’d fixate on getting to class every morning. How I’d convince myself to get out of bed, out of the apartment. Set a goal. Move toward it. Let everything else fade into the background. It's just noise. It's just feelings. Push it all down. None of it matters.

None of it matters. I just gotta get there, and then I’ll find the next thing to do.

Jia, I keep thinking as I struggle through the snow, my breath visible in front of me. Your mirror ate me. And I have no idea where I am.