There was Claireholm, lying on the street - with a stone lance impaled in his chest.
Caedes felt a brief spike of panic until he realised that Claireholm was still, thankfully, breathing, at which point his panic reduced to a firm but measured anxiety - he had not earned the nickname ‘the Doc’ purely as an honorific.
He went to rush forwards, but the Doll stopped him, shaking his head. Caedes, true to his instincts, went to push the Doll aside, until he saw where the Doll was pointing…and realised it wasn't just the three of them on the street.
The artificial fog had departed, but it was not the only artificial weather formation created by whoever Caedes had just executed. The clouds were also fake, and now as they gave way something came through the wintry sky.
The girl walked down from the clouds, stepping daintily from wisp to wisp, her eyes fixed on the dying man below. She was blindingly white - so bright it hurt Caedes to look at her - a white which he at first took for light and only later realised was snow.
She stepped off the last wisp of cloud and slowly drifted down to earth, her alabastrine arms folded behind a light spring dress. She tucked one loose strand of pellucid hair behind a bow, heedless of the cold - not that she needed to be, with a body of pure snow.
She smiled warmly at Claireholm, who raised one feeble hand to reach for her. The tips of his fingers brushed the air, threatening to fall back down, but she encircled his hand in her own before it could.
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She leaned over, and whispered in his ear. Neither Caedes nor the Doll heard what she said. In later decades Claireholm would occasionally get a strange, whimsical smile on his face - a bit like the Cheshire Cat, reading a sappy novel - and Caedes would know he was thinking back to that night and wonder about what it was he'd heard. But now he did not wonder, instead feeling immense relief as the lance turned to snow and that brilliant white glow encompassed his friend's chest.
The wound in his chest slowly knit close, but the glow did not fade. There was a whirl of crystalline white, and with it a pulse of qi. It was a bit like the qi of ice, and a bit like the qi of music, and a bit like neither, but something else. Caedes blinked in surprise as he sensed the movement of an activated dantian.
A bewildered Claireholm dragged himself to his feet, looking down at his uninjured body. Then he got down on his knees and offered profuse thanks to the girl, words of heartfelt gratitude spilling from his lips.
The girl gave him a slight smile, and opened her mouth. The sound of chimes echoed softly through the silent night, before there was a flurry of snow and she was gone.
Claireholm turned to look at them, one tear trickling down his cheek and wonderment etched clear on his face.
The Doll bowed, as did Caedes. Later, they’d celebrate, but for now the only thing they could do was acknowledge the moment with proper solemnity.
When the moment had passed, the awe leaving them to be replaced by sheer relief, they gave the bodies a proper burial, and returned to the home under the bridge. They had only five days left to prepare, before the denouément - that final critical moment, on which turned success or failure.
(For the interested reader: later than even those later decades, Claireholm would publish his rewrite of Snegurochka, and then Caedes would know what the girl had said and why it was that Claireholm smiled. But that is a matter for another time, and another story. ~ Editor)