Joy had heard a saying when he was a child, “monotony created our world, and our world creates monotony. Thus, we must make our own worlds to ease our monotony.”

He loved that saying, it was a reminder that if the world around him was too boring, he could simply create his own fantastical world to alleviate that.

Hiking through the endless snow was boring. Joy was immensely bored with the trip, and it had barely started. The group had hiked for about a day, it was quite hard to tell exactly what time of day it was since the sun was perpetually covered by clouds, and were making a camp for the night.

One advantage to bringing the Heater with them, was that a fire wasn’t necessary. They could even sleep on the cold snow, and it would feel just as comfy as dozing off in a rocking chair right by the fireplace.

So, all the group did was make a temporary shelter to keep the snow from accumulating on their bodies during the night. Then they huddled together in an awkward silence, letting the sounds of crunching nuts and tearing jerky fill the void of noise.

Joy stared at his hands and came to a decision. The easiest way to get to know anyone was through a game, so he reached inside of his soul space, and pulled out a deck of cards.

The cards themselves were not fancy or embellished, they were simply cards for playing games. The backs were a sleek black, and the fronts just showed the suit and number. Even the kings, queens, and jacks were very crude, a single letter was how they were distinguished from the other cards.

The only card that was different was the joker card. The joker card was garish multicolored, a disturbing antithesis to the rest of the deck, and showed a hyper realistic clown smiling while juggling several balls of varying colors.

Joy made a matching smile at the joker card, before pocketing it. Hidden safely from everyone’s point of view. Not every game needed a joker.

“Alright everybody let’s play Go-Fish.” Joy announced before dealing the cards.

Back in the castle, people may have complained or outright refused to play, but everyone was just as bored as Joy, so they huddled up in the center of the tent and started playing.

Joy liked Go-Fish as an icebreaker, it was an easy enough game that no one could absolutely dominate. Simultaneously, people would find the motions monotonous enough that they would have to strike up a conversation. Games were the best way to ascertain someone’s moral fiber, but Joy didn’t want to know exactly who these people were just yet, he just wanted to get a feel for them.

Five pairs of hands would set down pairs, reach into the center pile, or steal from the other hands. It made a beautiful tapestry of motion.

Joy knew he had already pushed the social limits of the group enough and anymore prodding would be more detrimental than productive, so he simply smiled and played the game. Waiting for someone else to pose the questions.

Finally, nearing the end of the first game Benny broke.

“So, how did all of you end up in the prince’s service?” His voice was filled with hesitation, but Joy capitalized on this forward motion.

“I personally was captured by those two over there, because I had won some contraband gold in a coin toss. Then I was coerced… encouraged to join in on some whimsical heists to bankroll this whole operation.”

Lillian jumped in, “Sam told us to show up on that street and that we would find someone doing something illegal there, and that they would be a solution to the lack funding.”

Joy jumped at this a flash of indignation coming across his face, “y’all arrested me without even knowing what I did wrong? That’s messed up.”

This topic caused Joy and Lillian to bicker for a few minutes until the game of Go-Fish finally came to an end. Joy had won by a ridiculous margin; he had an unnerving ability to guess whatever card someone had just drawn from the center pile.

Because he was the big loser all the cards were shifted towards Theo who started shuffling them while everyone prepared for a second round.

In the lull Joy asked Benny to share his story.

It turned out that Benny was the middle child of a middling house. He had always lived in the shadows of his elder and younger siblings, thus when his thirteenth birthday came around it was no surprise that he chose to take gift from Shadow.

In his words, “I had always felt that darkness inside of me, so it fell within my calculations that shadows would be my ally.”

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Benny always spoke in a lilting manner that overenunciated larger words. And he had an odd habit of adjusting his idiotic bowler hat whenever he started getting too excited. All in all, he wasn’t the most enticing storyteller that Joy had ever met, but it got the ball rolling.

Next, Lillian spoke about the prince himself coming to hire her. About how scared she was to leave her life on her family’s farm, but how much the prince had helped her adjust to this new life.

Her story was a lot more relaxed and enjoyable to listen to, so finally the Heater built up enough confidence and comfortability to share her own story.

She apparently was a simple maid who cared for the prince’s garden. She had only heard about this expedition from the rumors of the other house staff. Someone had been cleaning up what seemed to be footprints of honey that lined the castle and they had overheard the prince give his speech about this expedition.

Then the story spread like wildfire through the house servants. Many of their livelihoods depended on the princely sums that the prince paid his staff to keep his castle up to snuff. So, they were rightly worried that the prince would lay them off since there wouldn’t be anyone living in the castle for an extended period.

This had apparently sent everyone and their mother into a frenzy, hoping to find new employment, or to convince the prince why they were absolutely necessary.

Emmy had been a little slow to hear about this new hot gossip, but just like everyone else she started searching for new employment as soon as she found out.

But all the jobs had already been taken, all her fleet-footed maid partners had taken up employment in the other houses in need of staffing. No one needed one extra maid anymore.

Emmy had been quite scared at this point; she hadn’t done anything else in her entire life. Her parents had been maids, and she had been more than happy to join them. She always had the option of slinking home in defeat, unable to find her own place in the world.

But Emmy was tenacious and refused to walk back home in shame and defeat. She loved the independence she had found in the prince’s castle living away from her parents, so she hiked up her pants and made an audience with the prince.

Her gift had never been useless, but it was hardly useful to her, as she said, “everyone likes to feel warm and cozy, but no one needs to feel it.”

She saw an opportunity with this trip to the Frozen Continent. She never would’ve been able to take advantage of her gift if the voyage had gone towards the Dead Continent or the Fractured Continent. For once, her gift could provide a needed service, for when was warmth more needed than in the freezing temperatures brought by a god’s wrath?

Convincing the prince was far easier than she had hoped. Emmy had expected some setbacks or challenges. She had no survival skills or real experience doing anything except her maid duties, but she was issued no impossible quests, nor was she expected to learn anything new. The prince apparently just said, ‘oh that’s a nifty gift; you’re in.’ And that was the end of it.

A life of maidenly duties left behind to travel as a portable heater. The Heater.

Joy wondered about Emmy, she was soft-spoken and had a natural charisma to her. People were drawn to her as moths were to flame. Joy felt himself being drawn into her story; her voice dictated it as well as any storyteller he had ever heard.

Even though the tale was not one filled with gallantry nor excitement, he was interested in her little sidebars about some of the prince’s messier parties and truly horrific disasters left behind in his wake.

This was what Joy had hoped for. Bringing his crew together in a meaningful way beyond the bonds of survival. It was only day one of their laborious journey, but he was excited about what was to come. Especially because he had won every single round of Go-Fish.

The journey was far more arduous than when Joy had been travelling with Vanessa. Even though the cold no longer seeped into his bones, the pure physical endurance needed to push through the snow was insane.

Next time the prince gave him full rights to create his own team he was going to find someone to clear the path for him. Joy had never been made for arduous labor, no matter how much his parents tried to instill it into him. His father had always told him, ‘Never put your back into your work, but always put your soul into it.’

Joy’s father had been blessed with the strength of thirty men and he liked to use it. He would work through the fields, day after day, alone except for the work and the plants he cultivated.

Joy had always felt his father looked lonely, sitting alone in the middle of their farm, and he had asked many times why they didn’t hire some of their nearby neighbors to help on the farm, or at the very least let Joy into the fields with him. So, his family let him join in on the farming one day, and his father didn’t utter a single word to Joy the entire time.

His father’s hands stroked the leaves of every plant like a tender friend. Pruning the plants and cleaning the fields of rodents. He was never rough with them, the strength of thirty men condensed into a softness like silk. He floated among his friends, the plants, and Joy watched.

Joy understood that his father had reached a meditative state that no one else could ever truly comprehend, but that didn’t mean he wanted to reach his father’s enlightenment.

After that day Joy never called his father lonely again, nor did he ever ask to go into the fields with him again.

There was peace in physical labor, and Joy tried to find that inner peace as he plowed himself through the snow. One foot in front of the other, letting his body carry him through the monotonous and never-ending task.

The only person in the group who was not as miserable as the rest of them was Benny, who would enter the shadow realm and pop up in shadows further along the path. Apparently, the shadow realm was something like a vacation villa to the young man, anytime the going got tough he could just enter his private paradise.

Benny was the only unbothered person. However, Peku was also quite unbothered by the endless snow. He frolicked in the snow near the group and was surprisingly receptive towards staying with the group. Lillian had admitted in a rare bout of true honesty that she had expected Peku to run off since she had taken him out of his natural habitat. But Peku was a faithful companion, always near the group, chirping anytime something interesting happened.

The endless white landscape was beautiful in a pure untouched way. Even if it was hard to appreciate while they were slogging through the endless snow.