Lillian was sitting in a theater watching a play. For some reason she was wearing an uncomfortable skirt with a loose-fitting blouse. The two garments mismatched awfully, and she could feel everyone in the audience judging her for her subpar choices in clothing.

In a moment of embarrassment, she decided to run out of the seating area. She had been sitting deeply in the middle of the row and had to brush past many strangers. She made apologies and excuses as she tried to escape her predicament, but she could feel every stranger’s judgement wash over her as she passed them.

After what felt like an eternity, she burst out of the row then she moved as swiftly as she could politely, to run away. She could see her exit, a massive pair of stone arches marked her exit, and she rushed as quickly as possible, trying to reach them.

Then a hand grasped her shoulder; she jumped a little and turned to see who touched her.

A shiver ran down Lillian’s spine as she saw what had to be the most decrepit old man of all time. He looked like a mummified corpse walking. His only feature that didn’t look ghoulish was his smile. He seemed quite kindly if she only looked at his mouth.

His lips worked for a moment as he seemed to be searching for the correct words to say. The decrepit man licked his lips, but his tongue made a sound like sandpaper rubbing when it contacted his lips.

Lillian shivered away from his hand, and he let it drop. It hung at his side completely limp when he said, “did you enjoy the show?”

He spoke in a lilting manner that left too many pauses between the wrong words. But he smiled at Lillian, waiting for her answer.

She refused to speak; this creature must be trying to trick her somehow. It couldn’t have good intentions with a voice and face like that, could it?

Eventually, the old man raised his hand. Inexplicably there was a set of grapes in his hand. They were lush and green, and Lillian felt like she could see the juicy innards of them through their translucent skin.

“The show has,” he paused for a moment too long as if he was an actor in a play that had forgotten his line, “ended. May I offer you some refreshments?”

As the old man spoke Lillian noticed that there seemed to be an endless line of clowns walking off the stage. They were walking towards her, pushing through the stands. Stepping on feet without apologizing to the audience members.

The eyes of the clowns shone with disdain, and not one looked away from her as they started approaching.

What seemed like hundred squeaky shoes honked in a most disturbing way while Lillian turned to the old man. He leisurely took one of the grapes and popped them into his mouth.

As he started to chew a sound like glass crunching emanated from his kindly smile. Blood started to ooze out of his mouth, but his smile never faded.

Lillian saw the first of the clowns starting to get dangerously close, so she gave a quick thanks to the old man and took the surprisingly hefty weight of the grapes from him. Even if he was creepy as all get out, it was the polite thing to do.

Then she booked it towards the exit, the clowns were just behind her. They seemed just out of reach, but they never quite got close enough to impede her escape.

Finally, she reached the arches of stone. She wasn’t breathing heavily, nor did she feel the exertion of this run. However, she still stopped after she passed the arches. She somehow knew that the clowns would not be allowed to cross over this line.

They prowled and juggled an assortment of items angrily. Lillian hadn’t known that someone could juggle angrily, but these clowns were certainly juggling with rage.

Pins and balls were rising and falling through the air as testaments to their hatred.

Lillian looked out at the mass of clowns and took a deep breath. It was oddly terrifying, in a surreal way. But she closed her eyes, looking away from the masses. As she opened them, she no longer saw the clowns or the stage, instead she saw the canvas flap that made her tent’s roof.

Tightly gripped in her hands was an assortment of grapes from the dream but she was back in reality. Theo grunted slightly when he saw that she had awoken without an incident, then went back to playing with Peku. During their trip, Theo had found that if he made chunks of ice in interesting shapes Peku would play with them for hours. Right now, he had made an ice-ball that Peku rolled around the floor. It made a mess, but no one would deprive their team mascot of his personal joy.

After Lillian had awoken, everyone else started getting up one by one. First was Emmy, who immediately started cleaning up her personal area, making sure to prepare herself for the arduous day of walking ahead of her. She was followed closely by Benny, who started combing his hair so that it still looked perfect beneath his silly bowler hat.

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Joy, however, did not wake up until Lillian ‘fell on him.’ Maybe the fall involved an elbow to the stomach, but who was really keeping track of that?

Everyone gathered in the center of the tent and Theo, the de facto responsible person of the group, pulled out each person’s rations. They had not been travelling for too long, so they still had a large number of them left. It was just jerky and nuts, but it was better than having nothing.

A few times Lillian had dreamt of food in her dreams, the hunger had been getting to her. She tried to pull out large meals that everyone could share in the morning. Unfortunately, today’s dream item was not edible.

Joy was the unfortunate soul who learned that the grapes Lillian had pulled out of the dream were made of glass. He had crunched down on the glass and screamed. Causing everyone to spend a few moments trying to reach inside his mouth and take out the splinters.

Joy was pissed and bleeding, but Lillian was excited. This meant he would talk less, and the journey could continue in a blissful silence.

They broke camp after they finished eating their meal. Then they started the slow journey towards somewhere. Theo was still being very vague about where exactly he had chosen their destination to be, but what else was Lillian going to do? It wasn’t like she was going to figure out where the native people of the frozen lands lived. No thank you sir, that sounded like a lot of work to her.

So, she walked and played. Snow had never been fun when she was on the farm with her family. While the rest of her siblings were a hearty farm stock sort of folk, she had inherited the more delicate parts of her parents. So doing work in the snow was miserable.

Not that her family ever needed her on the farm, but she didn’t want to just laze about while they worked all day. That would be selfish. But some of those snowy days made her wish she could be more selfish.

In the here and now though, she loved it. Especially with the Heater’s gift, the snow became a beautiful thing to touch. She couldn’t feel the cold and so she was able to hold this crunchy thin gravel. Snow was so malleable in its uses, hard or soft, it was a textured and amazing wonder that Lillian could not get enough of.

She and Peku galivanted around the surrounding areas. They found these deep pits in the snow as wide as ten men laying down, and as deep as a singular, tall, but lonely man.

The two of them found that they could scurry ahead of the group and hide underneath the edges of the pit. Then jump out as soon as the group was about to pass them. The look on Theo’s face was priceless the first and second times. It got a little scary after the third though. And Lillian decided to stop jumping out at him after the fourth.

Lillian diligently forged paths for her companions to follow. Even though she was poking fun at them and having a good time, all her effort made the others’ lives easier.

Theo called for their ceaseless march to end. To make the setup a little less arduous he called it when they were near one of those large pits. So, the group didn’t have to clear the snow out of the area to make a comfortable camp.

Benny pulled himself and most of their important gear out of the shadow realm. The team had realized that since he had to walk less and was exposed to the harsh elements of nature less, that they could give him the heavy and delicate things to carry and there was nothing he could say or do about it.

Since what were the rest of them to do? Carry their things? Not when they had a perfectly good Benny to carry them instead.

As the tent stakes were being ineffectually driven into the snow, Lillian and Theo started handing out some more of the jerky and nuts to everyone.

That was the hardest part of this journey, the constant jerky, and nuts. No fruits or vegetables, no eggs or real hearty meats, just salty preserved foods.

One night earlier on the trip, Lillian had dreamt of a grand feast. The food was plentiful and delicious. So, Lillian had brought the feast back with her into reality. There were poached eggs, turkey legs, gravy, and steamed carrots. And so much more.

That day Lillian had felt like a savior to the group, bringing them a small piece of happiness in their bleak dietary lives. The group ate like kings for breakfast, then went back to jerky and nuts.

Lillian knew she was not allowed to control her dreams as that ruined whatever had made them special. It was a quirk of her gift, the more she tried to control her dreams the less effect they had on reality. So, she couldn’t try to find feasts of food in every dream to keep everyone well fed, instead she had to let Chance decide for her.

The tent stakes had been slowly but surely pushed into the frozen earth, and everything had been readied for their rest time.

As had become tradition, the group sat down to play a round or two of some game before they started their rotating night shift. Even though nothing had attacked the camp yet, no one wanted wolved to tear their one protection from the constantly falling snow to shreds. However, Lillian was exempt from this duty since her gift was so reliant upon her sleep schedule.

This night the group had decided to play poker, there was only one complication. No one had brought anything of value to bet with. No one wanted to bet with the food, the temptation to just snack on their rations during the game would have been irresistible.

Surprisingly Theo came up with a solution to this conundrum. The man made a series of small figures out of snow with his gift, each one with different values in the game. The miniature figures ranged from sea serpents to crude caricatures of the prince and Ian.

The group liked playing games, but they realized very quickly that only one person could ever win the games. Somehow, Joy got stupidly lucky in every situation. Lillian personally felt he was cheating; she just couldn’t figure out how.

Joy had two separate hands that were royal flushes in one game. The odds of that were not something Lillian cared about, but something was fishy about it.

Eventually Joy had collected everyone’s figures and everyone’s ire, and only Theo’s cool-headed nature kept Lillian from beating the shit out of the cheater.

She grumbled on her way to her sleeping arrangements, but she could still see that stupid grin painted on his face. Even though the pain of smirking like that must have been excruciating from the cuts lining his mouth, he refused to stop.

Lillian made a promise to herself that if she dreamt of food that night, she wouldn’t be bringing it back into reality. She was feeling particularly petty as she drifted off to sleep.