Theo was very lost. How was it that everyone expected him to be the responsible one, and get everything done for the group that no one else wanted to do?

Someone had to direct the group through this awful cold nightmare-scape, but why did it have to be him?

If Theo was being perfectly honest, he just kind of picked a direction once Joy had asked him to navigate at the beginning of the trip.

How was he supposed to know where the native peoples of the Frozen Continent, that no one had seen for hundreds of years, resided?

Unfortunately for Theo though, he was in too deep. He couldn’t just say that he had no idea where they were going, since then everyone would question why he didn’t say that in the first place. So, instead he just spent a lot of time staring at a useless map, pretending to be deep in thought so that no one would bother him.

Thankfully, he had been able to keep track of the group’s position through a few landmarks, and he had been following the weird giant pits around this area, in hopes that if he did get lost, all they would have to do was follow the holes back to somewhere he was familiar with.

At this current moment, Theo was staring at the crusty map that Sam had given him. He wasn’t quite sure how the map was already crusty since it was only a few weeks old. The map had been made from the reports of the surrounding area that had only been recently explored by the prince’s forces. No one had ever tried to map an abandoned continent before; thus, all the maps should be brand new. But somehow, this map just wasn’t. It was crusty and yellowed, the edges seemed to have had something spilled on them at some point, and Theo was pretty sure someone had dropped it in a random pile of dust, since he felt the overwhelming urge to sneeze every time he unfurled it.

The one good point about this trip was that Joy had somehow gotten Emmy, The Heater, to join them. At the very least he wouldn’t freeze his eyes if he kept them open too long in this weather.

Theo was glad that the weather was sedate today. There were no walls of ice and snow coming down from the sky. The heating that Emmy provided was convenient and all, but feeling warm and toasty did not cut it when the wind could knock someone off their feet or the ice falling from the sky could crack someone’s head open.

Big fat flakes of snow fell from the sky. They drifted in the air, so large that they seemed like lazy cats slowly wandering their way down from a high perch.

Theo knew that there was some magical and scientific reason for the whole continent having the unending winter. Some scribe whose gift was from Weather was ‘a perfect understanding of why weather-y things happened’ had written an entire book about why this continent was so fascinating in comparison to all the other abandoned continents. But Theo was never much for reading, so the whole situation still felt very mystical to him. The unending rage of a god that blighted humanity.

As amusing as his musings were, Theo let himself get back to the task at hand. He needed to make a difficult decision. The group had been nearing the end of the map and he needed to create a plan to keep the group from getting lost once they had left the relative safety of the known area.

He had considered leaving giant ice sculptures in their wake. Obelisks of ice that were tall enough and sturdy enough that they wouldn’t fall during the many days their journey would take. But he would have to waste a good chunk of time to create something like that, and they would need to make enough of them that they were visible to each other. The pace of the group would slow to a crawl, and that would not be ideal for the prince’s plans.

Theo wished that he was smarter. He just didn’t have a plan or method to keep the group from getting lost. So, he did the only thing he could.

“Hey everyone, let’s get going.”

He put all his trust in Fate and started wandering into the great unknown. Hopefully they all wouldn’t starve to death.

To everyone else it seemed the same, Theo pondered upon the implications. He was frightened to his core, unable to voice his fears about this unknown lest he expose his folly to the group. But they all had this blind faith that he knew where they were going and had no reservations about letting him lead them through this barren landscape.

The rest of the group had been living with the same existential dread of the unknown, but they had the lifeline. They thought that Theo knew exactly what was happening and that they could rely on him.

Theo, however, forged ahead as coolly and calmly as a chicken running around headless. He followed the massive pits, since they were a source of familiarity to him. But otherwise, he was metaphorically blind.

Snow fell from the sky, filling the tracks they left in the snow. Erasing any true markings of their presence. Every one of them was a miniscule blemish on a perfectly white canvas, being slowly erased as time passed, and more snow fell.

The day ended without incident. The tension never left Theo’s shoulders though. He felt the weight of disappointment and failure pushing him down to the ground. But he took that burden; what else could he do?

He sullenly chewed on the preserved meats. Lillian had been unable to dream of food for the past few days, so everyone was starting to get a bit grumpy with the rations. Thankfully, for some unknowable reason Joy didn’t join in on the nightly game, he summoned the deck of cards out of his soul space, but then went over to the corner of the tent to go to sleep immediately.

Theo was still a bit skeptical about Joy’s gift. It didn’t make sense in a lot of ways. A gift that hinged entirely on randomness was quite weird, but not unheard of. In principle it was the same as Lillian’s, who could bring random things out of the dreamworld.

But somehow this deck of cards could keep being resummoned. It didn’t make sense in terms of the way Joy had described his gift. If it was truly random, why could he summon a singular object?

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Asking about gifts in general was incredibly rude. It was a true glimpse into the karma of another human being, so very few people ever shared the true specifics of a gift. Maybe a few close friends and family would know how the gift truly worked, otherwise people would give vague summaries that left a lot up to the interpretation of the listener.

Theo just assumed Joy’s gift had a few layers of complexity that he didn’t feel comfortable sharing.

The mood of the group was dour for the night, something about Theo’s personal funk was dampening everyone else’s mood. So, everyone turned in early. Except for the Heater, who had the first watch of the night. It was not the most formal watch, but everyone made sure someone was awake the whole night, just so that they weren’t caught unaware by some surprise.

The ground was shaking. Big rhythmic beats, as if a giant drum was next to Theo’s head, and someone kept beating on it, repeatedly.

Theo wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but he slowly sat up. He looked around the tent, only him, the Heater, and Peku seemed to notice the noise. Everyone else seemed to be deeply sleeping. He already knew Joy was a pain to wake up, and Lillian had trained herself to not wake up easily to make her gift more effective. But Benny sleeping through this racket was not expected. He had hoped that the man would be more observant, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Emmy was opening the tent flap, trying to go outside to see what was making the racket and Peku was dancing next to her. Making his little ‘peku peku’ sound repeatedly, but still patiently waiting for the tent to be opened.

His antlers tipped side to side, touching each end of the tent. Thankfully they were so unimpressive that they didn’t tear the material at all.

Finally, once Emmy had opened the tent flap Peku burst outside, and Theo and Emmy followed. They were worried about the shaking earth, but now were more curious about what had Peku so riled up, maybe he knew something they didn’t.

Outside was a mountain.

Seemingly out of nowhere a mountain had risen in front of the tent. A mound of white that matched the flurry of snow around it.

Then the mountain turned and looked at them. Its eyes were larger than Theo or Emmy and looked down at them with a wisdom that only something truly ancient held.

Peku ran up to the behemoth and let loose a giant, “peku peku!”

“Peku peku.” The mountain replied in a light voice. It was the voice of a chiding mother, one who was letting their child know they had done something wrong, but that they were still loved and cherished.

The mountain had a pair of antlers that were far more impressive than Peku’s. They were interwoven like the branches of a particularly gnarly tree. The mountain also spoke to Peku, thus Theo felt that maybe they had discovered Peku’s family.

“No one is going to believe us, are they?” Emmy said to Theo as they stared at the gargantuan Peku that towered above their tiny tent.

“Shit, Lillian’s going to be pissed that Peku left.”

“Peku peku,” the massive Peku added congenially.

“At least it isn’t squishing us, that’s a nice bonus.” Emmy added.

The giant reached down towards the group and scooped up Peku, along with a massive chunk of snow. Then, the giant gentle settled the whole mound onto its shoulder.

It paused for a moment, staring at the two humans with far too much intelligence. Before letting out a final “peku peku,” and wandering off.

Each footfall crunched the massive layers of snow, creating the massive pits that looked familiar. They looked almost exactly like the pits that Lillian had been using to hide in during their journey. The pits she and Peku found so endlessly entertaining.

With a few questions answered and even more questions posed, Emmy and Theo went back into the tent. Once it was zipped up, they paused for a moment and held the other’s eye.

The two of them shouted at once, “what was that?”

The footfalls of giants were not enough to rouse their merry band, however two people shouting very close to each other was enough to get a groggy, “huh,” out of Joy and Benny. To which Theo and Emmy relayed the entire story.

Both men sat there listening, enraptured by the tale of the walking mountain. As soon as Joy heard about the massive Peku he opened the tent back up, in hopes that he could catch sight of the giant Peku. Benny followed, just looking over Joy’s shoulder, just as hopeful. However, neither saw hide nor hair of the massive Peku.

Both dejected men then went back to sleep, since they needed the rest before another long trek. Joy did make one snide comment before he fell asleep.

He meaningfully looked at Lillian and snickered, “she is gonna kick your asses in the morning.” Then Joy giggled on his way to sleep.

Emmy continued her watch shift and Theo went into an uneasy sleep. Hoping that Lillian would not get a weapon from her dreams tomorrow.

Theo was woken up by Benny. Since Theo was in charge of making sure that whatever Lillian brought out of the dream world wasn’t dangerous, he always took the last shift of watches.

The silly man still had his disgusting bowler hat on, but once he saw that Theo was awake, he moved the bowler over his eyes to block out the ambient light. Benny was snoring in seconds, Theo wished he could be that carefree.

He had let Peku go, even though he was being returned to his family Lillian had grown quite attached to the little monster and she was not known for being the most understanding. She was known for over-the-top pranks and violence.

Theo knew he had to start preparing himself. He made sure all his belongings were kept a safe distance from Lillian’s cot, then he started confiscating things out of Lillian’s backpack. It was a mess in there, so he also spent a bit of time reorganizing it, hoping this little act would gain a smidgen of mercy from her.

Morning came too fast, and soon, Theo was waiting beside Lillian’s cot. Even if he was terrified for his life, he couldn’t abandon his duty to her.

Her eyes opened, and something phased into existence in her hands. Her gift worked in a surreal way; it was like her hands had been submerged in murky water. It added a distortion to the world around her, then suddenly that distortion would fade and something unreal would have been placed into reality.

This morning she held a very small violin. It was barely the size of a person’s thumb and had a little bow to match it.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Theo and the surrounding tent. Theo knew this was his chance to come clean and explain the whole situation. He needed to say it.

“Peku’s family came for him last night, they were massive and…” Theo’s words were suddenly cut off by a shrill shrieking sound that came from Lillian.

During his impromptu speech, she had raised her little violin to a semblance of playing posture, then pulled the bow over the strings, in a most unharmonious way.

Everyone else in the tent jumped to their feet. Wondering who had punched a baby rabbit to make such an impressive squealing noise.

Lillian’s dark eyes burned holes into Theo’s icy blue ones as she spoke, “justice has been served. We will remember Peku and hate Theo forever.”

Then she turned around, seemingly intent on not talking to Theo for the rest of the day.

Theo started moping as he prepared everyone’s rations for the day. He intuitively knew that the situation wasn’t his fault, and that Lillian was being unreasonable. But that didn’t stop him from feeling awful about the whole debacle.

Joy sidled up to Theo without his characteristic shit-eating grin and said, “don’t worry buddy. She’ll get bored of ignoring you by the end of today. Can torment a person if you don’t speak to them.”

Joy went back to giggling as he munched and crunched on his nuts and jerky. Theo really wanted to kick his ass, maybe he would form little ice sheets under Joy’s feet the entire day, that would cheer Lillian up he hoped.