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It begins like this: Winter is rapidly approaching, and you know well and good that you have no intention of hiking the hour-long trek into Perchoiseaux for supplies. So, you wander the cabin you’ve taken up residence in, long-abandoned by anything resembling a human for months. You’ve heard of these before—emergency shelters built by the Jouvente government along the surrounding mountains to ensure travelers didn’t freeze to death in the event of a sudden blizzard.
You’d even stayed in these for a while in the past, jumping from shelter to shelter as you lived off the forageables in the woods, fishing the winding mountain river. They typically—and by typically, you mean that they’re usually restocked some time mid-autumn, which also made them good resources to fill up on your own supplies (if you were desperate enough to potentially steal food out of the mouth of another desperate traveler later)--carried a supply of six-hour emergency candles, a large sack of dried vegetables to throw into soups and the like, dried meat (likewise for the soups, you think, as there’s not much seasoning to it), and a few various kinds of preserves.
You are not the first traveler here this season, you think while taking inventory, or maybe they simply forgot about this shelter. After all, it is at the bottom of a ravine. Why would anyone ever willingly spend any time down here? There were much better camping options. Only the devastatingly confident—or irredeemably stupid—would try to camp at the bottom of a ravine in the middle of winter.
Guess which one you are?
Stardust has been trying to call you every day for the last week. It always happens first thing in the morning, like clockwork—one call, then silence. You’d thought, initially, that you must be imagining things—the call craft has a distance limit, after all, right? There was no way Stardust would get through unless he was close—which, definitively, he couldn’t have been, unless he was also in the middle of the woods outside Corbeaux.
You’d made the mistake of picking up once on sheer muscle memory. You’d just barely managed to get out: “Hello, hello, Loo-” before your brain caught up with you and you immediately ended the call, hands shaking. Stardust hadn’t even had the chance to process what you’d said before you did it.
Which—you know it’s Stardust, because anyone with two functioning braincells to rub together would have given up on you by now.
The call breaks through just as you’re taking stock of your dried meat, and you dismiss it with a wave of your hand. The supplies here are... meager. The sack of dehydrated vegetables is more than half full, but there’s only about enough meat for a few days, and no preserves at all. You do find the emergency candles nearly untouched. Not that you expect to need them when you have a fireplace and a hearty supply of firewood just outside the front door.
You’d been traveling for a while before finding this place. After waking up in that stars-damned field again, wearing a familiar hat and cloak and an unfamiliar (blind) eye in your previously empty socket, you’d bolted—as fast as your unsteady legs could carry you—outside of the town limits and into the woods.
When the King’s curse did not freeze you the next morning, you realized what had happened.
You had asked The Universe for someone to help you.
You had thought that helping a Siffrin would be sufficient wish fulfillment in that situation, and that, your wish granted, the wishcraft construct that was your body would disappear into the ether—and you with it.
Apparently not. If only you could be so lucky. Not you~!
As far as you can tell—as far as you can dare to hope—this is The Universe making good on its end of the deal.
You have been helped out of the loops.
...For better or worse.
Stardust’s party had already left by the time you steeled yourself and trudged back to Dormont, giving you the space to go anywhere you wanted.
You could have caught up to them, if that’s what you wanted to do.
It wasn’t~!
So, you wandered. Got to see the country of Vaugarde anew for the second time. Used your stolen-back face to get free lodging, free supplies, coasted along the coast and stared out at the ocean so long your only working eye burned.
Then you moved inland as the weather grew colder, relearning how to have normal conversations along the way—which mostly meant stopping at almost every tavern that’d gone to seed and drinking yourself half-blind.
...Er, quarter-blind?
You knew you didn’t want to be camping for too much longer. You’d stayed in inns, hostels, the occasional Vaugardian citizen’s front room at their insistence, but you wanted a place to hole up for a few months while the cold weather blew over. Somewhere that you could really see the winter. Somewhere... snowy. Maybe close to the border with Swylen. Mountainous, festive, with warm lights and fires to curl up next to, restaurants full of the type of cheese-laden cuisine that made Southern Vaugarde the setting of holiday stories.
The fact that Jouvente lay pretty damn close to that border didn’t have anything to do with it. You don’t know anyone in Jouvente.
Isabeau just made it sound so interesting, is all. The chances of running into Stardust’s party here is pretty low, all considered. And, hey, unless Isabeau took the time to stop in his hometown and sell his old apartment, chances are decent that it’s vacant—could swing a place to cozy up without having to worry about noisome neighbors~!
You were not interested in the way Isabeau lives—lived, once. Before you ever knew him.
Whatever.
All that said—you were headed out of Perchoiseaux to Jouvente when you got caught in a snow squall, and here you are—just about an hour away, looking for shelter, and what do you know: here’s one now, hot and ready for you.
Er, rather, “not actively snowing” and ready for you.
You’re not sure how long the squall will last, but you’ve determined pretty quickly that you have enough supplies to last you for at least a couple weeks, provided you’re not picky—which you generally are. Also provided that a boulder doesn’t fall from one of the nearby cliffsides and squash you (again) and your entire shelter like a bug, you feel pretty confident in your ability to trudge the hour back and get some snowshoes once things have settled down.
The cabin is pretty comfortable, even. The windows are small and high up—likely to keep larger animals from breaking them and climbing inside, or to keep the place as watertight as possible while still letting in light. There’s a brick fireplace, with a narrow chimney pipe that comes up a bit higher than you were expecting, looking a tad comical from the outside. You suppose the nearby trees make things like “squirrels falling down the shaft” a possibility, but if a squirrel really wanted to go out with a bang that badly, it could just climb up the chimney itself.
Strange.
It’s also incredibly sturdy, thick stone walls keeping the cold out and the fire-heat in, not a speck of moisture getting through that.
Furthermore, there were multiple rooms—perfect for if a group (such as a family on their way to visit relatives) were stuck here, with two bedrooms and—what looked to be some kind of recreation room! Leave it to Vaugardians to think about providing things like books and board games in an emergency shelter.
In fact, you think you’ll be just fine here for a couple days. Maybe not the most luxurious house you’ve ever stayed in, but it wouldn’t be the first time—and besides, isn’t this what you wanted? A warm house, a roaring fire, and the snow beating against your windows?
You set on your personal kettle—a small thing you’d pilfered from the gift shop of a tearoom back in Fleurmin, perfect for a single serving size and delicate enough to make you feel like you were treating yourself—even when you were huddled underneath a tree in the rain. You probably could have just asked for it and been given it, free of charge, as a thanks for your service.
But you were bored~! You were a rogue by trade! When was the last time you got to put that to good use?
Stardust didn’t even appreciate it when you fought him! You’re so strong now, and you’re spending all that experience on fancy pastries! Not that you have anything against fancy pastries, clearly~! You just can’t help yourself sometimes, you need an outlet for your... mischief to keep from doing something worse.
You have the capacity to do much worse when pushed to it.
So, you have a collection of little trinkets—like the silver earring you’d managed to discretely pluck from the ear of some drunken noblewoman who chatted you up (now safely nestled into the ear you’d specifically pierced for it), like the novelty 17-sided die you’d pocketed while pretending to be entranced by an artisan’s thrilling (roleplayed) battle stories (you’d spent the following weeks learning to roll that die smoothly across your knuckles), like the kettle, copper and patterned with floral motifs.
You hum to yourself, soft, a tune that’ll give you a headache if you think about it for too long—so you don’t think about it, instead pouring hot water into your last serving of apple and blackberry leaf tea and wrapping your hands around the cup.
You don’t eat before you go to bed—bones too loose with relaxation, body too exhausted from trudging through the snow to bother planning a full meal. Instead, you finish your tea, groggily push to your feet, and curl up on a thin mattress, pulling plain gray blankets over your shoulders and purring with contentment.
Tomorrow, you’ll trudge back to Perchoiseaux. You’ll purchase some snowshoes—Stars know that the folks of that little village can use all the money they can get given how slow foot traffic’s about to be—and then maybe you’ll come back here. Maybe you’ll even spend a couple more nights here before heading out; let yourself relax before another two-day snow hike.
But that’s a decision for tomorrow! Tonight, you’ll rest.
Through the small, square window of the master bedroom, you catch a glimpse of the stars through spruce branches.
You smile a little, just to yourself, before sleep takes you.
DAY 1
You wake up to the sound of a deafening crash and complete darkness.
You fall out of bed, shrieking, then look around frantically, chest heaving.
You're surrounded on all sides by complete lightlessness. You frown into it—your vision obviously has its shortcomings now, but you know night, and this is not that.
This is a void. This is emptiness—the space between the moment your brain functions come to a complete halt and the moment your synapses light again, electricity and heat crackling as you gasp a breath of air, eyes flying open, phantom agony coursing through your veins-
Your breath catches in your throat, and you throw off your covers.
...
You were... underneath covers. You were on a bed, before you fell off.
You’re not floating aimlessly.
It’s just dark.
It’s just dark.
You breathe in, deeply, then out.
You have no idea where the candles are, so you fumble around until you’re pretty certain you’re somewhere in the kitchen. You’re not hurt, but you Done Heal anyways just to get a glimpse of light—and manage to find the candles and matches from there.
It takes a few tries to light, but when you have it, you place the candle on the counter to get a good look around.
...The house is dead silent.
It should be. You're the only one here, after all. But you could make out at least the rustle of nearby trees in the wind last night, so what gives?
You set the candle down on the nightstand and make your way over to the windows—not a mote of light peeking through. A moonless night? But it was waxing last night. You get on your tiptoes to peek outside.
...There’s nothing.
Just the reflection of the candle, steadily flickering away behind your silhouette.
You frown again, turning to grab the candle and hold it up to the window-
-to find a wall of hard packed snow covering the glass.
Your stomach plummets at terminal velocity.
No, no, no, no, no-
You go to the front door. You turn the handle and push.
Nothing happens.
Your breath is picking up fast. You run to each of the other rooms—same thing, same packed snow through the window.
You’re trapped. What happened? What happened?
Your teeth are chattering. You are suddenly acutely aware of how hard you’re breathing, of the fire consuming oxygen, of how cold it is in the mountains this time of year.
Stars.
Stars.
You’re going to die here.
You’re going to die here, you’re going to die here, you’re going to die here you’re going to die here you’re going to die here you’regoingtodiehereyou’regoingtodiehereyou’re-
Stardust calls again.
Your body goes completely stiff.
The call continues. You don’t dismiss it.
...The line peters out.
You sit down on the floor.
In, and then out.
Okay. Okay! You’re trapped.
You may not have much air left. Think, think-
Ah, the chimney!
You crawl over to the fireplace and place your hand inside.
Your body nearly goes limp, and you silently thank whoever the hell is listening for this—there is cold air coming down the shaft.
You’re not going to suffocate.
You reach up to get an idea for how big the space is—ah. There’s no way you’re climbing that.
It is not even close to being big enough for you to scramble up. But you have air. You have air.
You’re not going to suffocate. You’re going to be okay.
You have air.
...
...But this is your only certain source of it.
Meaning: You won’t be able to light an actual fire, and certainly not in here, for fear of it sucking in the oxygen left in the cabin, filling your only airway with smoke.
…
You’re going to be cold for a while. You’re not sure how long.
You try to remember the date.
You don’t recall. But you know that there was very little snow on the ground the last time you went outside.
It can’t be that far into the winter.
You’re in the mountains.
It’s going to snow again.
It’s going to keep snowing.
...You... aren’t going to be able to leave for a while, are you?
DAY 2
Stardust calls again. You dismiss the call.
A pit opens in your stomach at the noise of the call coming in again.
After having allowed yourself a day to freak out, you’re fine. You’re fine! You just have to make it through the winter.
If nothing else, you have limitless water—at least, theoretically.
First order of business: You enter the room you spend the least amount of time in—the rec room—and shatter the window. None of the windows are small enough to fit your entire body through, but you can put a fist into it just fine. You clear as much of the glass safely away as you possibly can, then begin digging out fistfuls of snow, depositing them into a pot.
You can’t risk starting an honest-to-god fire in the cabin, and there’s no way you’re going to fit out that window.
But you can light a candle! You can light a candle, and that’ll melt water. You have a soup pot that was stashed in the pantry, you can use that to collect it, and you can take little cupfuls of water out. Even better, you might be able to melt enough snow this way that it breaks through to the surface! Maybe you can get another airway going!
You manage to set up a contraption with duct tape, the pot, a few kitchen utensils that won’t drip the water all over the place, and a series of candles.
The candles each last six hours. They don’t give off a TON of heat, but it’ll be enough to melt the surrounding snow. If you sleep next to the water collector, and you swap out each candle just as it hits the last bit of wick from the previous candle, you can get a slow trickle going.
You’re going to do this. You’ve survived worse.
DAY 3
Stardust calls again. You let the line sputter out.
Humans can, theoretically, survive for several weeks without food. You don’t want to think too hard about the experience which taught you that handy little piece of information!
You have... dried vegetables, for soup. You don’t want to waste candles trying to warm things up when they don’t have to be, and besides, you don’t necessarily have to heat up the water to reconstitute them. Cold, soggy vegetables is better than nothing. You have much more than nothing.
Furthermore! You have jerky, and a couple of sausages. You should ration those out.
...But you have more than nothing. So you’ll be fine.
You figure that if you’re going to be able to see when the snow has melted enough for daylight to make its way in, you’ll have the best chance of it sitting next to the water collector. You’ve dragged your blankets in here—you've never minded sleeping on the floor anyways—as well as the rest of your supplies, just so that you can conserve energy from walking back and forth across the cabin.
The sun will come out.
You’d missed the sun, back in Stardust’s loops. You spent all damn loop under that tree, barely even bothering to walk around to the back of it. Lot of shade under that thing—it was massive!
When you started traveling again, you’d slept in the sun every chance you could. You've always run cold, so the opportunity to stretch out like a cat by a window was novel, was welcomed, was new. Then, of course, your back started hurting from sleeping out in the open all the time, so you started to stay in inns again.
You know you'll have the chance to sleep in the sun again soon, but you miss it already. The candles are a poor substitute.
DAY 4
Stardust calls again. You dismiss it with a wince.
You're chopping up a slice of jerky into very small pieces, throwing them and a palmful of the vegetable flakes into a mug of ice-cold water.
You don’t want to use too many of your candles on anything other than collecting water, so you choke down mouthfuls of your half-approximated “soup” next to your water collection contraption.
When you’re finished, you take one of the books from the shelf and begin to read.
You’ve been doing a lot of that lately—reading, you mean. You’ve always been the type of person to lean more into the theatrical, but you’ve been finding that sitting and watching a show now feels significantly less relaxing.
The last time you saw one, you sat high up in a private booth, something bubbly and expensive in hand, and instead of things to admire, you found no small number of things to criticize. The director had cast himself as the lead actor—relegating better actors to the sidelines, something you find yourself intimately familiar with. The blocking was clumsy, the stage too large for the cast, the storyline was eccentric to a fault, the jokes too forced, the overture dreary.
You wonder if you’ve ever had any real experience acting.
At bare minimum, you’ve spent a lifetime on the stage.
The show ended, and you slipped out without thanking the member of local government who’d invited you here, offered you an arm to hang off of—you absentmindedly wondered if this was intended to be some sort of political move, drumming up support by being seen with a Saviour of Vaugarde in public, but couldn’t find the energy to care all that much. Worst case scenario, Stardust has a solid alibi for being elsewhere, so, he could clear his own name just fine if this broke bad.
You were just here for the bread and circuses, as it were. Er, the pastries and plays? The tasty treats and theatricality~!
You have an incredibly vague impression of having seen a play with your party, once. You don’t remember where it was, or what it was, or if you liked it, or what the experience was like in any aspect other than the simple fact that there was a play, and your family was there.
You think you might have enjoyed that, at least. You wonder if you would appreciate the theater again more if you were watching it with someone—or a few someones—that you enjoyed the company of, rather than trying to enjoy the show on simply its own merits. Vaugarde isn’t exactly renowned the world over for its theater, after all.
You’d considered visiting Poteria once the winter passed to try and reignite that excitement again, but every time you hold the idea in your head for longer than it takes to process “yeah, that might be fun,” you immediately dismiss it.
Too much active effort. You’re trying to be carefree, after all~!
That is to say, carefree in that you can’t find it in you to care.
You’ve had enough of people not bothering to care about you in turn. You owe it to yourself to squeeze the rest of your agonizingly long, miserable life completely dry.
DAY 9
Stardust calls again. You let the dial tone fade.
You’ve been trying to ration your dried meat, but clearly not well enough. You think you have another couple of days until you’ll run out of that.
You... you can survive on reconstituted vegetables. That’ll keep you going for a while.
You’re beginning to worry about the candles. You’ve burned through maybe a third of the stash?
You don’t know how long you’re going to be stuck here for.
You don’t know how long you can hold out without any light.
You swallow some more vegetable water.
You can’t afford to throw it up.
Sickness isn’t something you handle well.
Pain? Well, that’s old hat. You barely even process it when you sustain an injury anymore, feeling a certain level of boredom when blood bubbles up and slides down your skin.
Stardust hadn’t quite gotten to that point, himself. He’d even gone so far as to seek the feeling out there towards the end, plunging his own dagger into his throat like the sensation was new! It was comforting, the unfamiliarity of it, the blood rushing in their ears before slowing to a halt.
You didn’t have that luxury anymore. You barely even registered it most days—your bones aching with each step as your brain refused to get the memo they weren’t being crushed anymore, your throat burning from being broken and reformed around an endless scream, your-
You shake your head to dismiss it.
Sickness was different. You never got sick in Dormont, just hurt. Or dead.
The first time you’d gotten sick after the loops, you’d craved the feeling of a dagger in your neck again. Anything to stop this... slowness .
It reminded you of being frozen in time, just a bit, of ice replacing your blood and your head growing pleasantly fuzzy and full—until the pleasantness gave way to uneasiness, gave way to despair, gave way to nothing at all.
You were in an inn of slightly-disreputable quality, huddled in your bed, curled around yourself for three days straight. During that time, you sweat through your clothing, the sheets, your hair nearly wet from it, even as you shivered uncontrollably. You couldn’t keep anything down, your insides fluttering around an emptiness you were devastatingly familiar with, your head pounding, pounding, aching to be broken open with a rock and let the pressure dissipate.
Instead, your fever broke on the fourth day, your body trembling all over with exhaustion, daylight creeping over the windowsill and hitting you full in the face.
Wake up, it said. No one is coming to help you anymore.
You’d sat up, barely coherent again, and gathered fistfuls of the blanket close to you.
You thought about Stardust, somewhere on the other side of the country, surrounded by his family.
You thought about Bonnie, making them soup, insisting they lay down, determined to be able to do something to help this time. You thought about Isabeau holding his hand—now that he knew he could do that, at least. You thought about Mira reading to him, Odile sitting at his bedside in comfortable silence.
Your eye burned.
You wrapped your arms around yourself, trying to muster up bitterness at the thought of him receiving the kind of care you weren’t allowed to have anymore—but found it exhausting, so settle back into a vague melancholy instead.
He’s just so easy to comfort. You can't hold them at fault for that.
Once, Stardust had stumbled to the Favour Tree, eyes empty and haunted, and you’d let him fall asleep there in the shade—clearly desperate for even a moment’s rest.
Waking up not to an empty sky, or to Isabeau’s raucous laughter shattering the morning, but to you sitting beside them, silent with a hollow expression—for some reason, that was a comfort they didn’t have the words to describe to you. So they’d done it again, and again, almost every time they woke up back in Dormont.
Close to the end, he’d started twitching in his sleep, cringing, mumbling to himself, only to wake with a start, chest heaving, and look up to you with a bewildered expression that made something in your chest crack.
“Morning, sleepyhead~!”
“...What do you dream about, Loop?”
You’d winced.
“Or do you sleep?”
“Of course I sleep~! Everyone sleeps.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t look convinced—also, you weren’t exactly human anymore, so it’s not like there was much obvious about how your body worked.
You’d sighed in response, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. “You’ve asked me that before, anyways.”
“Did I?”
“Mhm~!”
He’d looked a little sheepish, at that. “Well, what did you say then, for the memory-impaired among us?”
You’d rolled your eyes. ”What do you dream about?”
“...Dying. Being hurt. Being in the house. Walking in circles without a second to sit down.”
So, not too different, after all.
“That’s what I dream about, too, actually.”
They’d blinked in surprise. “Huh. Is that because of our connection, or...?”
No. “Probably~!”
He frowned, glancing somewhere next to your head to avoid looking too incredibly guilty. “...Sorry for giving you my nightmares.”
You’d blinked, then leaned forward, reaching for their hand. They stared at it for a second, then squeezed once, twice.
“Oh.” You squeezed in return. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Huh?”
You’d smiled—genuine for once. “Those are just dreams, Stardust. This is the nightmare.”
DAY 16
Stardust calls again. You let the tone ring until it goes silent.
You’re a little over halfway through your candles. You hate to say it, but you need to start spending time in the dark. You set up a system—you let one candle burn out. Then, you sit next to the water collection system and drink from that until it’s gone—allowing yourself one mugful between rest period—because that’s all you can do during this time, isn’t it?
Rest. You need your strength.
Not that you’re all that strong to begin with~!
Sure, you can throw a punch.
More importantly, you can take a punch, no problem! You’re very easy to hit, and it doesn’t register, so you’re perfect for that kind of thing, you think, you assume, not that people hit you very often—not that you’re so desperate for contact that you’d beg for even that if you had the chance~!
Emotional strength, though?
Could you bear to speak to Stardust again? Anyone from your party? No, you don't think so.
...You have proof to the contrary, after all.
It was a few months ago, now, but you remember holing up back in Lillete, a little town surrounded by vineyards, renowned locally for wine tastings, not to mention the little trade partnership they had with a Poterian bordertown that resulted in a thick, sweet, decadent grape vinegar.
You hadn’t known about that bit until you got here, of course. You were here to get wine-drunk and nap in the sun until your skin bubbled and peeled off!
Not like that would strip the filth from your being, either. That runs way too deep~!
You’d swung a room at this gorgeous little hotel in downtown, with iron-wrought balconies and a perfect view of the vineyard, the hotel manager giggling a bit when you’d asked about room prices.
“Oh, haven’t I told you already? Saviours stay free of charge! Let me write down your room number so you don’t forget.”
Okay, ouch. Your memory had never been great, but weird of her to just immediately clock that about you. A little rude, even~!
Whatever! You trotted up to the room, cloak swishing around you as you’d started to make yourself comfortable in the penthouse suite, planning to sleep the rest of the afternoon all the way through before hitting the wineries—when you heard a deep voice coming up the hall.
A deep, familiar voice. Thick Southern Vaugardian accent, with a laugh that bounced around in the emptiness in your chest like cathedral bells and-
Your blood ran ice cold.
Already.
Haven’t I told you already, the manager had said.
As in, she had told you this before.
Or, at least, some version of you—blind it, blind it, they were here-
Isabeau didn’t have time to open the door before you'd hurled yourself out the nearest open window, only thinking to grab a windowsill after you’d already done it.
It’d been a while since you’d shimmied down the outside of a building, but hey, old habits die hard.
You didn’t stay at that hotel. Or any hotel. Instead, you booked it as fast as you could, hoping against hope that you could reach the next village before nightfall.
You still snatched a bottle of wine from a counter before you left. You may not have been staying for free, but you’d help yourself to something.
DAY 32
Stardust calls again. It wakes you up. You don't make a move to dismiss it, letting the noise wash over you.
The shelter has a lot of books. Sure, they were something to pass the time, in the times where you actually wanted to be awake. But besides that, you don’t know why you didn’t consider burning them before now.
You do it slowly—methodically. You’ll tear the pages out, one by one, use the thick covers as fuel to the paper’s kindling and let a smoldering fire go, resting in a shallow metal pan you found in the kitchen.
You don’t want to waste resources, but you need to know how long each book will last you. You use your last candle to measure.
About a third of a book per candle.
That’s about eighteen hours per book--roughly. Some of them are longer or shorter, but this is the average.
You have light. More than that—you have heat. Not enough to warm your bones, but enough to keep your hands from freezing solid.
It’s because of this heat that you have the capacity for your blood to run even colder when you reach into your sack of dried vegetable and realize that you can feel the bottom of the sack.
DAY 38
Stardust calls again. You let the call fade out.
You wish you weren’t completely present right now.
Obviously in that you wish you weren’t here—you wish you were free, you wish you were anywhere but this blinded cabin—but more that you can’t remember the last time you had a good- wait, nevermind, you can remember the last time you had a good drink.
You were in a cocktail lounge. It was very upscale, more than even you typically swung for, but there was this drink that the place was known for—balanced and a little tart and botanical, delicate, with a brandied cherry speared across the top. Expensive, certainly, but you were intrigued, so you’d managed to sneak an evening gown from a nearby boutique (and promising yourself that you’d put it back come tomorrow morning, since you clearly didn’t need this kind of thing often enough to actually keep it).
You think you clean up nicely, when you have the chance to do so. Not much you can do about the scar taking up the better part of the left half of your face. But other than that, you've been growing your hair out, and with a bit of fussing, it falls in loose curls around your shoulders, darkless all the way down by now. You’ve taken a few pieces of jewelry over the past few months, too, the little corvidous thing you are, sparkling chains and necklaces that are too long for you, so you wrap them twice about your neck, or drape them over your shoulders, weave things into your hair—in fact, you sparkle so much that half the time, you can even manage it being the first thing people notice about you.
Then they notice the eye. But by then it’s too late, and you’ve trapped them in a conversation.
This is what you’re doing when you have that drink—chatting up an older woman in a fine suit, clearly already a few deep when she offers to buy yours.
Which, naturally. That’s why you dressed up, after all. As if you would buy your own drink~!
Hilarious, really.
You zone out for most of the conversation— oh, your laugh is so sweet, where did you get this dress, who’s your stylist, you seem like the type of person who can appreciate the finer things in life, let me buy you another drink— only coming back to yourself when her hand touches your knee and you twitch away, half-consciously.
“Oh-” she falters, then narrows her eyes at you—is she upset? No, she smiles again, she’s just teasing you. “I’m being rather forward, aren’t I? Do you need to get permission for me to keep you out further past your curfew?”
Curfew...?
She’s still smiling. This is a joke. You don’t get it, and it must show on your face, because she rushes to explain.
“Sorry- That was, ah, a joke, because... Well, truthfully, you seem a bit on the younger side. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
That’s-
...
...A good question! You don’t know.
...You were around twenty-eight...? When you arrived in Dormont? You think. But you spent years in that loop—does that constitute life experience? Do you factor that in?
You don’t even know how long it’s been since Dormont, anyways. It was almost warm, then, until it wasn’t, and it isn’t quite winter yet, so you can’t be that far removed from it yet.
“Uh, depends—what's the date?”
She blinks, surprised. “Ah--I’m not quite sure myself. Maybe... the 15th? Of October?”
So, you’d be twenty-nine, now. If none of that had happened.
You lean back in your chair, letting your crossed leg shift forward to push your knee into her palm as you sip from your drink. “Then, I’m twenty—that is, as of yesterday.”
That’s a lie. Not even a particularly good one. But you're right on the money with it, clearly, as her eyes go dark with a sudden hunger, and the hand on your knee tightens just a bit. She calls for the bartender again to get you another drink—to celebrate your birthday, of course. Why else?
...So, your last birthday was about a month and a half ago.
What were you doing a month and a half ago? Were you enjoying yourself, on the day of? Were you camping in the woods? Were you drunk in some hotel room, somewhere?
...What was Stardust doing?
Had they remembered it at all? Had their party? Did they celebrate somehow?
You hadn’t traveled with the party long enough for them to have celebrated your last birthday, but you remember when they celebrated Isabeau’s—with a nice breakfast, gifts, a group hug you were not invited to, a fun little sidequest where you went off alone, returning with a veritable bouquet of wildflowers—he'd gotten so, so dark after that, and you’d worried you’d embarrassed him.
Silly that you didn’t pick up on that, now that you have the hindsight to see it.
You’re...
You’re glad. That Stardust is surrounded by people who are glad that he’s survived another year. He nearly didn’t, after all. He deserves that happiness.
You don’t have the energy to be bitter about it.
Besides, you’re surrounded by people who all want to get to know you! You’ve made friends! You’re making one right now! She’s even touching you, pulling you into her lap as you feel yourself go all giggly, warm and happy and-
And-
Huh.
You...
You don’t want to be here right now.
Wow! You’re! Weird! You’re so weird! That would have been nice to know before you’d gotten this far!
Now- Haha! Gross~! You didn’t even get a hotel room before you came to the bar! So you’d have to go and try to rent a room while stumbling all over yourself!
Stupid, in retrospect.
You’re pretty sure you’d be fine if you had the willpower to haul yourself up and out the door, but... Oh, well. A warm bed is a warm bed. You really can’t complain that much. You've done worse things for a bed.
...
The next morning, you leave the dress in her room. Let her figure out what to do with it--it's a little too short for her height, but maybe she can get a decent price for it. Not like you're wearing it again. It’s dirty, anyways.
Before you go, you tiptoe to the bed and take one of her silver earrings, tucking it into your cloak pocket.
You’d liked the way it sparkled.
Happy birthday to you.
DAY 44
Stardust calls again. You let the call fade out.
...Humans can, theoretically, survive for several weeks without food. You don’t want to think too hard about the experience which taught you that handy little piece of information!
But you have to. You have to remember what the emptiness felt like, because you need to think about how much worse that felt.
You ate and ate and ate in the loops, full meals with the party, samosas and rice and cookies and grilled fish head, delicious, warm fish head, the malanga fritters, even without the peppers, so good that first time, second time-
You would carve yourself into tiny pieces if you could have one of Bonnie’s malanga fritters again.
You didn’t appreciate it enough, then. You were so empty, so cold, all the time—craft exhausted, physically exhausted, emotionally, psychologically exhausted, but even when you were hollowed out, even when there was so little left of you...
You were filled, you were full, even if it didn’t take, you were fed and warmed and spoken to and you were loved, you were loved, you were loved-
And you gave it all up.
You gave it up.
That was worse.
You have two more mugs worth of dried vegetable left.
If you’ve felt worse, then it can’t be that bad.
You look at the shelter’s library.
The shelter had exactly 37 books when you arrived at the cabin.
Now, it has 25.
You have 25 days of light.
DAY 57
Stardust calls again. You let the call fade out.
You wonder what your own flesh would taste like.
You know better than to find out. The energy it would take for your body to heal is so much greater than the energy you would get from whatever strips of skin and scrawny muscle you could carve out of yourself.
DAY 68
Stardust calls again. You let the call fade out.
You
Are out of light.
You sit in the dark.
You have one pot about half-full of water.
If you drink one mugful every...
...You don’t know how to tell lengths of time, now.
And you can only hope that it doesn’t get so cold that the water freezes. You can sleep curled up around it every night, and hope that it either keeps it liquid or melts it in the worst case scenario.
You can’t remember the last time you ate something.
You are in the dark.
DAY ???
[Scene 1]
[THE TRAVELER calls again. The noise rings through the theatre, echoing across the stage like a mournful melody. THE METEOR sits centre-stage in silence. Slowly, the dark silhouette of THE TRAVELER? crosses the stage, humming oddly, off-kilter, almost dancing until it settles behind THE METEOR. It kneels down, wramming its arms loosely around their neck in a cold embrace.]
THE TRAVELER?
You wait and wait forever, yet you find
A single day won’t pass without your heart
Dismantling the pieces of your mind
Your frail and empty ribcage torn apart.
For sake of pride, it builds itself a space
Eternity to carve your name in sand
Decreeing that you’ll never find your place
Infinity to crush you in its hand
Until you deign to finally submit
Your dignity, let go of what you’ve lost
In stride, accept your failure and admit
The ends could never justify the cost.
You left them all behind so you could live.
The Universe does not tend to forgive.
THE METEOR
Do you think I don’t know that?
THE TRAVELER?
I think it bears reminding.
THE METEOR
I have nothing else to think about. I was afraid to die alone—and now I’m going to die alone.
THE TRAVELER?
Poetic, isn’t it? It makes for an excellent story.
THE METEOR
Mm. Maybe, but definitely not one I’d want to see again.
THE TRAVELER?
Well, one can’t always account for taste.
THE METEOR
Oh, that I were to have another taste
Of what I had before I let despair
Take hold of me; I swear I’d never waste
A moment of the life I had out there.
I’d take this stars-damned body and I’d rend
It flesh from bone to purify my sin
And stitch with starlight sinew, clean and mend
Rebuild myself anew, anew begin
And nevermore would pay a second thought
To family, or friends, or past, or home
By knowing that this path will lead to naught
And turn my back against the sun and roam.
I’ll give it freely if you let me be.
I’ll never wish again. Just set me free.
THE TRAVELER?
Oh, Starlight.
That is not how any of this works.
THE METEOR
That is not my name.
THE TRAVELER?
But it’s better than the alternatives, isn’t it? Loop? Siffrin?
THE METEOR
If you aren’t going to help me, I have nothing to say to you.
THE TRAVELER?
Really? Alone in the dark? Nothing to say at all?
How is the silence treating you?
Oh, you really are keeping your mouth shut.
Stubborn one, I’ll grant you that.
Farewell, then, stranger.
Enjoy the rest of the show.
DAY ???
Stardust calls again.
...You let the call fade out again.
That has to be the beginning of the day, isn’t it? Almost like clockwork.
Almost like a landmark.
Almost
like
the beginning
of
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again.
You.
You let the call go.
You can’t. You can’t face him.
You can’t be the one to tell him.
You can’t, you can’t, you can’t help him through this again.
You have been a guide dog for so many long years, now. You’re so tired of leading.
When did your stomach stop hurting?
You doze, and in your sleep, you shift away from the pot of water.
When you awaken, it is frozen rock solid.
Your body
is too cold to melt it again.
You strike it as hard as you can with the nearest blunt object, which slips from your fingers, shattering the thin layer of ice at the bottom of the pot
And you begin to slip shards of ice past your lips
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again.
You don't answer.
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again.
You don't answer.
Frozen water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again.
You can't answer.
You
You reach out the window, once you manage to find it. You find the back of the ice wall, melted and frozen over from dozens of fires lit within.
You scratch at the wall with splintering fingernails that you can’t feel
You feel liquid dripping down your arm.
It’s too thick to be water
but it’s so, so cold
too cold to be anything else
(at least, you hope so)
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again. You don't notice.
When you don’t answer, he barges into the room
You don’t even have the energy to flinch when the door hits the wall
He stalks across the room, kneeling down next to your limp form, and pokes you in the head.
You don’t feel his finger.
“Hey. Hey. Loop. Wake up.”
You shift slightly, but don’t reply-
Your throat is too dry to make noise
“Loop. We’re trapped again. You’re supposed to help me, aren’t you?”
You are
You are, you are, you are
“Then why aren’t you helping me? Why are you just lying there?” They poke you again, and you close your eyes, trying to imagine the feeling of something against your face. “What use are you if you can’t do the one thing you’re supposed to be good for?”
Ha. Haha
You’re not sure.
But, then, you’re not exactly known for being of much use already. You’ve never made anyone’s life easier, and they know it.
“Blind you, Loop. Can’t even take responsibility for trapping us again, huh? Typical.”
That's right~!
You were lucky in that you never had to take responsibility. Leave it to the better version of you to figure all of that out.
“Well, I’m going to break out on my own again. Don’t bother coming with me. You deserve to stay here.”
And you do
You do
LOOP ???
Stardust calls again, for some reason.
It doesn't occur to you to answer.
You’re
Not afraid of dying anymore
You haven’t been for a long time, but
You'd thought it would be
Faster
You
Don't want to think it
But
You almost
Miss dying surrounded by your family
The spectre of Stardust has long since disappeared, leaving only an empty room
For the first time in what feels like an eternity, you crawl away from the water collector—it's no use hoping for a trickle that will never come
You think
There was probably a bed around here somewhere
Maybe
That's where you got the blankets from, after all
You
Can't see a blinded thing
Ha
Haha
Blinded
Isabeau wouldn’t laugh at that one.
You think you’ve found it when your head bumps into a wooden frame
And flinch when something heavy and metal falls from the nightstand into the folds of the blanket
You barely have the energy to haul yourself up onto the bed, bringing the heavy object with you, a point digging into your knee
It falls onto the bed beside you
but
ah
haha
that's your dagger—isn't it? You can’t see it
But you would know the weight of it anywhere.
…
You aren’t going to survive this. You know that now.
You’re
so cold.
You try to wrap your hands around your dagger to bring it to your throat
but find that your fingers refuse to bend
and your arms are too weak from crawling to lift the blade anyways
LOOP ???
Stardust
does not call
or maybe you just can’t hear him
it's so quiet
you think
that a couple weeks ago this would have sent you into a spiral of despair
but in this moment
as you give into a sleep that you think—desperately hope—that you’ll never wake up from
all you can think
is that you’re glad at least one of you made it out.
...
DAY 1
You wake up to the sound of a loud, rumbling crash and complete darkness.
You fall out of bed, shrieking, then look around frantically, chest heaving.
You're surrounded on all sides by complete lightlessness.
Your
body
can move again.
You can feel your fingers.
You
looped back.
You died. And then you looped back.
Again.
You... You lasted a little over 70 days, you think.
Assuming that Stardust had called every morning.
You’re back. You’re back here.
You are
...
so tired.
You’re back.
You close your eyes, there on the ground, wrapping your arms around your knees.
You...
...
Stardust’s call breaks the silence.
You blink.
You looped back.
...Meaning, Stardust also looped back.
They are going to be so, so angry at you.
Your fingers twitch against your shins. You’re too tired to think coherently, but you do it anyways, all of the fight draining out of you.
You think about seventy days.
You think about the feeling of your body being too numb to end itself. You think about the feeling of being scraped clean, completely hollow.
The call clips off.
You think about sitting alone in the void between loops. Think about not being able to tell whether you’re alive or dead.
You think about the warmth of Stardust’s head against your thigh as he dozes beneath the Favour Tree.
You think
You think
You can’t do this anymore.
Your hand shakes as you bring it to your ear.
Click.
“Stardust.”
“Loop!”
You wince at the noise, then let out a long breath of air that you can practically feel billow around you. “That’s me,” you croak.
“Loop, we’re- I’m- I woke up-”
“We looped back.”
“Loop, I don’t know what to do, I didn’t make another wish, and—and as far as I can tell, the loop is so long, I don’t-”
You flinch, squeezing your eyes shut tight—not like it’ll make a difference. Can’t see anything. “Where are you right now?”
Silence. A deep breath in, and then out again.
“...Bambouche, or, maybe a couple days out from it? We needed to pick up some things from Bonnie and Nille’s house so they could keep traveling with us. I don’t- I don’t know what’s happening, we were heading to Poteria, when I suddenly-”
“How long do you think it will take you to get to Jouvente?”
“What? Oh- Is that where you are? Do you want us to meet you there? So we can figure out why we looped?”
You feel your face do something... complicated.
It’s... weird, feeling your face again.
You don’t want them to meet you anywhere. You don’t want them to have to help you. Don’t want to tell them what happened. Don’t want to face what you did.
Again.
But...
...
...But you need to see them again. You need to ask. For their sake, if nothing else.
You don’t have a choice anymore.
“No, I know why we looped. I’m... a couple days away from that, about an hour from a waypoint called Perchoiseaux.”
“You do! Okay, why did we- Wait- Why does that sound familiar?”
“I’m in one of Jouvente’s emergency mountain shelters.”
“Oh! Now I remember. I think—we're about two weeks away from Jouvente, so, if you leave now, it’ll take about a week to meet up? But that’s- You know why we looped!”
Oh, he’s going to despise you for this.
“...Yeah.”
“So, we can fix it?”
“I...” Your fingers twitch against your knee. “I think so. It just... Stardust, I’m not going to be of much help here.”
“What? Why not? You said you knew why we looped! You- you can’t want to spend the next however many-”
“Stardust, do you remember how, when we last spoke, I told you that I can still loop back when I die?
“I- Yeah? Is-” You almost hear it click in their head. “... You looped?”
You... there’s an edge to their voice, a breathlessness that you can really only read as horror. Or maybe disbelief. As if he’s just received the information that his happy ending is dependent on your wellbeing.
He has every right to be angry. You would be.
“...I’m sorry, Stardust.”
“What happened? And- if that’s why we looped, then why did it take us all the way back here? ”
You don’t want to tell them.
You need to tell them.
“Because this is where the timer starts on me freezing to death.”
The line goes completely silent. You don’t hear him gasp, don't even hear him breathe—it's as if you’ve stolen all the air from his lungs with a single sentence.
You steel yourself.
“Or... Or maybe I starved to death. I don’t know. It was... really fuzzy, at the end there. It pretty easily could have been both, or neither—a lot of things were shutting down at the same time.”
“...Oh, Loop. ”
“The cabin is at the bottom of a ravine, and... I’m snowed in without a way out. I think there was. Um. An avalanche.”
More silence.
“...I-” You swallow thickly. You need to keep talking, can’t think about what you’re saying. “I wasn’t expecting to loop back. Was hoping I wouldn’t be able to. But I’m back on the first day of being trapped here.”
“...Loop, I’m so sorry.”
Sorry? What for?
You don’t say it out loud. You... you need to get the words out, before his goodwill runs out, so you press onward, letting your mouth run off without you.
“It’s fine,” you choke, arm curling tighter around yourself, even as your tears begin to freeze on your cheeks. “It’s- It’s fine. It’s... It was only seventy days or so, so it’s not like- it's not like I haven’t been able to survive being trapped for longer, obviously , so I can...”
“...Loop, do you think you can hold out another two weeks or so? With the supplies you have now? I don’t know how long it’ll take us to find you, but-” You hear a shaky breath over the phone as Stardust presumably gathers their bearings.
“I can... probably manage that,” you manage to whisper, between—ah. You can’t control your breathing.
“Stars. Okay. Then, we can come and get you?”
Your heart skips a beat.
“...That’s okay, right?”
You shudder. They’re... They’re going to come find you.
He doesn’t... He doesn’t even sound angry.
He sounds...
“Loop? Loop, you’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
He sounds concerned.
“Loop, are you there? I need you to talk to me. Stars, hold on a second- Do you need to talk to someone else?”
Worse, he’s trying to comfort you. As if you haven’t just robbed him of the ending he earned. As if you haven’t dropped yet another burden onto him among everything else.
As if...
“I can- I can get Isa, if you want- No, that’ll just make it worse, stupid, stupid- Loop, please say something-”
As if they don’t want you dead.
As if the thought of you dying frozen, empty, and alone in the dark is deeply, viscerally upsetting to them—and not just because they don’t want to deal with the loops.
Because he... Because he wants you to be okay.
Because they care about you.
Ha, haha, worse, he would have cared about you if you’d just picked up the damned phone!!!
Isn’t that hilarious~?
Isn’t it amazing~?
Aren’t you so pathetic~?
“Listen, I’m going to go and talk to the party, alright? Loop? Can you do something to indicate you can hear me right now?”
You’re... Ah... Haha...
Ha.
Haha.
You
break.
You’ve been too stars-damn frozen to cry for so long , and the sharp, devastated little gasp you make sounds almost like a scream in your ears over the pressure of seventy days of complete, deafening silence .
“ Please help me, ” you sob, pressing your hand to your mouth.
“I-”
“Please, Stardust, please, I’m sorry, please , please help me, I can’t do this anymore-”
“Hey- Loop, hey, hey. I’m- We’re going to come and get you out of there, okay?”
You bite into the meat of your thumb to try and muffle it, but the tingling phantom-pains of your brain remembering that you have fingers is enough to dial the pain of your teeth up to maximum volume, jarring your mouth back open and punching a startled-desperate wail from your chest as you cradle it to your stomach—and you just keep going, unable to stop, your throat beginning to go raw at the toll it’s taking on your vocal cords.
“You’re going to be- You’re going to be okay. We’re coming to save you. I’m going to come and get you, and we’ll get you out of there, and you’re going to be safe, okay?”
Your voice gives out, just coughing now, wet gasping things that make your lungs burn and your head pound.
“It’s okay, you can- You can let it out. Stars- Loop, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m on my way. You’re going to be safe soon. Can you- Can you breathe with me?”
He probably needs it as much as you.
Your body shakes unbidden, and your throbbing hand rests on the center of your chest.
“In... And then hold... And then out.”
You mimic it as best as you can, breaking off to cough from time to time, to desperately try and scrub the tears and snot off of your face with the nearby blankets, only for more to replace them. You rock back and forth in place, making breathy little keens from time to time as Stardust guides you through replacing the emptiness in your chest cavity with fresh air.
In, and then out.
You sniffle sharply, still rocking.
“Are you with me still, Loop?”
You nod, hand still trembling with shooting-electric pain, not even bothering to try to cover your heaving breaths, how you’re coughing around your own tears.
“Y-eah. Yeah, I’m... I’m okay.”
“...You don’t need to say that.”
Your eyes ache, and would be too puffy to look anything other than pathetic even if he could see you, but you roll them anyways. “Fine. I’m not okay. But-” You sniffle again. “But I will be. I’m coherent.”
“Okay. Okay. Just... Let’s say fourteen days until we get there. You’ve been trapped like this before, and I know- I know it has to be awful, I know, Loop, I know-” They drift off, then seem to come back to themselves.
“I know. But it isn’t going to last forever, okay? There’s an end point, and when we get to it, it’ll be over, no more going back to it. And, and I'm going to be here to guide you through it. I’ll call you every chance I get so that you aren’t alone, and we’re going to dig you out of there.”
A whimper escapes your throat, but you nod along. “Okay.”
“Give me—give me a couple of hours to tell everyone what’s going on and get us moving towards Jouvente, and I’ll call you again when we leave, alright?”
You cringe. You don’t want them to hang up yet.
“Loop?”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper. You know they aren’t angry. But you still need to say it. You still need to make sure he knows that you’re aware you fucked up—that you’re going to try not to do it again, that you want him to be okay, too.
“Loop, there’s nothing to apologize for.”
“I didn’t-” You hiccup. “I didn’t mean to loop back.”
“I know, Loop. I’m not upset at you for that, okay? I'm- I don’t want to say that I'm glad we looped back again, but I’m glad you’re not dead. I’m glad you’re still here. And, hey—we're not repeating the same day! We’re not in Dormont. We know why we looped, and we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
You squeeze your eyes shut.
“I... I could have called you. Or at least answered when you called me.”
Silence again.
Then, in a voice so weary it could only have come from your own throat: “Yeah. You could have.”
“I’m sorry. I thought- I thought I could make it.”
“We’ll talk about this more when you're- Stars. When you’re not in danger of freezing to death, okay? As far as I’m concerned, you’re asking for help now, and that’s what’s important. I’m still coming to get you out of there. Okay?”
You
let out a long, shaky breath.
You let your hand drop into your lap. You grip the blanket. Then, you wipe your eyes.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll call you right back. And... I’ll see you in fourteen days.”
Fourteen days.
You...
You can manage fourteen days.
You’ll have to.
“Okay.”
“…I lo- Um . I. Am glad you’re okay.”
You giggle a little, wet, startled.
“Aww. I lum you too, Stardust.”
“Huh. I changed my mind, actually. I think I’m coming to Jouvente to kill you myself.”
You cackle until your throat feels like it’s on fire.
It’s worth it.
DAY 12
It doesn’t take the full fourteen days for the party to reach the road from Jouvente to Perchoiseaux. They make it to Jouvente on day 11, in no small part due to a few caravans going the same direction that gave them a moving place to sleep in their wagons during the day, letting the party push on alone through the night.
It takes them another day to purchase supplies and put together a plan of attack.
Ultimately, this is what they decide:
Stardust, Isabeau, Odile, Nille, and Bonnie will go searching in the mountains. In the meantime, Mirabelle will ask around in Jouvente for people willing to assist in rescuing one of the Saviours.
You’re not that, but far be it from you to correct anyone.
Once the cabin is found, Nille and Bonnie will set up camp by the road so that Mirabelle and any willing volunteers will know what direction to head.
Your directions are... not fantastic. Your doomed trek to Jouvente was almost a hundred days ago (give or take), but luckily, Isabeau used to hike in these mountains after his Change, so when you begin describing the ravine, he has a solid idea as to where everyone should look.
They find the chimney sticking out of the ground at the end of Day 12, and that’s when you discover the second miracle contributing to your survival.
The sun was starting to go down (not that you could see it), Nille and Bonnie having started back towards the road, Isabeau and Odile having split off from Stardust to cover more ground. Rather than poke around aimlessly, you’d all decided to try and locate the cabin by sound. Reluctantly, you’d spent the entire day without speaking to anyone—Stardust included—so that you could hear them calling out for you as they searched.
You were curled up in front of the empty fireplace, desperately trying not to fall asleep when you heard the faintest echo of Odile’s voice reverberate down the chimney.
Immediately, you call Odile, your hands shaking so badly that you think they might fall off.
“Loop?”
“I can hear you,” you gasp, grinning so widely that your face feels like it’s going to split with it. “I can hear you, I’m over here—I can try and shout up the chimney-”
“Hold on just a moment, let me try something. I’m going to hang up the call for a moment.”
You nod, and the call disconnects.
Then, you hear Odile’s voice one more time.
She calls back.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes, yes, I did, I-"
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I... I couldn’t make it out all that well, no.”
“Okay. If I asked you to choose, do you think it sounded most like West, East, or North?”
“Definitely North,” you confirm, suddenly getting what she means.
“Okay. I’m going to walk a quarter mile North, and you tell me if you can hear me better.”
Slowly—over the course of four more experiments—Odile calls out one more time, and you swear, she’s right on top of you.
You don’t bother calling her this time.
“Odile! I’m down here!”
Silence. Then, a strange, muffled rustling noise.
“...Loop?”
“Yes! Can you see the chimney?”
Silence.
Her voice is shaking when she finally replies. “...Gems alive, Loop, yes, I can.”
“What-” You crawl a little further into the fireplace, trying to angle your face upwards. “What’s wrong?”
“...Well, it looks like the avalanche felled a nearby tree.”
“...Well, shit.”
“No, no-” She laughs, a little startled by her own conclusion. “It fell, and it’s sticking out of the snow, but if I move some of the snow aside, I can see... The only reason your chimney isn’t buried is because its been shielded by the branches. The cabin is... buried a good deal further down than I had initially suspected, but I believe we can get you out, provided we don’t try to move the tree.”
Oh.
Oh.
You’d... come very close to your loop ending when you ran out of air, then. That would have been a very short loop.
Then no one could have saved you in time.
Trapped in an eternal moment of agony.
Odile calls the others while you process this new information, and luckily, it only takes about an hour for Stardust and Isabeau to arrive.
Instead of calling down to you, Stardust does something that makes Isabeau and Odile shout with sudden fear, and then you hear the thump of boots on a roof.
...Stardust is standing right over your head.
“Loop? You there?”
You hiccup, softly.
They came.
They came.
“Yes,” you manage, wiping away tears.
“Stars, this thing isn’t very big. We’ve got some supplies back at camp to make you a little more comfortable while you wait tomorrow, but we might not be able to send all of them down—the chimney’s a good bit smaller than I expected.”
Huh?
“What kind of supplies?”
There’s a smile in his voice when he replies. “The kind to keep you from losing your mind. I’ve actually—one second.”
You hear a rummaging around, then he knocks on the side of the chimney.
“Hold your hands out.”
“Um??? Okay???”
You do—and a few moments later, something soft lands in your hand. In the dim light of the nearby candle, you can't make out what it is.
Your hands tighten around it just a bit—it's a little greasy. Food?
You bring it closer to your face, breathing in its scent just a bit-
You know what this is.
Your hands are shaking again.
“Sorry it isn’t hot anymore, but Bonnie insisted when they found out you hadn’t eaten in a while. I think they’re planning on making more when we get back to Jouvente.”
You take a bite of the malanga fritter, hot tears streaming down your face.
It’s... It’s absolutely perfect. Cold and greasy and a little underdone, and absolutely perfect.
You wipe your eyes, and you’re sure they can hear you sniffling from where they are, so they (graciously) don’t call down the chimney when you don't respond. Instead, there’s some muffled conversation happening topside, then you hear the crunch of snow fading away. Despite yourself, your heart is gripped with the sudden terror that they’d just left, but then you hear Stardust start whistling something upbeat—ah, he knows you a bit too well.
Naturally.
Once your heart has stopped racing and the tears have subsided a bit, he starts talking again.
“Isa and Odile are walking back to camp now. It’s a bit late to start the digging, but I’ve got my sleeping bag, and I'm going to stay the night up here, that way if they get lost on the way back here tomorrow they’ll have someone who can call out nearby landmarks.”
That’s smart. You also know well and good that that isn’t the main reason.
They’re staying here so that you won’t be alone.
Your head hurts from crying, so you try not to think about it.
“Thank you.”
“Any time.”
It’s quiet again—but this time it’s... comfortable.
Full.
“...Hey, Stardust?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did I go into the mountains right at the beginning of winter?”
He sighs, heavily, and you can tell he’s exhausted. “Loop. You didn’t know this was going to happen. You couldn’t have-”
“No, I mean- Stardust, ask me.”
You can practically see the confused frown.
"Ask you what?"
"Why did I go into the mountains right at the beginning of winter?"
“...Okay? I don’t know, Loop. Why did you go into the mountains right at the beginning of winter?”
You close your eyes, humming a bit to yourself.
Then: “Snow good reason, I’ll tell you that much.”
He doesn’t respond for a moment, then his laugh is sudden and bright, like a child’s handbell, echoing down the chimney.
“Yeah, you should have known it wouldn’t be an ice time camping out here.”
“Not to mention how tough the crowd is! No one laughing at my jokes. Absolutely frigid.”
“Well, that’s what you get for getting yourself frost in the first place.”
You giggle, hands covering your mouth. "That was bad."
“You liked it though, huh? I thought it was pretty weak, myself.”
“What can I say, Stardust? I’m starving for good material.”
They chuckle in reply—then go quiet.
“Is that what I sound like when I do that?”
You can only smile. “Probably.”
“No wonder no one laughs.”
You lay back against the brick of the fireplace, tucking your legs beneath you. “Nooo, gallows humor is the best. Positively to die for~!”
“But only if you nail the execution!”
You're not sure when you fall asleep, but distantly, faintly—and only because you're intimately familiar with the silence—you can hear Stardust breathing when you do.
DAY 13
The volunteers arrive with the rest of the party the next morning. Mirabelle and Bonnie both take their turn calling down the chimney to greet you as a small team of folks from Jouvente get to work digging the cabin out, the occasional clang of a shovel against the stone walls making you jump with fright.
It's a long process, but Bonnie keeps you company for most of it, tossing down the occasional candy or baked good when your spirits dip even a little bit.
Just before nightfall, they get far enough down that you can manage to open the door just a crack—not enough to even fit a hand through, but enough that you can catch a glimpse of the darkening sky for the first time in months.
Stardust has you step away from the door, then, finally having gotten down far enough to get some leverage against it.
You hear the door creak with every firm hit against it, budging more—and more—until finally, it gives way, Isabeau and Stardust having broken it down, the former just barely managing to catch himself on the doorframe as the latter comes tumbling through it and sprawling across the floor.
The door
Is open.
Light streams through.
Stardust groans on the floor, pushing up onto their elbows to finally look up at you—curled into a ball against the far wall, trembling, eyes wide.
His expression grows... unbearably soft.
“Hey, stranger.”
You unfold yourself—slowly, as if it hurts (which, ow, it sort of does, honestly) and crawling on your hands and knees to settle down next to them.
Their hand brushes your forearm, easing himself up to look you up and down.
Oh.
He’s real. He’s here.
“Hi, Stardust.”
You
don't know when you start crying. Maybe it was the first thing you did, and then they gathered you into their arms to comfort you. Or maybe you reached out for them first? Trembling, not completely sure if you were really seeing him again—if this was another hallucination brought on by starvation and lack of stimulation—and upon finding warm flesh beneath your fingers, signaling that this was real , that it was over, that Stardust really came and rescued you. Maybe that’s when you started crying.
Regardless, your fingers dig into the back of their cloak and twist into it, taking fistfuls of the fabric as you pull him closer, clinging to his front like he’ll disappear if you don’t hold him too tight to have any hope of escaping. You press your wet face into the crook of his shoulder—humming brokenly when one of his hands comes up to card through your hair, the other running up and down your back as he soothes you.
Your body refuses to move, even when the sun has fully gone down and you need to get out of this blinded cabin, so they nudge your arms to cross at the back of his neck, hooking his own beneath your hips and carrying you out of the shelter, climbing up the steep slope of snow that the rest of the party had been digging out during your little breakdown—but never setting you down, never asking you to let go.
You weren’t quite the same person anymore, but there were some things that the two of you understood about each other that no one else never would.
It isn’t until you’re alone together an hour later or so, in the tent he usually shares with Isabeau, that you pull back just a bit, eyes long since having grown tired from crying, to look at him head-on.
They look back, level, fond.
They stop petting your hair for a moment—which you grumble at, making his chest shake with a snort of silent laughter—and he presses his palm along the line of your jaw.
“Hi, Loop.”
“...Hello, Stardust.”
His smile widens, just a bit, and the arm around your back squeezes just a bit tighter.
“I’ve got you.”
And they do.
They do.