Chapter 2 Vidar
Vidar
Ifeel the human before I see her. Her warmth bleeds into my domain like a wound, her life force a beacon against the perfect cold I've crafted. My storm responds without conscious command, swirling tighter, colder. Hunting.
This is the third wanderer this season. The others turned back when the wind first changed. This one pushes forward, foolish and determined. I taste her scent on the air—female, alone, afraid but not panicking. Not yet.
I move through my storm as easily as humans move through still air. Snow parts around my form, ice crystals dancing across my antlers, responding to my mood. Curious. I should let her die. It would be simple. Natural. The white takes what doesn't belong to it.
And yet.
My hooves make no sound as I approach, glamour half-formed around me. No need for full disguise—she'll be dead or gone soon. But something tugs at my attention. A rhythm not of my domain.
Her heartbeat.
Strong. Stubborn. Fighting my cold with surprising resilience.
I materialize at the edge of a ridge, observing. She kneels in the snow, a small black device in her gloved hands. Through the whiteout, I see her face clearly—concentration, not terror. Practicality, not prayer. Interesting.
Why do you not run, little human?
My storm intensifies without conscious intent. The cold sharpens to a blade's edge around her. I feel her electronic devices surrender to my frost, one by one. Still she doesn't flee, just shifts strategies. Cataloging resources. Making plans.
I should turn away. Let nature finish what I've begun. Her kind are temporary visitors in my eternal domain. Fireflies blinking in and out of existence while I remain, unchanging as the glacier beneath us.
And yet my feet carry me closer.
The wind shifts, carrying her scent directly to me. Something ancient and forgotten stirs in response. The antlers on my skull crown pulse with sudden light. Bright enough to be visible even through my storm.
A mistake. She sees me.
I freeze, halfway between forms—neither fully glamoured nor fully revealed. My true face partially visible behind the deer skull that is both a mask and me. My crystalline claws flex at my sides.
Run, human. It's not too late. Run from what you cannot understand.
She doesn't run. Instead, she raises a black box to her eye. A camera. She's photographing me? In the heart of a killing storm, at the edge of death, she seeks to capture my image?
Tetta er óvenjulegt. This is unusual.
The shutter clicks. The sound carries to me despite the howling wind. For a heartbeat, I'm curious what her mechanical eye sees. More than she does, perhaps. Cameras don't lie to themselves about impossible things.
Her arms are shaking violently now. Her lips have turned the blue of deep ice.
The cold has penetrated her core—humans her size have minutes at most in these temperatures.
I can sense her heart struggling, her breath shallow and labored.
She's dying on her feet, this strange human who chooses to capture images rather than flee.
The camera slips from her nerveless fingers, dangling from its strap as her knees buckle. Her consciousness flickers like a candle in wind as she pitches forward into the snow. Her life force dims, the cold finally claiming victory over her stubborn heat.
Decision time. Let her die in my snow, as hundreds have before her. Or intervene, breaking five centuries of solitude.
My hand—halfway between human fingers and crystalline claws—reaches toward her fallen form. The warmth of her fading life calls to something in me I thought long dead. Something that remembers purpose beyond cold and isolation.
"Koma, lítie ljós. Ekki slokkva enntá." Come, little light. Don't extinguish yet.
My voice sounds strange even to my ears—unused for decades except to speak to the wind and ice. The old language comes more naturally than the new ones.
I lift her easily. Her weight is nothing to me, though her heat burns against my skin. The mate-instinct rises unexpectedly, a hunger I haven't felt in centuries. I push it ruthlessly down. Absurd. She is prey, not mate. Food for my storm, not companion to my solitude.
And yet I cradle her with uncharacteristic gentleness, my glamour strengthening automatically to prevent my cold from finishing what my storm began. Her camera dangles from a strap around her neck. I should crush it. Instead, I ensure it doesn't fall as I begin to move.
The cabin waits a mile away. My home, though I need no shelter from the elements that are part of me. I've maintained it out of habit, out of some dim memory that I once required such things. Now it will serve a purpose again.
Snow compacts beneath my hooves as I run, swift and silent. The storm parts around us, no longer hunting her now that she's in my arms. I feel her heartbeat through her layers, struggling but persistent. Minutes matter now.
The cabin appears through the white—dark wood nearly black against the snow, windows glowing with the automatic blue light I maintain. No smoke rises from the chimney. No warmth waits inside. That will have to change if she's to survive.
I shoulder through the door, ducking my antlers through the frame. Inside, I lay her on the bed—unused for so long the furs have gathered frost despite the shelter. A fire. She needs fire.
My hands hover over the hearth, reluctance warring with necessity. Fire is my opposite, my weakness. Yet without it, she dies. Why should that matter? I don't know. But it does.
With a gesture, I summon flame, wincing as it blooms to life. Each lick of heat is a small pain against my nature. The room warms immediately, ice crystals on the windows beginning to melt. Discomfort crawls across my skin, but I ignore it.
Her clothes are wet from snow, drawing precious heat from her core. They must be removed. Another hesitation. It has been centuries since I touched a human form with anything but killing intent. The intimacy of this act feels like trespass, though survival leaves no choice.
I remove her outer layers first—the heavy coat, insulated pants, boots. Then, with clinical efficiency masking unexpected interest, the inner layers—sweater, thermal shirt, leggings. I leave her undergarments, a concession to human modesty I barely remember.
Her exposed skin glows with fading warmth, freckles scattered across her face and shoulders like stars. I wrap her in the furs, now warmed and dry from the fire's heat. Unthinking, I brush a strand of damp hair from her face. Frost forms where my fingers touch her skin, then quickly melts.
The camera. I'd forgotten. It hangs from the bedpost where I placed it while undressing her. Curious, I lift it, turning it in my hands. The device is simple enough to operate—even isolated as I am, I've observed enough of humanity's progress to understand their basic tools.
I press buttons until the display illuminates, showing the last image captured.
I freeze, transfixed.
Myself. Not as a rippling reflection in dark water or fractured in ice crystals, but clear. Defined. Real.
My antlers glow against the white backdrop, crystalline branches extending further than I realized.
The skull mask that is both my face and not my face stares back with hollow eye sockets blazing blue.
Behind it, partially visible, the features I've forgotten I possess.
In the strange stillness of the image, I look more ancient and less human than I've allowed myself to acknowledge for centuries.
Something twists inside my chest—an emotion I have no name for. To be seen like this, captured in perfect stillness... It's violating. Fascinating. Terrible.
I've avoided reflections for decades, content to exist without reminders of what I've become. Now this small human has forced me to confront my own image, trapped in her mechanical eye.
I should destroy this evidence immediately. My finger hovers over what must be the delete button, claw partially extended. One press and this moment of vulnerability ends.
Instead, I set the camera down carefully, as if it might shatter. Later. I'll deal with it later.
For now, I cannot stop seeing what she saw—not a guardian or a monster, but something ancient and powerful and utterly alone.
For now, I settle into a chair beside the bed, watching the rise and fall of her chest beneath the furs. The fire's heat is a constant irritation, but I endure it, adjusting my form to better tolerate the warmth.
Minutes stretch to hours. Outside, my storm continues to rage, but with less focus now that my attention is divided. I maintain enough intensity to keep any would-be rescuers at bay. This human is in my domain now. I will decide her fate, not her kind.
As dawn approaches, her breathing strengthens. Color returns to her face. She will live, then. The question that remains is what to do with her once she wakes. Return her to her people? Keep her as... what? Company? Absurd.
Kill her after all? The thought comes with unexpected reluctance.
Her eyelids flutter. Consciousness returning. Decision time.
With practiced concentration, I strengthen my glamour.
The antlers shrink and transform to a more acceptable crown-like formation.
My skin warms slightly, though still cool by human standards.
The skull face recedes, revealing my rarely-used human features.
The claws retract into merely unusual fingers.
I move away from the bedside, putting distance between us. Better she not wake to find me looming over her. I don't want her first reaction to be terror.
Why I should care about her reaction at all is a question I'm not ready to consider.
Her eyes begin to open. Brown, I notice. Ordinary. Human. Yet something in them calls to the winter inside me.
Tetta er upphafie. This is a beginning.