Þetta 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, lítið ljós. Ekki slökkva ennþá."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 fromfinishing 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. Ileave 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 beseenlike 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.
