That night, I finally review the photos on my camera. Most are what I'd expect—stunning ice formations, black volcanic sand against snow, the dramatic Icelandic landscape. Then I reach the ones of Vidar.
My breath catches. Even in the two-dimensional images, he's magnificent. The skull mask partially transparent over his features. The antlers extending in crystalline branches. Frost patterns swirling across his skin. In the final photo, the one I took of us together, the contrast is striking—his pale blue-white skin against my flushed human tones, frost forming where we touch.
Proof. Evidence. Mystery.
I need to protect these images at all costs. If anyone saw them... I can't even imagine the consequences. For Vidar, for me, for the fragile secret we now share.
I transfer the photos to my laptop, then create an encrypted folder with a password I'll remember. Then I methodically delete them from my camera's memory card, making absolutely certain they can't be recovered. These images aren't for sharing, not with editors or audiences, not with anyone. They're mine. Ours.
I carefully select which photos to submit to my client—stunning landscapes, ice formations, the beauty of Iceland's winter wilderness. All technically excellent, all completely natural, nothing that would raise questions about impossible beings with antlers made of ice.
The next day passes in a blur of practical matters—collecting the gear I'd left at Árni's office, finalizing my invoice, packing my belongings. All the while, I'm hyperaware of the changes continuing within me. My breath forms visible clouds in roomsothers find perfectly comfortable. My shower runs cold enough to make the pipes creak. At night, tiny frost patterns form on my pillowcase where my cheek rests.
On my final evening in Iceland, I stand alone on the guesthouse balcony, watching snow fall gently over the small town. I lift my face to the cold flakes, feeling them land on my skin without melting immediately as they once would have.
"I'll come back," I whisper, not sure if I'm speaking to myself or to him, if he can hear me across the miles of wilderness that separate us. "I need to go home first, but I'll come back."
For a moment, the snowfall seems to pause, flakes hanging suspended in the air around me. Then they begin to dance—not falling randomly but swirling in deliberate patterns, touching my face like cool fingertips before resuming their natural descent.
Message received.
As I turn to go inside, I notice frost patterns on the balcony railing where my hands rested—not chaotic crystals, but deliberate designs. Intricate swirls that form words in a language I don't know but somehow understand.
Until winter calls again.
I trace the patterns with my fingertip, watching them melt at my touch, and smile. This isn't an ending. It's barely even a pause.
Whatever lies between us—between the human photographer and the winter guardian, between warmth and cold, between two worlds that should never touch but somehow have—it's just beginning.
And I intend to capture every moment of it.
10
Vidar
The cabin feels wrong without her.
I move through its single room, adjusting things that have stood untouched for decades. The bed where her warmth lingered now holds fresh furs, softer than the old ones. The hearth has been rebuilt, stones rearranged to draw heat more efficiently into the space. Windows, once frosted over permanently, now cleared to allow more light.
I pause, examining my own behavior with detached curiosity. Five centuries of perfect solitude, and now I find myself... nesting. Creating a space not just for me, but for her. For us.
Foolish. She may never return. The connection between us could fade, winter melting from her blood with distance and time. The rational part of me understands this. The rest...
The rest rebuilds the cabin, improves it, creates a sanctuary worthy of her return.
I've abandoned my original dwelling, the one where the humans found her. It held too many eyes, too many questions.This new place lies deeper in my domain, sheltered in a valley where the ancient pines grow so thick they form natural walls against intrusion. No trails lead here. No maps mark it. Only winter knows its location.
And now, perhaps, she does too.
The changes in me are subtle but unmistakable. The glamour comes harder now, requiring more concentration to maintain. The frost patterns on my skin grow more elaborate, more conscious in their design. And always, always, I feel her—a warm presence at the edge of my awareness, distant but undeniable.
She's returned to her world, as she should. I know this. I encouraged it. Yet the knowledge does nothing to ease the hollow sensation that has settled in my chest since her departure.
The storm that perpetually surrounds my domain has changed its patterns. Once chaotic and fierce, it now moves in rhythmic cycles, like breath or heartbeat. When I stand at the edge of the forest, gazing toward the distant lights of human settlements, the snow parts before me, forming a clear path that beckons toward her.
I resist. She needs time. Space. The choice must remain hers.
Instead, I extend my awareness through the winter itself, allowing frost and snow to be my eyes and ears in places I cannot physically go. Through ice crystals on windows, through snowflakes drifting past conversations, I gather fragments of news.
