Not human,my brain insists.Definitely not human.
But as I watch him set two bowls on the table with methodical care, I can't help but wonder—what exactly have I found in this storm? Or more accurately, what has found me?
"Sit," he says, gesturing to the chair opposite his. "Eat while it's warm."
I have nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. So I sit across from the beautiful, dangerous stranger with antlers and try to ignore both my fear and the inappropriate heat that floods my body when he looks at me.
Three days until the storm passes, he said. Three days alone with Vidar.
I'm not sure whether to hope he's lying about the storm's duration or telling the truth.
4
Vidar
Frost blooms on my skin where we almost touched. I hide my hand, cursing silently as I move toward the kitchen. My control is slipping. Five centuries of perfect restraint, and now this—betrayed by my own form at the proximity of a mortal woman.
She saw it. The frost. Her eyes caught the patterns forming before I could conceal them. Her gaze is too perceptive, missing nothing. Like her camera, seeing what should remain hidden.
I busy myself with food preparation, a human ritual I barely remember. The simple vegetables and dried meat require little skill, but the mundane task anchors me as I fight to strengthen my glamour. The skull mask wants to emerge, the antlers strain to expand to their true size. My fingers ache with the effort of keeping the crystalline claws retracted.
The fire still burns too hot, but I don't leave again. Weakness, to retreat twice from mere discomfort. I'll adapt. I've endured worse than warmth.
"You're not eating?" she asks as I place her bowl on the table. Her voice has recovered its strength, losing the rasp of near-death.
"I prefer to hunt," I say, the admission slipping out before I can consider it. "This is... emergency stores."
She nods, accepting this oddly specific detail without pressing further. Her eyes—ordinary brown, yet somehow unsettling in their steady focus—remain on me as she eats. Her movements are tentative at first, then hungrier as her body remembers its needs. Life reasserting itself.
"The storm," she says between bites. "Is it always like this here?"
"No." I remain standing, unwilling to sit in human fashion when my legs want to fold differently. "The weather here is... responsive."
"Responsive to what?"
My eyes meet hers. "To me."
She pauses, spoon halfway to her mouth. Her pulse quickens—I can hear it across the room, the tempo of prey sensing danger. But she doesn't look away.
"That's not possible," she says, but her tone lacks conviction. She's seen too much already to dismiss impossibility.
"Many things exist beyond common understanding."
"Like your... headpiece?" she asks, gesturing vaguely toward my antlers.
I nearly smile. Her directness is unexpected. Humans usually talk circles around the obvious, afraid to name the strangeness before them.
"Yes."
"What exactly are you?" she asks, setting down her spoon.
Wind rattles the windows, my storm responding to the challenge in her question. The fire dims slightly, ice forming on the inside of the glass panes. My control wavers.
"Finish eating," I say instead of answering. "You need strength."
For a moment I think she'll push, demand answers I'm not ready to give. Instead, she nods and returns to her meal. The practicality that caught my attention in the storm reasserts itself. Survival first, answers later.
The small emergency radio from her pack suddenly crackles to life on the shelf where I placed her belongings. The device she thought dead from the cold now functions—my doing, though not consciously. The static resolves into a voice, speaking Icelandic about weather warnings and a missing tourist. Her name. Freya Lindholm.
