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Guqqie wasn’t dressed for the winter.
According to their studies, this was the most normal and unassuming Earthly attire: a bright, floral button-up thrown over a white t-shirt; light green pants that cut off a bit before the knee; long black socks covered by flat and surprisingly comfortable shoes with no laces — sandals .
This, zi had found, was the outfit of a tourist . Someone who visited a place for the first time, usually for fun, but didn’t raise much suspicion from the locals because that was something humans did sometimes, visiting places . It was the perfect disguise.
The others had looked at xem strangely, before, when she walked outside in that outfit in the rain, but Guqqie had shut down any further protests or questioning as moon simply tipped her head back in wonderment, letting the raindrops fall on her face, smile wide and bright.
Everything on Earth was new. Everything . The people, the landscape, the wildlife, the technology, the gravity … almost nothing was as it had been back home. It was all an adjustment. Guqqie thought she was handling it quite well, all things considered. For a tourist.
But as the months dragged on, and what had been a vacation started to feel more and more like a marooning, it began to get cold. Guqqie knew, logically, that they should wear something warmer, but couldn’t risk raising suspicion — zi didn’t have any other clothes besides her spacesuit.
The first time it snowed, Guqqie thought the world was ending.
That morning, they studied the newly-frosted ground with a curious sort of caution, wishing that someone had been around so she could ask about it, but the only person who remained in town was Bear, and no matter how many times Guqqie called out for him, his door remained firmly shut. So zi was left to make their own conclusions.
If it had snowed only a few months prior, when the town was bustling with people who claimed to be her friends, Guqqie might have come to learn that snow was something humans enjoyed. Xe might have gasped, in surprise, as a cold ball of snow hit their shoulder.
They might have turned to see the culprit double over in laughter, and smiled, hurling a snowball of her own back at the town’s self-described knight. She might have joined in as the others made men out of snow, gave them sticks for arms and carrots for noses.
Guqqie may have, as the night quieted down and most of the others returned to the warmth of their houses, laid down on zir back to make a mold of themself in the snow, smiling over at Aimsey as she explained that they were meant to look like angels.
But none of that ever happened. Instead, she was alone. And she was cold. And though the world hadn’t ended yet, it would end for them soon enough.
As Guqqie stood at the top of their tower and watched the sun make its slow descent below the horizon, suspending the world into a darkness moon could no longer avoid, she suppressed a shiver.
“You’re cold,” their echo said, and Guqqie only shrugged.
“I was never prepared,” zi replied, ruefully. “I was dressed like a tourist. I wasn’t prepared to stay.”
Silence fell for a moment, the wind howling loudly in her ears.
“You could, though,” countered the stranger with their voice and body but without their face, “you still could stay.”
Guqqie laughed. It was rough, and choked, and the cold suddenly had sharper teeth as it bit into her skin.
“I can’t, and you know that. I was always just… passing through.”
The voided stranger said nothing.
When Guqqie jumped from their tower, she thought of the sun. Of warmth. Xe thought of home, of two families had and lost, but mostly, they thought of warmth. When she got home, to more familiar and hopefully more forgiving skies, Guqqie could shed off their tourist disguise and find a way to belong somewhere again.
(That was her first mistake. Assuming they’d belonged anywhere to begin with).
When star woke to the blinding fluorescent lights of zir spaceship, hallways endless and empty, all she could do was laugh.
At least , Guqqie thought, as moon rose to her feet and prepared to run, it isn’t cold .