Archive of Our Own

There is smoke in the air, as the wind picks up with the smell of rain. A fine smudge of gray rises from the chimney of a house nearly a century old. Inside, next to the chimney, a wiry old woman tends to the fire with a smile. When it settles into a steady flame, she rises to her feet with some effort. She walks stiffly over to a nearby table and picks up a well-worn, thin notebook.

For the first time in the two weeks it has taken her to fill it, she does not pick up the pencil that lays on top of it, instead letting it roll off the book and onto the table. Instead of pulling back a chair and writing, she walks over to the love seat next to the fire and flicks through the pages. Nervously at first, before settling and simply enjoying the feeling of the rigid pages under her thumb.

She turns to face the mantlepiece, the photograph of her wife grinning at her, and lets out a quiet sigh. Conversationally, as though she speaks to her wife in this way all the time, the old woman suddenly speaks up.

“You know, I was hoping to tell you all of this before. Well.” Her voice wavers slightly. She stops and swallows. “Well. You know. But there’s nothing preventing me from telling you now. I wrote it all down, turned it into a story for you.” She smiles at the photograph. “So, I’ll be reading you my story this time.”

The old woman opens the notebook to the first page and starts reading out loud…

I’ve never told you the full truth of how I first became friends with Seth. Nor have I told you everything I knew about him, things he asked me to keep secret from everyone. Despite the world slowly opening up ever so slightly to the possibility of magic existing, I’ve kept my promise.

(Don’t you worry Fabi, I’ve never cheated on you once. This isn’t that kind of story.)

But I’ve been worried this week and I figured that I finally have the liberty of sharing this with you, despite you being beyond the grave now. Writing like this keeps you close and comforts me, so here I am, penning these words to you.

When I was a young woman, back in Uni, I joined the Mountaineering and Rock Climbing Club. I’d always held a strong fascination for the outdoors — mountains in particular — but I was a city girl and I never knew anyone who was interested in going there.

As a child, my grandfather would tell me all sorts of stories about the woods. He’d spent his whole life as an outdoorsman. First as a young boy, growing up in a small town in a deep forest in Oregon, then as a logger for much of his adult life. When he was injured, he retired from logging and instead turned to teaching bushcraft and hunting to young teens — something he’d learned from his own parents and grandfathers and kept up his whole life. He ended up being well known for a time. By the time I was born, he was still up and about doing all sorts of projects. However, by the time I was old enough to have gone to one of his classes, he was spending most of his time in the hospital.

We visited him often and that’s where I heard the most of his stories. After he was gone, my mother would sometimes share her own stories of the woods, from before the accident took her legs when I was eight. By the time I was ten, we started finding ways for us to go on hikes that could accommodate wheelchairs and we would often visit her uncle’s cottage near a lake up in Canada.

I’ve loved the outdoors my whole life. Nothing made me feel more alive. To hear nothing but the quiet wind in the trees and the songbirds whistling away, or the sounds of waves lapping on the shore.

Still, I went to University to study in medicine. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to be, really, but I just knew I wanted to help people the same way people had helped Mom. I eventually settled on kinesiology, and to this day, decades later, I’m quite happy with my choice.

It was in my first semester that I met Seth Sorenson. At the time, he looked like a young twenty-something man with dark brown hair, broad shoulders and an easy smile. He was very handsome, though not my type. (You can laugh at that all you want Fabi, you know it took me a few years to learn that men themselves weren’t my type.)

Of course, at the time, I had no idea there was anything peculiar about him. The only thing of note about him was that he was one of the better looking guys who had joined the Mountaineering club that semester — the other being Lars, who was tall and blond. Well, better looking in my opinion, most of which I think really just boiled down to ‘they had long hair’ and they were the only ones I heard other girls say they found hot. From what I would later hear, many of the men I considered plain were very attractive to the other women. Ah, the women, though. They were beautiful. And I became fast friends with a great many of them! Still, I didn’t care much about looking for a romantic partner yet. Mostly I enjoyed bonding with everyone over our shared curiosity and love for nature, technical challenges and pushing ourselves to greater physical heights. (Something you’ve never had much of a mind for, I know, but we don’t need to share all of our hobbies to be an excellent couple. Our shared love of books was more than enough for me.)

In the seven years I was in Uni, we went on several trips. Most were smaller in nature — the university was less than an hour’s drive from a myriad of great hiking trails, most of which climbed up steep valleys. We became intimately familiar with those trails over countless weekend outings. Sometimes we’d even go to the closer ones in the mornings as well, before or around classes, with those that could. We also went bouldering and used the university’s rock climbing wall extensively, learning everything and anything we could about the technicalities of the sport.

We made it a point to visit a few lesser peaks around the area on those few weekends when things weren’t too intense at school and we were all fit enough for it. Each summer, we trained to ascend one major mountain.

It was on these countless escapades into nature that I began to take notice of Seth’s many oddities.

The first one happened while we were bouldering. We’d been working at it for a few hours, taking turns. Seth was one of two people ascending that particular boulder, one someone had nicknamed Bear Scratch Boulder, due to the long cracks running down it that looked like something had scratched it. There had been the usual jokes around the name, wondering if it had instead been done by a dragon or Bigfoot, because, and I quote “We sure would rather meet one of those instead of whatever bear could do that!” as we were prepping. When it was Seth’s turn, he did a good enough job getting to the top — better than me, but much slower than most of the others who’d been doing this longer than both of us combined. Until, when it was time to go down, he slipped.

It was weird, because he should have been fine where he was standing. There wasn’t anything to trip on, the surface was smooth enough when I was up there. Lindsey told me, much later, that it almost looked as though someone had pulled on his foot as he was moving. Except, of course, there was nothing there.

Still, he fell over and rolled over the edge of the rock, scrambling to catch something. He wasn’t fast enough and he fell twenty-two feet onto the base of the rock, bounced off and rolled into the bushes. Immediately, the two senior members of the club snapped into action, while everyone was shouting or gasping in horror. Dallas ran off to our packs to grab the first aid kit and Katrina ran over to Seth to see how bad it was and prevent him from making it worse.

Barring the minor scrapes to his face where it had hit the rock, Seth had nothing except for minor complaints that he would be seeing bruises the next morning. He didn’t seem to have a concussion, but neither Dallas nor Katrina were willing to take his word for it on a fall of that magnitude.

“It’s a freaking miracle you didn’t break anything at all,” she told him, “Your soft tissues - like your brain - don’t like getting banged around that much. I’d rather be careful than have you pay for it, thanks.”

Her worries were luckily unfounded and he was perfectly fine - though everyone made jokes about his miracle fall for a while after.

He seemed to find it a bit uncomfortable after a while, and those who noticed eventually asked the others to drop it. It was for the best, because the strange incidents were only just starting.

It’s not as strange as everything that happened after, but this was one of the things that really caught my attention at first about him. Seth was already on my radar as ‘the guy who got really lucky from that fall’, but this is what made me think of his as something of a mystery. As with any group of people going on an adventure, probably in the history of everything, we often got drunk around the fire and told stories. These ranged all over, from the fantastic, to the creepy, funny and dumb. But this is about something that would have been a story, if Seth hadn’t caught himself in time.

He was very drunk. Most of the group was. We were celebrating our second biggest summit and classes were over for the year as of the week prior. It was something of a double celebration. I hadn’t had that much to drink — as you know, I tend to become nauseous really fast and it’s bad enough that I don’t really get to enjoy the buzz much before the bad stuff starts. The point of drinking is to have fun and destress a little with friends — not spend the evening wishing there were no loud noises and that you had a clean washroom to yourself.

Still, we were all telling stories about the places we’d been to, for those of us who had traveled. I’d really only ever traveled to visit family, and the farthest I’d ever been was visiting my uncle in Canada as we weren’t rich enough to leave the country for vacations or anything, so I wasn’t contributing much. Soon enough, the conversation shifted to mountains and mountain ranges and someone brought up the Himalayas.

Out of nowhere, Seth - who had also been quiet up till then - mentioned that he’d been to the Himalayas before, more than once. But he said that the first time he’d been ‘taken’ there. The way he said the word was somehow grim, like he was still a bit angry about it. It took me a second, but I wondered if he meant he’d been kidnapped to the Himalayas somehow. Was that even possible?

I wasn’t the only person to wonder this, because Jared asked him. Seth’s eyes went wide and he seemed to realize what he’d said. He almost looked scared. He hurried to justify himself, giving the excuse that he was confusing a dream with reality. It was a bad excuse, but half of the people who were listening were drunk enough to believe it and the conversation shifted to dreams for a while.

I didn’t forget. I don’t think I’m the only one. I’m quite sure if I asked a few of the other people who had been there if they remembered anything odd about Seth, this might be one of the things that comes to their minds. Still, it was the first time I realized that there was something about him. I thought that he probably had been kidnapped somehow. He could just have said his family was going on a trip there and though he didn’t want to go, they forced him. That’s perfectly plausible. But he didn’t come up with a realistic lie, he just froze and came up with something absurd.

I mean, it could have been a realistic dream. He didn’t need to justify himself, and in all honestly it was far more likely to have been a normal situation he had badly explained.

But I didn’t believe that at all at the time.

Still, I never once saw Seth get that drunk again at any party, nor did I ever hear any rumours of any outrageous drunk tales of dumb things he’d done or said from anyone else after that.

Now, up till that point, everything odd about him had been entirely in the realm of the possible, if very, very rare. A lucky landing on an unlucky fall and a hint of something weird in his past. This next thing is what really struck me as significant. It was also the thing that made me downright scared of him for a while after.

It was winter in our second year and we were out on a snowshoeing hike, one of many. The idea was to enjoy the outdoors and keep up stamina, as well as learn to dress and prepare properly for cold temperatures. I already had some level of experience with this, from my winter walks with my extended family, but also from our first year in the club, having done these the previous winter as well. We had a couple of newbies with us, to make up for the handful of people that had left after graduation.

We were all set up in teams of two. I was with Terry, a guy with flaming red hair who ended up quitting the club at the end of the year, to put more focus on his studies. He was already having trouble finding motivation to come and he was struggling a bit more than most, having skipped out on a lot of training. So we ended up being stragglers. Still, we were following a four hour loop and we were going to make it just fine.

Except, lucky us, it started to snow. And snow. And snow. Soon enough, visibility was barely a few yards and the snowshoe tracks we were following were starting to fill up at an alarming rate. We were far behind by now, at least an hour from the main group and we were two hours away from the exit.

Next thing we knew, the tracks petered out. They’d just been looking like indents for a while now, but we realized that we had somehow got turned around at some point and we had been following an animal trail. I felt dread curl up in my gut when I realized we were now lost. Terry was swearing up a storm.

We followed our tracks back a while, but when it became clear that we weren’t even sure if our snowshoe tracks were even ours… we stopped and decided to change plans. Even if we had made it back onto the trail, we had no good way of knowing if it was the right one. The snow was five feet thick, at the very least. In some places, the trail markers had almost been touching the snow, and that was when we had started the hike. It was one of the snowiest years on record in recent times. This snowfall was only supposed to hit overnight according to the forecast — not sometime in early afternoon.

Still, we were well prepared. I had to remind Terry not to panic, that we had everything we needed in our packs, even if we couldn’t find our way back today. I had two space blankets, snacks enough for several more meals, a dry change of socks, fire starter and waterproof matches, amongst other things.

Thankfully, we probably wouldn’t need to use any of that. We had good maps, compasses we knew how to use and joy of all joys, cell reception! Bad cell reception, but better than nothing.

I immediately called our Head of Group to tell her we were lost. I can still remember the exact discussion we had.

“Heyyy, Amy. Uh, we’re kind of lost and we can’t find the trail. We tried to retrace our steps but we stopped because even our trail is snowed in.”

“Shit. Stay where you are and stay together. Can you start a small fire?”

“Yeah, I’ve got stuff for it. Not sure if anything here will catch though.”

“Give it a try anyway. Try to keep warm, we’ll send help. How much battery do you have left?”

“Fifty-three percent. But it’s a new phone, so it shouldn’t go down too fast.”

“Keep it warm in your coat. The cold saps the battery faster. Any idea where you were on the trail before you lost it?”

“Not exactly. We’re on the way back down from the top of the loop. In the flat part. Um, lots of birch around here? Not sure if that helps.”

“Before or after the beaver pond?”

“Not sure. I don’t remember seeing one, but I’ve mostly been looking at the ground so I could have missed it.”

“Alright. You guys have your whistles?”

“Yeah,” I looked up at Terry and he nodded. “We both do.”

“Good. We’re almost all out, so you’ve got probably thirty minutes at the earliest before anyone can get close enough to hear you. Try to start a fire. Then if you manage it or not, take turns whistling, ok? We’ll whistle twice back if we hear you. You’ll be out in no time.”

“Thanks Amy.”

“You can thank me when we’re back at the parking lot.”

After hanging up and tucking my freezing phone into my inside pocket, we both set out to try and start a small fire on an exposed rock. We figured it had better chances of surviving if it wasn’t directly in the snow. I thanked every god and deity I had ever heard of that I had dry fire starter because my Grandpa had told me to always, always carry some with me in the woods. We gathered a bunch of fallen branches (I vetoed all that had any green in them — it would take ridiculous amounts of energy to burn those). Then I took a third of my fire starter (which was really a bunch of very dry pine needles, a chunk of tree sap — one of the most flammable substances I knew of — and birch fluff I ripped off a nearby tree), made a little pile with a depression in the middle and used my first match. It wouldn’t light. I eventually moved onto my second, then third match, before the stupid things finally worked and we lit our tiny little flame. Suffice it to say that I brought a flint rod with me from then on after that minor scare.

We spent the next few minutes eagerly feeding the fire bits and pieces of dry twigs and cheering when it gobbled them, sputtering slightly but staying alive. At first we protected it from the falling snowflakes with our hands, but eventually it was steady enough that we found we could warm ourselves on it just fine.

We cheered again and high fived before huddling closer to the flame. After a little while, Terry looked at his watch and said it was getting close to thirty minutes. We began to take turns using the whistle.

Thirty minutes turned into forty-five and the heavy snow continued. Even with the fire we were still shivering and stamping around to keep warm. We gathered more firewood.

After an hour had passed, I called Amy back.

Turns out there was a setback and one of the teams had almost got lost looking for us. Julio had twisted his ankle and needed help getting back to the parking lot, so there were less people out there searching. We said we didn’t hear any whistles even though we were keeping it up, and giving pauses to listen, but that we did have a fire going.

The storm was so heavy at this point that it was hard to see far into the trees and any trail was obscured. It was starting to get dim, as we slowly inched closer to sunset.

Amy said that Seth would be continuing without Julio, as the injured man’s sister would be bringing him to the hospital, and that if she and the five others in the woods didn’t find us within the next thirty minutes, she’d be calling for help. I confirmed I had enough cell phone battery to last us another few hours and that we should be just fine and she hung up.

Our morale was a little lower, but still, we kept up stamping our feet and blowing our whistles, pausing after each blast to listen for a reply.

Twenty-five minutes had passed when we suddenly heard a whistle call back. It came from a direction we hadn’t been considering at all. Still, we cheerfully blasted back two whistles, to confirm we heard it. We stayed next to the fire and from the gloom of the forest, a vague shadow in the shape of a person began to cut out from the snow.

A man’s voice called out to us, a bit muffled, but clear enough,“HEY! YOU GUYS OK?!”

We ran up to him and him to us, as fast as one could in snow like this. Even on snowshoes we sank a fair bit. Sure enough, it was one of our teammates, Seth. He gave us both a hug and warmed up by the fire a moment while we called Amy back.

She was overjoyed and asked Seth where we were. Seth showed us on his map, while talking to her. We were very far off trail. We’d got turned around much earlier than I thought and had probably passed around the other side of the beaver pond without noticing. Amy was surprised Seth had found us that far off and he shrugged it off saying he’d ‘had a feeling’ and then he’d smelled smoke and followed that. The second part of that sentence made sense, but the gut feeling was very much the kind of wishy washy weird new age stuff I found hard to believe at the time. I would never have trusted that when looking for someone. (I know, I know, it’s funny to hear that coming from me of all people.)

Still, he knew where we were. We now knew where we were, and after killing the fire, we all set off towards the trail. The snow was much lighter now, and Seth’s old footprints looked crisp and clear.

This is important.

Because after a few minutes, they stopped.

Seth continued leading us towards the trail, onto perfectly fresh snow. His first footsteps, which I saw from a distance as we went down around an erratic boulder, were of two snowshoed feet perfectly spaced from each other. As though just standing straight. Then, the footsteps just started walking forward, joining up with the trail we were following.

As though he’d just appeared out of nowhere fifteen minutes earlier and walked over to us after.

Let me tell you love, my stomach sank into my heels.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal. I studied Seth from behind. He looked physical. And present. He’d hugged us and felt warm and alive and smelled a bit sweaty. There was a plume of condensation in front of his mouth when he breathed. Snow melted when it touched his skin and didn’t melt when it touched his bright red hat.

He was wearing the same clothes he usually wore to expeditions and there was nothing weird or off about his looks. Nothing about his body language. Nothing about the way he spoke or the way he sounded. This was Seth, through and through, not some weird thing pretending to be him.

But he’d appeared out of nowhere and was leading us off into a direction where there were no tracks. And the way he had found us was so strange. He said he’d just ‘had a feeling’.

I checked my map and compass just to be sure he was leading us the right way. When he stopped to check, I also checked. He just blinked when I did it the first time, but didn’t say anything. I told him I wanted to be sure I was learning my stuff properly, so I didn’t mess up like this again and it made him chuckle.

“Fair enough,” he’d said with a grin.

It was so unassuming. It still sent a cold tingle in my gut. I was on a razor’s edge the entire time we went back. Everything in my mind screamed that the way he had found us was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Of course Terry didn’t find a single damned thing odd about this situation. He was just exhausted and happy to follow along. It was slow going, but my readings and Seth’s told me the same thing: we were slowly but surely making our way back.

Soon enough we found our first trail marker and we all cheered wearily. The part of me that was convinced that we were going to be killed and replaced by whatever creepy supernatural lookalike that Seth was breathed a small sigh of relief.

We followed the trail and within minutes we met up with Jessie and Lindsey, followed minutes later by Jared and Corey, then Amy and Ignacio. I breathed a big sigh of relief, suddenly less scared now I was surrounded by others. Nobody seemed to noticed anything strange at all about Seth, and well, beyond how he had found us, there was really nothing odd to notice. He was smiling and looked tired but happy. He noticed me staring and grinned at me, and I made myself smile back as well as I could. He seemed to notice my smile was probably more of a grimace, so I made myself joke, “My feet are killing me. I can’t wait to lay down and do nothing,” which of course made everyone laugh and agree.

We all followed the trail to the parking lot and then spread out to take our cars back to campus. I was in Lindsey’s car on the way back, although I’d gone up in Julianna’s car. But she was the one who had to drive Julio to the hospital to get his foot checked out, so Lindsey had offered me her last seat. Seth’s old minivan was already going to be full, so I wouldn’t have been able to drive with him anyway. Amy offered to take Terry, since he had come over with me, Julianna and Julio.

It only occurred to me later that we were all spread out perfectly, so that the rest of the team could pester each of us about what had happened. For a short while though, I was just happy and warm, curled up in Lindsey’s emergency wool blankets, as the car heated up around me. There were many drafts of cool air though, as the others loaded the trunk with our snowshoes and hiking poles. I’d told them I was fine, but Lindsey had insisted and taken my stuff so I could go in first. It was nice to be pampered after such a scare. Then everyone was in, and we took off and I got to be on the other end of an interrogation.

Eventually I feigned needing sleep, just so I wouldn’t need to pretend I hadn’t been spooked by Seth’s appearance. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. It had been Seth, not some supernatural entity out to send us into the middle of nowhere and laugh as we died of exposure. And if it was really Seth, well, there had to be a logical explanation. He wasn’t supernatural, he was just an average guy from school.

I didn’t want to spread weird rumours about him just because I’d imagined a thing. So I didn’t say a word.

People remembered that story for a while, but in the gentle way that people who get lost and found within hours are remembered. As a ‘haha, be careful in winter kids!’ kind of vibe, instead of a ‘if you were less prepared or less lucky to be within cellphone distance, this could have been tragic!’ vibes.

People would still tease us for getting lost, up until Terry left. But I never forgot the chilling feeling I had when I was lost in the woods and realized something supernatural had happened.

It took a few months for me to fully relax around Seth again. Well, as much as any girl can relax around a man.

The next part of this story was on a late spring trip. We were ranging a bit further than usual, staying at a hotel a four hour’s drive from campus. We had booked for three nights on the long weekend. It wasn’t a long weekend for most people — there was some kind of event I don’t much remember, and most classes were cancelled that upcoming Monday.

We got there on Friday and planned to climb the two nearby peaks Saturday and Sunday before heading home on Monday. Just in time for Julianna and Lindsey to get back for their afternoon classes, which hadn’t been cancelled. Plans for a good time, all in all.

Except I had my first ghostly experience that Friday night.

My room had somehow felt almost unwelcoming when I’d first entered, but I didn’t think much of it. Then I’d glimpsed a dark figure sitting in the corner of the room for a moment, as I was unpacking.

I felt the same awful feeling I had when I’d noticed Seth’s steps stopping in the snow, months earlier. My stomach dropped and my adrenaline kicked in, heart thundering. I looked and looked and there was nothing to be found.

I was eager to leave my room and everyone heading out to supper was the perfect excuse. After I drank a little, I admitted to them that I thought I saw a ghost in my room. Everyone found the experience to be fun and interesting — they all loved a good ghost story — but I didn’t doubt that they all would think I was more than a little crazy if I said I actually believed that was what I saw.

After supper, as we were taking turns going to pay at the counter, Seth stood in the loose line with me. I was particularly aware of where he was that evening, because the ghost had jogged my memory of why I was so nervous around him.

Still, with an unusual quiet and calm voice, he said, “Would you like me to ask the ghost to leave you alone?”

I think he was trying to make sure nobody else heard him ask. I just stared at him, surprised. Was he admitting to whatever had happened before? That he could do something downright weird?

Normally I would have said, ‘No, absolutely not, stay away from my bedroom’. But that ghost terrified me. The room itself scared me. If that meant letting Seth in there to duke it out with the ghost, then frankly, I much preferred accepting his help. If he was supernatural in some way, he probably had a good fighting chance. Somehow, some part of me refused to believe that ghost could be reasoned with.

So, I said, “Yes. But if it won’t go, I’m changing rooms anyway.”

He didn’t look surprised, just nodded, and said, “If it won’t then I’m dealing with it the other way.”

Chilling statement right there.

Still, I didn’t have any other choice and I certainly didn’t want to pay extra because I wanted my room changed, so I didn’t say a thing.

Next thing I knew, we were standing in front of my door. I swiped the card and opened the door. The handle felt unnaturally cold and I shivered, dread starting to build rapidly. I felt almost sick at the idea of staying there, yet couldn’t make myself move.

Seth said, “It’ll be ok,” and walked in. His shoulder brushed mine and for the fraction of a second we were touching, the feeling of dread vanished without a trace. It came back in full force the second after though.

I was still reeling from confusion at what that meant, when Seth stopped and greeted whatever invisible being sat in the chair in the corner of the room.

“Hello,” he said. “You’re scaring my friend. Would you mind going elsewhere? You can come to my room instead if you want.”

He waited, as though listening to an answer. Then he started nodding and looking around.

“I see. I’m sorry to hear that.”

He stopped, looking back at the chair, listening to something again. I could almost see something on the chair, like a faint warping.

“If you want to, yes.”

The warp vanished, or maybe moved? Maybe it just went away because I blinked. I still felt profound dread and I was starting to wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut and not brought Seth here at all. I was having difficulty focusing on the conversation, though I can recall it very clearly now.

Seth stepped forward and lifted his hands. He seemed to catch something midair, his fingers closing around something — maybe ghost hands? — when the air lifted all of a sudden. The cold vanished and I felt like I could breathe freely for the first time since I’d walked into the room when we’d arrived. There was a kind of brightness around Seth, or maybe just around the room itself.

He lowered his arms slowly, then turned to me. “Well, it’s clear now. The spirit passed on.”

I stared at him, shocked. I don’t remember exactly what I said, though I know I thanked him several times and couldn’t believe my eyes.

He looked awkward, but still smiled. “You’re welcome.” He started edging his way out of the room and I moved to let him.

Before he left, I asked, “If I asked you what just happened, would you tell me the truth?”

He looked surprised, then, after seeming to debate with himself, he eventually shook his head, no.

Somehow, I’d been expecting that. Still, it was his secret to keep, so I decided not to push it. “Alright. But, thank you. And… thanks for finding us last winter. Sorry I’ve been a bit, uh, paranoid, since then.”

His eyes widened in surprise, “Oh, I thought -“ He shook his head. “You’re welcome. Don’t mention it. Literally. Don’t mention it, please.”

He didn’t say about what, but I figured he meant both what had just happened and what had happened before. “I won’t.”

He fidgeted nervously for a moment, then nodded and walked away. I hadn’t expected to manage to… what, scare him? But visibly I had. I felt a bit bad for that, but well, he had downright terrified me before so, even’s even.

My room felt amazing. The air was clear and fresh. Like the weight that had been bearing down on it had been removed and someone had shaken it out and straightened it up. Like Seth had given the whole place a spiritual cleanse on top of what I think was an exorcism of some kind.

That whole incident was why my view on him shifted completely. That was two supernatural incidents related to him, where he’d helped. Two really, objectively good things. Also the ghost was downright terrifying in ways I had never dreamed of, even though it did nothing but exist in a corner.

All of this to say that after that, the more utterly odd things I found out about him, many of which were downright supernatural or miraculous, the more I just learned to accept it.

I didn’t see anything more than mildly odd circumstances around Seth until the two years he suddenly vanished, right after starting his Master’s degree. I make it sound very dramatic, but really, he cancelled classes and took two years off because of family issues.

I’m inclined to believe it, though he’s never actually told me what happened in those years.

Still, for those two years, rumours would sometimes circulate that something had happened to him, something strange or supernatural. They never had any credence, but by then I wasn’t the only one who felt there was just a little something unearthly about Seth sometimes.

And then, like that, he was back. When asked, he repeated what everyone had said at first, that he had a family emergency, but it was dealt with now. He would deflect conversations smoothly, so instead of specifics, we found out his sister was pregnant now and he was excited to be an uncle. We found out his parents were traveling overseas to visit family friends and that he’d been to Polynesia visiting an old friend at some point in those years.

I wondered how all of this fit into the strange secret about him I still didn’t understand. I had plenty of theories — that he was a fairy of some kind, or a Bigfoot (sometimes said to leave footprints that appear and disappear) but his feet were pretty average sized for a guy and really, I think Jasper was more likely to be Bigfoot from how much hair the man sported. It was all dumb ideas I had every so often.

Still, we both ended up graduating without anything odd happening. We kept contact as friends, and soon enough, after my job stabilized and I found myself having time to do things again, I went looking for another mountaineering club. I ended up finding one through Seth, as he’d just joined one and heard I was looking as well.

We would talk about work sometimes. I was doing pretty good and I was proud of my work and the progress my patients were showing. Seth was helping take care of the family farmlands. He said his sister and her husband owned it, but it was a family thing and he’d grown up helping around. Mostly he helped someone named Dale in caring for the livestock and general upkeep of the roads and all that. He said you didn’t need a Uni degree to do it, but he’d really just wanted an excuse to leave home for a while.

He had a degree in folklore and geography, which I remember needling him with a bit, “You of all people have a degree in folklore?” To which he just laughed.

He didn’t tell me more about himself and why he could exorcise ghosts or what had happened when he found us, but I never pressed him on it either. I was curious, yes, but I didn’t need to know. If he ever felt comfortable enough to talk about it to me, he would. Or he wouldn’t, and that would be fine too. I would joke with him, knowing he was something, but it was all in good fun and I would stop if he looked like he was starting to get uncomfortable.

We kept up this easygoing friendship for decades, even through all the weird stuff that continued to happen. Mostly, we’d only ever see each other when the club we’d joined pushed for a summit though.

Over the first decade or so that I knew him, we climbed countless mountains together as a part of the university club, as well as a rolling ensemble of smaller trips with various friends. Most of these were hikes with beautiful sights, made in preparation for larger climbs. One year, we did part of the Pacific Crest Trail with a few others. It was one of the best experiences of my life. It was also one of the first times I started to notice consistent weird behaviours from Seth, things that I would later notice on future outings.

Sometimes, I would catch him staring at something nobody else could see. Like, there was this time where he just watched an empty valley for thirty minutes while eating, not talking to anyone. Just staring at it as though it would bite him if he let it out of his sight.

That night, he vanished. I didn’t tell anyone when I noticed. I figured it was something supernatural. And sure enough, he reappeared two hours later, just after dusk. Nobody had noticed, because I’d covered for him and said he’d gone for a quick nap in his tent.

Sometimes, he’d watch a bird with this big dumb smile on his face. Like it was the prettiest, happiest thing he’d seen all week. Once, he actually asked me what I saw when I looked at it. That time it was a particularly pretty heron, waiting patiently for a fish to pass by. I told him and he looked a bit sad. Then the heron struck and caught a fish. The ripples in the water around it were strange, almost as though it was much larger. It worried me, so I just told Seth to finish eating lunch, because we had to go in a few minutes and walked off, pretending I hadn’t noticed.

When he was particularly fixated on a bird or animal like that after, I’d sometimes try and see what made it so weird. The environment around them would often move in strange ways, as though there was an entirely different volume moving through space there. It gave me the heebie jeebies.

There are times we’ve climbed mountains that required camping on the slopes to reach the top, and on three separate occasions over the decade we climbed together after school, I’ve seen him spot something odd during the day. Each time, when we would stop for the night, he would vanish.

Twice, I’ve had the luck of this happening on snow. I followed his footsteps out into the dark, only to see them end suddenly when he was out of sight of the camp. I went back and would tell others he went straight into his tent, if anyone asked. I don’t know if anyone ever actually noticed that about him, or if it was just me. He’d always be back later, either chipper about something or looking mildly anxious.

If it was the latter, there would almost always be something that would go wrong in the following days. Rockfalls that made use turn back, the weather taking a turn for the worse — you name it.

Once, Dallas was thrown into a crevasse by a rogue gust of wind, knocking him slightly off balance. Thankfully we were all tied together and Seth and I managed to catch a solid hold with our ice axes before being pulled down. Amy was right behind Dallas though, and she was pulled off her feet and found herself hanging in midair. It took a while, but we managed to pull Amy back over the edge, shortly followed by Dallas. If the man could have gone pale, I think he would have turned white as a sheet, he was trembling so bad from the experience. It turns out that on top of falling into the crevasse, he’s almost been impaled on a large shard of ice. We’d only just managed to stop his fall barely two feet above the thing. Dallas was a strong guy though and it didn’t take long for him to recover. And well, you remember how I wouldn’t shut up about his legendary ascent of Lhotse a few years after that.

In another case of “bad luck” I was sure was supernatural in some way, we once became trapped on a small mountain while out practicing. There was absolutely no forecast for snow or bad weather of any kind and it would later turn out that a freak weather event had caused the sudden blizzard that engulfed the mountain that day. The snow became so intense and the weather so bad we needed to stop and make shelter for the night or freeze on the face of the mountain. That or we could just as easily have walked right off trail and gotten lost below the tree line. So we made a bivouac, digging a flat hole in the snow against a large rock, letting the snow accumulate as walls against the wind. We got close and snuggled into our sleeping bags, with one team member set to be on watch rotations to make sure we could deal if a wall collapsed or something.

Seth volunteered first watch and I second. Hunter took third and Amy took last. The last thing I remember before falling asleep is suddenly feeling comfortably warm, like the ice in my bones had just vanished. I slept like a rock.

I woke up at some point needing to pee. A quick check of the time showed it was almost the end of my watch and Seth hadn’t woken me up. When I sat up, I felt as though there was a warm weight on me that lifted. Seth was awake, stargazing, but he glanced over to me. The madman’s arms were out of his sleeping bag, no gloves on and he seemed perfectly comfortable.

After doing my business and coming back, I informed him he needed to sleep and I would be continuing watch. He agreed and burrowed back into his sleeping bag. He was asleep within minutes and I felt that warmth return, with a light weight lying across my chest and legs. I was willing to bet it covered the others too. The cold didn’t have any bite anymore, and I could tell that I could easily have my hands out of gloves too, without fearing frostbite. Another weird Seth oddity I was willing to bet. But it was one of the good ones.

I tried to feel what was keeping us warm, my fingers felt like they could almost sense something soft, but then Seth shivered and the warm, light weight moved a little and I realized that whatever it was — it was attached to him somehow. So I let it be. I woke up Hunter a few hours later and fell back asleep.

The rest of our return was uneventful and I didn’t mention to Seth that I’d figured out a tiny bit more about him. Whatever that warmth had been, if he had access to it all the time, that would explain why he didn’t seem to care about the cold when it got really bad on our trips. He was cheating! The thought made me laugh as we crested the last rise of the trail and were back in sight of the Lodge.

That was one of the last trips Seth took with our group of friends, before cutting contact for several years. We were in our mid-thirties by then and it was becoming clear that he somehow wasn’t ageing. Oh, he grew a beard each time he came on our trips and it did help him look older, but you still couldn’t deny he looked like he was somewhere in his early twenties, despite being nearly a decade older.

He waxed poetic about ‘good genes’ and skin care to those who questioned him about it, but I knew what was up. See, as you get older, the fatty tissues in your face will change shapes. It’s a minute change that happens over the span of your teens to your late twenties. Soft, round shapes gently grow into more angular versions of themselves. The effects can vary depending on genetics, how much fat you had to start with, your diet, your exercise levels and so on, but generally speaking it can be seen quite clearly in most people.

Genetically speaking, Seth could be telling the truth and simply be one of those people who keep a baby face late into adulthood. But I met his sister once, shortly after she had her first kid, and she only looked a little younger than her twenty-nine years. Well, the drawn and tired look of a new mother probably aged her up a little too. So while I agree that they probably do have ‘good genes’ like Seth called it, it's not to the same degree. Kendra said they were only a year and a half apart. Seth’s face could easily be placed to be five years younger than hers those days.

Either way, as the good friend I was - and luckily as being the only one having studied medicine in our small group of friends, I supported Seth in his theory. Though I did tell him it was dumb to call it ‘good genes’ and said it made him sound like an old man who bred horses for a living, talking about his stock. That earned a few laughs and we shifted the conversation away from the subject.

Still, you could tell the thought was on people’s minds. Amy once confided to me that she still thought it was strange and I did my best to reassure her. I also pointed out that he probably didn’t know why or want to have a baby face forever either. It had already become a running joke that bartenders asked for his ID almost every single time we went out for drinks.

It was as we were preparing to ascend Mount Rainier that Seth told me how this was affecting him.

“I’m thinking this might be one of my last ascents,” he said, as we were driving to the hotel we were all staying in. I’d picked him up at the airport a few minutes earlier and we had been catching up on life until he threw me that curveball.

“Of Mount Rainier? I mean, I guess we have already done it twice, but it’s a great mountain.”

“No,” he laughed though he didn’t sound amused. Mostly tired. He sighed quietly. “Any ascent. I’m going to be quitting after this.”

“What?! But you love this stuff!”

“I did. I just - I love hanging out with everyone and climbing mountains makes me feel alive,” he held the word for a moment, as though he was tasting it. Then he let out a breath and I could see his shoulders fall from the corner of my eye. “But I can’t do it anymore.”

“Can’t do which part anymore? Because visibly your love of mountains hasn’t curled up and died yet.”

I’ll admit I was a bit snappy in saying this, but, to my defence, I was worried and hurt. Seth was such an energetic and generally upbeat kind of guy — it was worrying me to see him look so defeated. On a more selfish note, I didn’t want to lose one of my best friends. We might not have spent tons of time together in recent years, but we still saw each other a whole lot more than any of my other friends from Uni. He was one of the few people from the club that I still went out of my way to spend time with.

“I’m… It’s not important. Let’s just talk about something else.”

“No. Let’s not talk about something else! My best friend wants to quit his favourite sport and won’t tell me why. I think that’s pretty important!” We rolled to a stop at a red light. I looked over at him. His hair was unkept, his beard barely a few days old, and he looked sad. “Listen, I won’t push if it's for some ‘spooky’ reason you can’t talk to me about, ok? But if it isn’t, I’d like to know. Please?”

He gave me a look and shook his head laughing, though it was still that quiet, tired laugh. “You know you’re the only person I know who doesn’t push to know more? Out of everyone at school and club, you’re the one who has seen the most weird shit I can do and you just let it be. How can you do it? I sure as hell couldn’t!”

The red light turned green and we started moving forward again. I turned right onto the highway on-ramp and picked up speed, merging into the early morning traffic.

“Well, it’s personal isn’t it?” I eventually answered. “I’m not going to force anyone to share their lives with me. And I can’t see how pushing for an answer to a supernatural event or, or whatever other random thing you’ve done or been around that made other people ask you could be helpful in any way. Sorry, I’m not making any sense.” I shook my head. “Look, I can’t see how forcing someone to share their secrets wouldn’t push that person away. And I like you as a friend. So I don’t want you to go. Which wraps nicely back around to me asking why you want to give up mountaineering, hm?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

He groaned. “You’re like my mom.”

“Good, I’m sure she’s a wonderful woman.”

“She is,” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Just like you are, Sarah.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. He paused, looking for his words. “You respect people and boundaries more than I think anyone could ever know… I’m glad we’re friends.” He laughed, his tone a bit lighter than before. “Even though I don’t know what I could have done to deserve it. And I don’t want to lose you either.”

“You don’t become friends with someone because they deserve it —“

“It was an expression!” He tried to cut me off.

“Still! I don’t know why you - Look. Self deprecating humour just ends up hurting you. We aren’t friends because you saved my ass a bunch of times - though, I appreciate it, obviously. We’re friends because you’re a pretty great guy. You’re funny. You laugh at my stupid jokes even though they aren’t funny. You’re nice to people and you don’t expect anything in return for that. You’re fun to be around. Do I need to say more? I don’t know why you have to put yourself down all the time when you’re literally a pretty great guy!”

He sighed. “Am I?”

“What?”

“Am I really that great?” He laughed again, though it was strained. “I’ve made some really bad mistakes. Ones that got people hurt. People I loved and -“ He cut himself off. He continued in a small voice, talking to himself I think, “What am I doing?”

We were quiet for a moment. I waited for him to continue, feeling bad and awkward and wishing I could go back in time and punch myself in the mouth for being a complete moron. But he just seemed to curl in on himself. The quiet was smothering, the hum of the cement racing by below us was deafening. Eventually I broke the silence.

“I’m sorry. For pushing and snapping at you. That wasn’t fair of me.” I took a deep breath, fighting to keep my voice steady. “It’s just that I have a friend — She, she’s, going through some… some really bad shit. And she says that kind of thing a lot too. I... I don’t want any of that bad stuff to happen to you.” I swallowed. “But that was kind of shitty of me, to make you stop. Because of course I can’t control anything that’s happened to you or whatever you’re going through. Forcing you to change how you’re talking doesn’t help you. It just makes it easier for me to pretend everything’s fine and dandy. Even when it isn’t.” In my periphery I saw him lift his head to look at me, though I couldn’t see his expression. I kept my eyes firmly on the road and the cars around us. “So, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. “I… Thanks. I didn’t know.”

“I don’t like talking about it. Nobody in the club knows. So I can hardly fault you for keeping any secrets, can I? Just - please take care of yourself mentally too, ok? I won’t nag you I just… I don’t like seeing my friends get hurt.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thanks.” I smiled at him. After a comfortable pause, I drummed my hands on the steering wheel. “Well! Look at that, we’ve only just been around each other for an hour and we already managed to get in a few dark and depressing topics! You leaving mountaineering, a whole mini argument that came from compliment-giving of all things and allusions to bad mental health!” I counted them off my fingers, then muttered, “Aren’t we busy…”

“Sarah…” Seth shook his head, exasperated. “Okay, fine. Switching tracks a little here.” He took a slow, deep breath. “I’ll tell you why I’m quitting, okay? Just - Please don’t ask me why this is happening. I really don’t like thinking about it.”

“Oh.” I glanced at him in surprise. He was sitting straight again. I nodded firmly. “I promise.”

“Right. Thanks. So. Ugh, it’s so hard to intentionally talk about this. I’ve spent my whole adult life avoiding this. But, you know how I’m… not really ageing?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah. See, right there? You just take it in stride. If I admitted that to literally anyone else in the group, they’d go haywire and bombard me with questions.” He ruffled his hair. “They already do and it’s getting old. I like them as people, don’t get me wrong! And we’ve been friends for years but… It sucks and it’s getting to the point I just don’t want to see them anymore. Because it’ll always be ‘Oh Seth, looking young!’ this and ‘Hey there, Babyface!’ that and they give me that look, like they’re trying to drill a hole in my head to see why.” He groaned.

“Yikes. I mean - I knew your nickname - but I hadn’t noticed they were still acting weird about it.”

“Of course they are. They’re all getting older and I’m… not. I can just feel it, that once we all hit forty or fifty they’re going to start needling me even more about it.”

“And you’ll still look the same as always.”

He sighed. “Probably.”

“Alright. That’s a perfectly valid reason to drop out. Of the club that is.” I said. “I’m still going to drag you up mountains with me. If you’re willing, of course. You know I don’t give two shits whatever age you look. We don’t need to always be four people. Plenty of people go hiking and climbing in smaller groups. Bit less safe, but I think that isn’t necessarily a problem for you and it isn’t for me.”

He didn’t answer for a while, but I could see he was looking at me. I glanced over and had trouble reading his expression. Somewhere between relief and disbelief.

“What?” I ended up asking.

“Thanks. I don’t know what - You’re one of the best people I know. And I know a lot of wonderful people.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how much what you just said means to me. Seriously, thank you. I’d love to go mountaineering with you, Sarah.”

I grinned, and extended one hand over to him, the other keeping the car steady. “Glad to hear it. So that’s a deal?”

He laughed, bright and happy, and shook my hand. “Deal.”

Of course, as luck goes, ours ran out two days later on Mount Rainier.

The ascent went well enough. But on our way down, Seth seemed to become a little more tense, glancing around often at something none of us could see. Sure enough, the snow picked up as we went and our two tag teams slowly grew apart. Jared and Lindsey pulled ahead and we waved them on when they looked back at us. Slowly but surely, eventually we lost sight of them in the falling snow as it whipped up into a violent storm around us. Each snowflake felt like little knives stinging every inch of exposed skin and I was glad for my ski goggles keeping my sight clear.

We were descending a series of cliffs when things went terribly wrong.

Seth had been going first, down the tallest cliff yet, when he gave a worried yelp followed by the cord suddenly going slack.

I watched in horror as he fell one hundred feet until he was out of sight.

“No. No! NononononoNONONONO!!” I pulled the cord up frantically, as though it would somehow bring him back as well. My hands shook violently. “SETH!!! SETH!!!” I screamed as loud as my lungs would let me, but the wind and snow stole my words from my mouth and I bet they didn’t even reach halfway down the cliff.

Trembling I finally got the end of rope and held it up to see how it had snapped. It was new, it couldn’t have frayed! I went over all my gear and I knew he did his too. But the cord hadn’t frayed. Instead there was a clean cut. Almost perfectly even.

Even a knife wouldn’t have been able to achieve a cut this clean with so little friction.

It had come from barely twenty feet below me. I didn’t want to look down, terrified of what I would see, but I made myself do it anyway.

It was an empty rock face, fading into the snow storm. I called for Seth again, pointless in the deafening white noise of snow and wind. Even if Seth was alive and could hear me by some miracle, there was no way I would be able to hear a reply. We had no cell service here. Communication was impossible.

Were it literally any other human being, I wouldn’t have expected them to survive the fall in one piece. I could only see about one hundred feet down, but we knew it extended much longer than that. But it was Seth. Seth who was some sort of supernatural and had access to magic and weird things I couldn’t even begin to understand. I had this whole theory about him walking into alternate dimensions to get around. Maybe he could do that from mid-air? I could only hope that he could. That he would be fine. He had to be fine. He just had to be.

Hopefully I would be too. Whatever had cut his line was up here with me and the thought of going down the slope with that lurking malevolently there had my stomach roiling with fear. I could take the deadly threats of nature. I knew them. But an invisible foe?

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and took several deep breaths. It was going to be ok. Whatever it was might completely ignore me, since I couldn’t see it. I was going to go down that cliff and I might either find Seth’s dead body shattered on the rocks, or I’d find him standing there unhurt, joking about what took me so long. Either way, he wasn’t here with me so I had to go down. Staying up here was as much of a death sentence as was going down and confronting the thing.

All of this took only a minute, before I started gathering my things in preparation to begin scaling down when the owl appeared.

I spotted it from the corner of my goggles and turned. A large snowy owl swooped up from the base of the cliff and struck the open air next to me. It seemed to grab something — in midair, less than a foot from me — before it pulled backward and dragged whatever it was into the sky with it. The owl cleared the cliff, drifting down, holding the invisible thing, before dropping it. The wind swirled around me with every wingbeat, as though the owl’s wings were much larger than they appeared.

I stared, frozen.

The owl hovered there for a few moments, beating its wings to stay in place, watching whatever it had thrown. Then, satisfied, it glided around and watched me. Staying out of reach, flitting in and out of the snowstorm around, never landing. Like a guardian angel. Or like some hovering, worried friend who didn’t want to be in the way, but never got too close.

I had no doubts that what it had thrown was what had cut Seth’s line.

I looked at the owl, and sighed, tired beyond belief. Feeling like an idiot, I said, “Right, thanks for whatever that was. Are you Seth? Because I’m willing to believe just about anything right now.”

The owl stared right at me, bright yellow eyes piercing my soul. It looked exactly, perfectly like a snowy owl. I could see all the little feathers in its face fluttering in the wind, each of the individual dots on its feathers. Then it seemed to come to a decision and flew over to the side of the cliff where I was crouched and landed.

There was no snowy owl.

Instead, Seth stood in the snow. He was wearing the same clothes, same climbing gear, even holding the damned coil of chopped off rope that had caused him to fall. I couldn’t see his expression behind his goggles, and his mouth was hidden by his scarf, but he shifted around awkwardly as I stared at him, so I was pretty sure it was him.

“Well, that answers a bunch of questions,” I said, like a fool. “You can turn into a bird.”

He walked over and helped me to my feet. As happened sometimes when it was freezing and Seth was around, I suddenly felt warm again. Like I’d been wrapped in a hug, even though he was just holding my hands. The wind was gone. A quick look up behind me though and I noticed that the snowflakes were bouncing off something.

He just laughed and said, “No, I can’t. But I can fly.”

“I literally just saw a snowy owl turn into you.”

“It was me the whole time, you just couldn’t see it. Looking like birds is a kind of… let’s say ‘automatic camouflage’ I have no control over. Are you alright? It didn’t hurt you?”

“No. Not as far as I know. Would I know?” I was feeling more than a bit overwhelmed. Seth could fly. Some invisible thing had tried to kill him and was likely going to try to kill me too if he hadn’t saved me.

“It had sharp claws, so I’m guessing that the answer to that is yes.” Seth held my hands tight and the invisible force behind me pulled me slightly tighter in a strange hug. He looked worried, which was dumb because I was the one who had been worried out of my mind for him. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes. No.” I shook my head. “I don’t know! You probably died and then you didn’t and then the line was cut and I just - You can fly?! Why in the world do you climb mountains if you can fly!?”

His scarf shifted around hiding what I assumed was a grimace, though I couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know, ok? It makes me feel human again. And they’re great places to fly around." He shifted the invisible force around my back, making snow fall off them. “Do you think you can climb down that wall, or do you want us to fly down it? I can carry you.”

“What, me and all our stuff? There’s no way you can carry all of that.”

“Well, no, I’d bring you down first and then get the gear. Or toss the gear first.”

“If you dent anything in my pack you’re paying for its replacement.”

“Right, bringing it down carefully then! So?”

“Just— Let me think about it for a second.” I sat down. The invisible walls moved around and suddenly the wind was back. Then Seth sat down next to me and they were around me again. I couldn’t help my curiosity by then. “What is that?”

“What?”

I pushed a hand against the invisible thing. “This.”

“Oh. My wings. You can feel them? Even though you can’t see them?”

“Wings.” I said and stared at the invisible area. I remembered that night I’d felt them the first time, in the bivouac. They’d been soft, even though I could barely sense them. I tried to get a sense of scale for them, but I couldn’t figure it out and I was still reeling from everything. I felt like my brain was desperately confused and nothing made sense. “I can kind of tell something’s there.”

I wasn’t feeling too good, so we decided to just call a break before making any plans. Seth took out some snacks and we ate. After few long minutes munching on trail mix, I felt a little better. We sat there in silence and I tried to make sense of things.

I finally had answers to some of the biggest questions I’d ever had about him. More importantly though, he was alive and sitting next to me. Also important, I was still alive. Neither of us were hurt. We weren’t home safe, we were still on the side of a mountain in a blizzard… but that seemed to be letting up a little at least. I could see the faint outline of the ice below. Weirdly enough, I wasn’t even worried about hypothermia or even the thought of not getting back in time for sundown. With one of Seth’s wings wrapped around me - and that was such a strange thought to have at the time - I knew we would be safe throughout the night, even through the worst snowstorm. To this day, I still remember the sharp spike of jealousy I felt when I realized this was how Seth always felt. The fear of the mountain didn’t exist for him - couldn’t exit.

It was only much later that I realized this must be part of why he decided to climb and hike like the normal human he used to be. To try and ground himself and his humanity in one of the few things that makes us all human. Subject to weather and luck, feet on the earth, looking up. And going somewhere, one step at a time.

My hands still trembled slightly from the scare and the slow release of adrenaline. I focused on breathing and calming down. It took a few solid minutes, but soon enough I felt grounded and centered again. Ready to continue.

I was not ready to throw all of my fear of gravity to the wind and decide to fly down in Seth’s arms though. I told him I was getting off this mountain the usual way and he could help or not. He just went along with me as cheerfully as ever and soon enough we were belaying each other down, like we had originally planned to.

After what felt like hours, we were standing at the base of the cliff. From here, there were only a few minor rocky descents and then we would be crossing the ice fields. The storm was less severe down here, waning further still, and we managed a few short chats as we went.

Seth, asshat that he was, decided to show off by jumping off one of the smaller cliffs — a twelve foot drop — and landing without a scratch at the bottom, looking pleased as punch at his trick. The footprints he left when he did that reminded me suddenly of the day he’d found me and Terry in the woods. Once I reached the bottom and scolded him for almost giving me a heart attack, I asked him about it.

“How in the world did you find us that day? If you hadn’t it likely would have taken ages for an actual rescue to get to us.”

“Oh, it was harder than I made it out to be. I wasn’t planning on flying to find you guys at all. Visibility was garbage in the air just as much as it was on the ground. But Julio got hurt and then I was searching on my own.” He shrugged. “So I figured - Amy had said you guys managed to start a fire. I might be able to see that from the air. It would be a lot faster anyway. So that’s what I did. Took compass readings as often as possible. I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction, but anyone would get lost up there in that weather. I’d been flying for almost fifteen minutes, when all of a sudden I caught a whiff of smoke. I landed and whistled, but didn’t get any answer. Took a few more tries, before I found the smoke again and then there was this faint little light, way further on. I landed, blew my whistle and you guys answered. The rest is history.”

“Yeah, you almost made me shit my pants when we reached the place where you landed, though.”

“Yeaahhh… I only realized when you told me about it, sorry. I’d just assumed you and Terry were freaked out because you got lost. Then I noticed how you were looking at me for a while after that and I felt bad for scaring you.”

“Terry was freaked out?”

“Well, he sure didn’t look like he was doing great when I found you guys. I think that was almost the last straw for him. Was surprised he hanged on for so long after all that honestly.”

“Yeah.”

We walked in silence some more after that before reaching the ice fields. We tied up together again in case either of us fell in a crevasse, and set off, carefully poking the ground before us. Seth was in the lead this time. Usually he went last. For the first time, I saw why.

Snow bounced off the air around and above him. Like there was a slightly curved glass lid, balancing on either side of him.

I’ll admit I had a little thrill of excitement when I realized what I was looking at. His wings were wide open, ready to catch either of us should one of us fall. They were huge, extending easily ten feet to either side.

I kept my finding to myself and went back to focussing on the crossing. Soon enough, we were through and walking to the tree line. The rest of the way was smooth sailing and we celebrated a successful second summiting of the mountain with Jared and Lindsey over supper. Seth announced that he would be quitting the club, as he had less and less time to focus on hobbies with work these days, but that he had loved spending time with them and everyone else over the years. It was sad, but they took it well and hoped he would still find time to hang out for smaller events sometimes.

The next day I was set to drive Seth back to the airport, when he admitted he’d just flown there on his own to meet up with me, and he could leave from anywhere to go home. So instead, we just drove to a quiet trailhead nearby and said our goodbyes. We promised to keep in touch and then Seth was gone and there was a wood pigeon flying away from me.

Once he was out of sight, the absurdity of the situation got to me and I started laughing and just couldn’t stop myself for a while. The whole drive home and for a while after, I would get these random bursts of giddy excitement at the realization that I had an answer! That magic was real. That we had survived something terrifying.

It’s quite funny, as I’ve been aware of these things now for well over half of my life — but I sometimes still get butterflies in my stomach at the thought of magic being real. It brings me a wonderful childish feeling of whimsy on dreary days.

As you know, we’ve stayed good friends in the years after that. Good enough to invite him to our wedding three years later, and good enough that you’ve know him almost the whole time you’ve known me! Still, I think you only saw what he truly looks like twice, before he bought a magical pendant that lets him change the age he looks like.

I’m not quite clear on the details of how he acquired it. I think it was originally cursed, but he was given it in exchange for purifying it. It’s either that or it’s still cursed, but the curse can’t harm him, and the service he did was to receive this ‘poisoned’ reward. He always dances around the story and shifts the details. I’ve learned enough about the magical world since then to know he likely physically cannot tell me the true story.

Still, it was terribly odd to see him look older once he started using it. That took some adjusting. It brought him great joy though, since he changed his appearance by increments, appearing older each time he met up with our friends until finally looking almost his age at our wedding. I remember you mentioning that the poor man had his years catch up to him rather suddenly and, oh, I struggled to keep a straight face, Fabi. I hope you didn’t think I was laughing at you.

It was nice to see our friend group relax from the invisible tension Seth’s agelessness had brought, and we went on to be good friends until life and time slowly scattered us all apart. In the decades before I got too old to brave the cold and the mountains, we summited countless peaks together. I remember you watching me pouring over maps and planning everything for endless hours.

I loved the times I would catch you looking at me, the tender love in your eyes. You didn’t care much for climbing, but you trusted me to be careful, trusted me to do everything in my power to come back safe. And I think you loved being able to see me be passionate about the things I enjoyed.

I know I did for you.

I’d often catch myself watching you tapping away at your laptop or jotting ideas down on the dog-eared notebook you carried with you everywhere you went. You were so focused. You were so good and methodical at what you did, yet you always went into it with a profound love of the craft.

I miss you Fabi.

I’m sorry, I got off track. I was talking about climbing.

Now, at the ripe old age of eighty-three, I don’t have the stamina to do any of that anymore. But Seth will still call half a dozen times a year, with a hike he’s heard about and we’ll go do them. Since you passed — almost five years now! I can hardly believe it — he’s been around a lot more. I can’t do things as easily as before, but I’m still hale and healthy. He looks the same as always, though looking back at old photos I’d say he’s changed subtly. Instead of twenty, I’d say he might be generously considered to look twenty-two. Most people have a hard time guessing his age these days, but I doubt any of them would peg him to be a man of eighty-three! It’s quite incredible that in the sixty-odd years we’ve been friends, he’s barely changed at all. Well, beyond deciding he’d rather be going around looking like a fifty year old, nowadays.

I suppose I should expand on the magical side of things, as I’ve been talking about magical pendants as though they were nothing of note.

Less than a month after ascending Mount Rainier, we went to hike part of the Appalachian trail together. It was then that he decided to answer all of my questions. And to introduce me to something that would allow me to see the magical world. When I found out that it was food, my first thought was “Great, drugs.” You’ll be glad to know it was not drugs, but rather butter from a magical walrus. I’m sure that would make a great street name for a drug, though.

Of course, he didn’t need any. Said he hadn’t needed any since the day his wings became permanent.

Well, I wasn’t going to miss out on the chance to see what he actually looked like, so I accepted the butter and tried a tiny bit. You can imagine my shock when I blinked and Seth suddenly had a pair of positively huge white wings sticking out his back. If I’d been more religious I’d say he looked like an angel - one that smelled a bit sweaty from the heat and was wearing a rumpled old band T-shirt so worn out I couldn’t read the name anymore, but still. I hadn’t expected this but the wings actually glowed! It was very faint, but visible enough.

I was a good friend, so I told him they looked like weird CGI glued on wings and why in the world were they shiny on top of everything else? He’d been standing awkwardly but that got him laughing and then things got back to normal.

We started our hike and he started answering my questions. I kept on getting distracted by the wings though. They were fairly reflective and sometimes I felt like I was walking next to a car, catching glimpses of my yellow shirt and bright red backpack in them. I had somehow expected him to walk around with them hanging into midair behind him, like they always do in movies and TV shows, but he actually kept them folded like a bird would. The ‘wrists’ were hanging off his shoulders and all the other feathers were overlapping, covering his whole back and extending two feet behind him. The wings were actually passing through his backpack as though it wasn’t there at all, which sparked my first questions.

He showed me that he could just make them fade in and out of sight, and when they were invisible they were utterly intangible. Even he couldn’t feel them then.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I drilled him on just about every subject I could think about after that. I wouldn’t ask questions when we were near people, but Seth eventually said we could just pretend to be talking about the plot of a book and nobody would bat an eye. Of course, he was totally right. Over the years of talking about this kind of stuff in the open, I’ve had two people ask me what we were talking about. The first time I said it was the plot of a book we were co-writing. The second time, I said we were talking about the lore of a table top roleplaying game we were participating in. It was quite funny to see the person’s enthusiasm die down rapidly as they tried to figure out a way to leave the conversation after that. We had a good chuckle about that after.

After that first introduction into the world of magic, I was curious, but somewhat satisfied as well. I don’t like walking straight into danger and much of what Seth was telling me about that world was dangerous. I enjoyed our discussions, but I never pressed to see more. Still, Seth brought butter for me when we would visit and I caught glimpses of the magical creatures that still populate the wilds of our world.

We once spent an hour watching a griffon hunt, drifting on the wind above a particularly beautiful valley. On another hike entirely, I once had the honour of seeing a curious fairy approach to talk to Seth, only to notice me seeing her and flee. Seth left her a tiny feather as an apology. Once, as we were camping in Yosemite park, there was a huge thunderstorm the day before we attempted to climb Half-Dome, and Seth brought me outside to see huge birds flying through the clouds. Their wings crackled with lightning, and all we could see of them were silhouettes alternating between darkness and purely illuminated with electricity. They were thunderbirds and it was an awe-inspiring sight.

Over the next ten years, Seth would bring a variety of foodstuff that would ‘open my eyes’. Apparently Fablehaven, the magical creature preserve he lived and worked in, had their very own creature that produced milk with these properties. They were experimenting with producing butter and selling it to the various people who needed it. I spent many hours listening to Seth wax poetic or swear up a storm about how their other projects were going. Notably, they were attempting to make cheese that would have a very long shelf life, while still keeping the magic. That wasn’t going terribly well and it took quite a few years before they figured out that particular conundrum. It worked though, and I have a small block of magical aged cheddar in the freezer. Meanwhile though, milk cookies were a good work around, though you needed to eat three for them to work.

I’m getting ahead of myself again. It was the year just before our wedding, when Seth invited me to visit Fablehaven for the first time.

I enjoyed a fantastic long weekend over there. I was accompanied everywhere I went outside the house which was fine by me, considering what I knew of the magical world by that point. I got to meet just about everyone who was currently living on the grounds, and heard endless fantastic stories about the many people who had been around before.

I also learned of the trauma Seth and Kendra, his sister, went through as children and the difficult situations everyone involved had been put in. They’ve healed as well as anyone could from all those events. By then, in their early thirties, they were both already twice as old as they’d been when it had all calmed down and ended. It’s horrific for me to think of two young teens having the weight of the world on their shoulders, just because they’d been arbitrarily given magical powers by entities that didn’t care about age and maturity.

I’ll stop myself there, otherwise I’ll simply fill the rest of these pages with a pointless rant that will change nothing. The past is in the past, and they’re both moving forward. At the time of my first visit, Kendra already had both of her children, a daughter and a son. The daughter was eleven and the son was eight and both spent most of their time playing with the fairies and asking me endless questions about the outside world.

Since that first visit, I’ve been invited over once every other year or so, usually on timings so my trips never coincide with the Solstices or Equinoxes which are apparently rather dangerous days. I have however been visiting nearby on three occasions on those dangerous dates and ended up helping Seth babysit the kids on a few of those nights. We would go out and watch a movie the kids wanted, before retiring to an old hotel. Seth had a few creepy stories to share about it, and he told the same ones every single time we went. The kids were glued to his lips at first, though the last two times I went they were both still annoyed they weren’t being trusted to spend the night back home. Shortly after that, they gained permission and were overjoyed, only to be plagued by nightmares for some time after.

I personally have no intention of ever looking out the windows on one of those nights, should I ever be invited to stay. You know me, Fabi, you know I would never get one squick of sleep after that.

One of my visits I hold dearest in my memory is the time Bracken, Kendra’s husband, actually called me over to ask for advice. Kendra’s father had injured himself and was refusing magical healing. He didn’t need to go to the hospital or anything, but he needed help doing exercises to get his muscles back in proper working order. Normally I wouldn’t do anything official outside of my usual work, but the Sorensons had been kind and generous towards me, so I took time off work and went to visit them. I helped Scott integrate some exercises into his life that should help, but I was made aware of a problem that was worrying Seth and Dale, who were both groundskeepers. The bison they raised were having some health issues.

I couldn’t help with that, not being a veterinarian, but it was me mentioning that that gave Kendra’s daughter Lilianna the idea to study in the field. I’m quite proud to say that it was my inability to do something that goaded her into learning for herself. The bison problem ended up being solved by a veterinarian who worked on various preserves and who was an old family friend.

I visited Fablehaven last week, after Seth failed to show up to one of our meetings. Kendra told me he was off on an urgent mission for the Fairy Queen and nobody knew when he would be back. She looked worried. Two of her grandchildren, Lily and Tim, seem to have disappeared at the same time as Seth’s departure and everyone is worried they tried to follow him. A great many creatures were interrogated before Bracken managed to find Seth’s Search and Rescue artefact in his room. It showed the children as being halfway across the world, in a dangerous place, accompanied by Seth. Much of the fervent anxiety that had been plaguing us all released upon learning this, but not all of it. Kendra especially seems to have been hit hard by this turn of events, even more so than her son whose children they are. I think the similarities to her own dangerous childhood are too much for her. This event is bringing back old memories.

I stayed the weekend, helping around the house as much as I could. She isn’t young anymore and neither am I. Fortunately for her, Bracken is around, steady and still as deeply in love with her as he was when I met them the first time. The man barely looks like he’s in his early thirties, when she’s visibly coming on in age, same as I am. Still, there is a youth to Kendra. Even as a hale and healthy woman who’s been on her feet her whole life, I still come off as somewhat older than her despite the opposite being true. She’s been blessed by her magic to age gracefully, though she tells me she’s refused quite a few offers to slow her ageing.

Kendra was blessed with two children, who are both doing very well and one of which has had grandchildren. I remember how happy I was telling you about this when they were born, Fabi. We were going to have them visit when they were a little older, but then you took ill and well, those plans fell through.

It was around this time that Seth and I began volunteering for Search and Rescue. I was following you around on your travels for your latest book and was inspired to help. As usual, Seth followed me shortly after once he found out. We participated together for a good five years, before I broke my leg while on a search. That was the first time I ever let Seth fly me anywhere. We were deep in rugged terrain and it would have been an utter nightmare to get out.

The flight was terrifying. Cool, but terrifying.

Also it turns out flight magic only just barely helped him fly while carrying a person. Definitively not as safe feeling as I’d been hoping.

After that, it took a while before my leg healed properly and I wasn’t allowed to continue participating, as you well remember my angry outbursts at the subject. Seth and I continued climbing during this period, but the climbs were less difficult for a time. By the time my leg was fully healed, I was back at an inflexible job and we depended on it for money. I couldn’t just up and go help people, though I desperately wished to. Still, Seth continued alone and participates in searches up to this day, though his methods have changed.

Though most of the time Seth would search in the normal way, sometimes, if the person was suspected of being further out or far more difficult to find — and especially if rescue was having trouble getting helicopters - he would fly. For his birthday that year, I chipped in with Kendra and we bought him heat vision goggles. It did wonders for his ability to find people, but he suddenly found himself in a conundrum, one he came to me for advice on.

See, he could see the people, but he couldn’t help them. Not without exposing himself. He still did it, the first time he managed to find a person, far, far off from the searching area. But he hid his face and pretended to be a local going on a hike. He helped tend to the person’s injuries and bring them to civilization, only to vanish right before searchers caught sight of him. The person he helped was bewildered and it sparked plenty of rumours.

So I was the one who suggested we come up with a system. I would gather bundles of essential items the person was likely missing out on (things like heat reflective blankets, fire starter, water) and if the person was healthy enough, Seth would just air drop these things next to them. He agreed and that’s what we started to do.

Eventually, he brought the idea of giving them a bag containing a paper map and circling the area they were in, with a compass and instructions on how to use one. If the person was still healthy enough to walk that is. At first I thought it was somewhat cruel, but then figured that, in the cases of people who were extremely far off from the search area, it could help. It wasn’t as though Seth could bring them over himself without giving himself away.

We bounced many ideas that summer, most of which just weren’t possible. Seth couldn’t walk people back to the search areas and help them through difficult terrain — eventually somebody would take a photo of him and would recognize him and then he wouldn’t be able to help anymore. But often it was a matter of life and death, from severe injuries to lack of medicine the person needed to stay alive — things that couldn’t be helped with a blanket and a fire.

Eventually, Seth went home and I didn’t hear from him for two months, until I got a call at the crack of dawn. He was overjoyed and claimed he’d found the solution. Or rather, made the solution. Apparently he’d gone to an old wizard friend for help, and together they’d made him a belt that prevented recognition. By the end of the week, he was over visiting, showing off his new magical toy to me.

We tested the limits of it. It was only active if buckled and the person wearing it said a specific word. A different word was used to deactivate it. If removed, it stopped working. It even scrambled photos. Each photo would show a different person standing in frame. The only consistency were the clothes’s colours. Every time I would look away and then look back at him, he would look like an entirely different person. Man, woman, thin, fat, wiry, muscular, and so on an infinite variation and assembly. The only thing that remained more or less the same was his height.

It even scrambled his voice to sound exactly like the person he appeared to be at the moment, even if you weren’t looking at him. We tested with video, his heat goggles and several other things before being satisfied that nobody would be able to recognize him. It was quite lucky you were off at a convention that weekend, Fabi, or you would have been very confused indeed at all the strange guests in our house.

Now, if this description sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Seth became very well known as the “Off-Trail Angel”, a play on the title of Trail Angel, given to those who help hikers in need. Seth grumbled about it a bit, disliking being labeled an angel of any kind, what with the wings, but I told him to suck it up and accept the compliment. We’d both been helped by various Trail Angels on our own hikes and they had all been wonderful people.

For a time it was all anyone could talk about, in the spheres of people who spoke of the supernatural and the 411 phenomenon.

The people who pointed out the fact that the Off-Trail Angel only ever appeared to those who had an official search and rescue announced were, of course, absolutely right in assuming there was human intervention at play here. I kept an ear out to every ongoing search and relayed the information to Seth. He couldn’t go to each one, but if the search dragged on, he would often fly out and take a look.

At some point along the line, a little over twenty years ago, he got a rare artefact that allowed him to see and sense the position of a person he was thinking about. It was a little clunky to use, requiring two whole sentences of nonsense magical words to speak out loud and a clear image of the person’s face and a name they responded to, but it worked. And it worked true miracles.

Because it could also show you where the dead were.

Seth methodically began to crack cold cases of lost hikers, mountaineers and others who had never been found. This was shortly after having suffered a few close losses himself and he just couldn’t imagine the suffering one must go through when there’s no closure. He made it something of a point to do this, and I decided to help him. I went through endless videos and articles and sent them to him.

One by one, the cases were given more information, bodies found and returned to families. In most cases, nobody had any idea how the person had made it there.

Before any of this could happen though, we had a problem to solve. How do you tell people where the body is, when you can’t walk the person back over to the authorities? Internet and gps marks were an absolute no, those could easily have been traced back to us.

I brought back Seth’s old idea of circling a spot on a map. He could write the exact gps coordinates and the person’s name on a piece of paper we would print at my place and then hand it over.

He said nobody would believe it or check it. We thought about how to make them do it for a moment, until I said he could just walk into the police station, or talk to a ranger or whatever, wearing his belt and it would be fine. That is exactly what he did and I’m sure you remember quite well just how quickly this event skyrocketed into popularity.

There’s that old video of the second time Seth brought the coordinates to a police station. You know the one — it must have passed on every TV channel and platform that supported videos for almost a full month before dying down a little. It’s the one where they show three different camera angles of him walking up to the front desk and dropping off the piece of paper before walking away. Every single camera view shows a different person.

Oh the people loved screaming ‘hoax’, until it kept happening and happening and each time they found what they were looking for at the coordinates.

I will admit some level of petty pride at seeing the naysayers flounder after that.

Of course, it didn’t take long for people to tie in the supposed Off-Trail Angel with this person and for a while that was the most popular ‘cryptid’ people spoke of. Then, as with everything, most people got used to it and it became commonplace for people to check several camera feeds when receiving a piece of paper.

Seth was even interviewed a few times, though he didn’t say much. Each of the four reporters who had been filming him had footage and sound of a different person and voice answering their questions. It was quite trippy, and Seth and I got a kick out of how odd it was. Even weirder was how one of the personas almost looked like Seth.

In between all of this madness, he continued helping Search and Rescue. One time out of three, he would simply join as someone walking the land, disguised as a slightly ageing version of himself. The other times, he was in the air. It was sadly common to find the person already dead, from whatever cause nature brings — be it exposure, injuries, rock falls or animals. Still, when he would find them alive, he would land nearby out of sight and, under the belt’s disguise, help them. He would give them a feather to keep them warm, tend to any wounds and give them some food. Then he would guide them all the way back to civilization or to the nearest rescuers. He would attempt to vanish without a trace if he could, but there were many, many rescuers that witnessed him carrying injured people to a stretcher or taking lost children straight back to their parents.

Still, even on the times he was searching on the ground, he would check on the person, using the artefact. Especially if it was getting dark and people weren’t going to find them yet. Those nights, he would head out and, under cover of darkness, leave them with airtight bundles of food, sealed water bottles and brightly coloured secondhand blankets as they slept.

I started gathering bright old blankets from secondhand stores, just for those occasions, and made little care packages for him to bring. All were built carefully, making sure there weren’t any traces of DNA or finger prints that could be traced back to me or Seth. I had a place for them in my storage box. They were sealed in those transparent plastic bags meant for packages, with glue on the open end. When dropping them off, Seth just had to slide them out of the bag without touching them and then off he went.

Of course, as you might remember, this would also end up turning into a rumour — one that would give some relief to the person finding themselves with this. Because those people were almost always found the next day.

We had a good system and, honestly, Seth saved countless lives doing what he did. He always made sure to remind me that my help was always greatly valued, if not by others, then at least by him. It’s something we continue doing together up to this very day and something I consider to have been the biggest secret I ever kept from you.

I’ve always felt bad about that. I would have loved to tell you everything. But well, much as I love you dear, I don’t think you could have sat on this kind of information without sharing it with someone. If you’d even believed me at all, that is.

I suppose that must be why I decided to write this letter to you now. It’s like a mirror of before. I have peace in knowing you are sleeping safe, yet now I worry for the children instead. Still, Seth will keep them safe, as well as he or anyone can. Both he and Kendra were deeply marked by their childhood trauma and neither wishes to inflict that on anyone else. Everyone worries all the same though.

I know that if I had told you any of the things I’ve shared in this letter, you would never have believed me, my dear Fabienne. I think it is one of my life’s biggest regrets, that I could never speak to you about these things, though I shared everything else with you. Still, that is through no fault of your own and I would never change the time we had together. You did not believe at all in the odd and fantastical, as was your right. And I respected that.

In your life that is. If this message somehow makes it to your ears, or mind or soul, well, I suppose that would be enough to change your mind on the matter, wouldn’t it? If it doesn’t, well, there’s no harm in trying and believing.

I suppose I just miss you by my side, as I always do, since you’ve been gone. Most of the time I get by pretending I’m on a trip, and you’ll be right there, tending to your garden when I come back. You loved that garden so, but I’ve always been rather terrible at keeping green things alive and I’m afraid I must tell you it has gone out of control.

As I am feeling anxious for the children and for Seth, I wish to share my fears with you. I want you to soothe me as you always did. You had such a lovely way with words. I’m rather pleased with my own pen thus far and I can say I’ve learned from the best. Its nothing quite as good as something you would write, love, but I’ve tried my hand at your craft and it’s almost as though I can feel you here with me again, in the scratching of ink on paper.

So here are my last secrets to you, my Fabi. Well, I still haven’t told you how I found your favourite cake recipe. I will keep that secret to my grave. Perhaps then, should we meet after, I’ll share it.

When I hear further from Kendra, I will update this letter with news, then burn it in the fireplace. Hopefully its ashes will bring the message to you.

P.S.: Seth and the children have returned safely. Little Tim found some kind of magical violin and is attempting to play it. Apparently the sound is horrendous, but not bad enough to ruin everyone’s joy at their return.

Sleep well, my love. I’ll join you someday, but for now I have a lovely celebration to look forward to. I think I’ll bake them some of your favourite cake, it’s always a win at parties.

- XOXO Sarah