Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If I did, I would put him to work for me, repairing broken furniture, lifting heavy objects, cooking food, and assassinating my enemies. Also, I don't own Firefly. If I did, I'd… uhh…. Actually, I'm really not certain what I'd do if I owned Firefly.

Co-authors disclaimer: If I owned firefly, I'd hire Jayne to lift things, Simon to knit things, Kaylee to twist things, Mal to shoot things, and I'd send Wash to die in battle so I could have Zoe for myself.

Credits: Thanks go out to Sudentor for his assistance with translating and with the beta work for this chapter. Additionally, large parts of this chapter were co-written with TheAntiRyan, entitling him to credit and to the above disclaimer.

Episode One: The Endless Winter
Chapter III: Ravenous Things

_oo00oo_

I come among the peoples like a shadow.
I sit down by each man's side.
None sees me, but they look on one another,
And know that I am there.

My silence is like the silence of the tide
That buries the playground of children;
Like the deepening of frost in the slow night,
When birds are dead in the morning.

I unswear words, and undo deeds.
Naked things know me.
I am first and last to be felt of the living.
I am Hunger

"Hunger" – Robert Laurence Binyon

_oo00oo_

"I am a leaf on the wind," he said. "Watch how…"

With a massive cracking sound, the front viewport of Serenity caved in and lunged for him with fingers of shattered plexiglass and warped metal. He screamed, or at least he tried to. For some reason, his lungs and chest refused to cooperate. Perplexed, he looked down and tried to figure out why.

His brain couldn't process what he was seeing. Absently he observed that he seemed to have a wooden pole the size of a birch tree growing out of his chest. A sudden wave of fatigue overtook him and he collapsed forward, or would have, but the pole in his chest (why was that important again?) wouldn't even allow him to do that. And so he just hung there, suspended, like a puppet dangling from one final string.

"WASH!" somebody screamed. "Wash, baby. Baby, no! Wash come on, you gotta move, you gotta…" the voice grew more distant. Whose voice was that?

It was Zoe.

And in that cruel moment the confusion cleared and Hoban Washburne realized that he was about to die. He could see the others dragging Zoe away, her voice growing more and more frantic as they grabbed her arms and wrestled her out of the bridge. He was going to die alone. He was going to…

The darkness moved in to claim him.

He woke up with a scream, his heart thundering in his chest.

Wash looked around. The cockpit was empty, and devoid of twelve-foot-long wooden posts sticking out of his chest. For that, he was immensely grateful. His hand drifted absently to his left side, under the armpit. The rough grain of the wooden post had sheared off the skin there like sandpaper, over an area so wide that the full span of his hand couldn't even cover it. It was nothing but a gnarled mess of red, angry scar tissue, even now, a full year later. He'd broken four ribs, as well. He still had trouble breathing.

Zoe had an almost identical scar on her right side. His mind brought back the scene – the crash landing, the brief moment of calm, Zoe's scream and the sound of shattered plating as she tackled him, even as Serenity's viewport caved in under the weight of the Reaver's wooden missile. It tore through the space between the two of them and drove through the pilot's seat, the rough carve of it driving the two of them apart and taking a good deal of skin and blood with it, besides.

Blood. There'd been so much blood. Not just from him, but Zoe. It was only Simon's quick thinking that kept the two of them from bleeding out. He shuddered, and then took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

Breathe in. "I am a leaf on the wind." He lied to himself. Leaves didn't bleed.

Breathe in. "I am a leaf on the wind." He lied again. His heart didn't believe him and continued crashing against his ribcage like an animal trying to tear its way free. It was too much.

"Tā mā de" he hissed, and shot from his chair. The entire bridge of the ship felt like it was closing in on him and he had to get out. He bolted from his station, sliding down the ladder and striding through the front hallway with purpose, down the stairs, down past the catwalk and into the cargo bay. The air-lock opened easily and then he was outside, feeling the shrill bite of the cold cavern air against his skin. He crumpled to the ground and groaned. His breath was vapor. He fought hard to keep from retching.

He'd neglected to tell Mal about these panic attacks. Or Zoe. He suspected they knew anyway; it's not like he could hide them. God, had he just stepped away from his post? In the back of his mind he could hear the voice of his old drill sergeant from the naval academy. The man was screaming at him. He fought for a moment to calm down, breathing the cold, bitter air deeply until his heart calmed again. He didn't know how long it took before his breathing returned to normal. Too long, though. And then he was back in the ship, sealing the airlock behind him. His shoulders sagged as fatigue overtook him, now that the panic was leaving, and he trekked with lead feet through the cargo bay again, climbing the stairs and following the catwalk to the dinner hall.

He put on a pot of coffee, lay back in one of the chairs and closed his eyes, letting his senses drift to his breathing, and then his heartbeat, and then through the ship. He could hear the soft sound of Jayne's snores coming from the crew quarters; no small feat, considering that Jayne's room was the closest thing the ship had to sound-proof. River was slumbering as well. He'd drawn the early watch, manning the bridge in case they were hailed over the comm. But then again, any alert from the others, he could hear just fine from here, he supposed.

"I am a leaf on the wind." He told himself again, and this time it didn't seem like as much of a lie.

He wiped the cold sweat off of his brow and groaned. He couldn't let this keep happening to himself. As the coffee finished brewing and he poured himself a mug, he wondered just what Mal would do when he realized that his pilot was broken.

_oo00oo_

The old trapper sat on top of the bones of a fallen pine. He stared at the remains of the trap in front of him, his lip curled in a soundless snarl.

"That's the third this gorram week," Filchner spat into the mess in front of him—a jumble of heavy gauge mesh and framing and the frozen entrails of what might have been a fox, at some point. There was barely enough of it left for him to be sure. Blood spackled the base of the birch where the trap lay. A hard shudder worked its way up from the base of his spine; he'd seen plenty of broken traps in his time, working the game trails of New Alaska. None of them broken like this, though.

"Damn wolves. It's gotta be," his partner, Byrd, cursed. Byrd's mood was equally foul at the loss of both a night's stew and a valuable pelt. "Didn't even leave the fur behind."

"Wolves ain't that smart." Filchner said, a deep furrow appearing across his brow as he considered the trap in front of him. Filchner was a slight man, easily swayed by wind and superstition alike. His beard was the thickest thing about him, though as of late it had begun to grow wispy. He knew his traps like the back of his own hand, though, and this trap? He'd made it himself a few years ago, back on one of the rare trips into town where he'd had the occasion to. Wolves couldn't break a trap like this.

"Ain't no other way to explain it, Rue," Byrd said. He was the younger of the two, and less experienced by far. Byrd filled out where Filchner thinned, and seemed to stay stocky in spite of the lack of food this far south. The extra weight reached his face, making him look more than a little childlike under the layers of chicken scratch he tried to pass off as a beard.

"Don't try to sell me nè yì tuó shǐ, Byrd," Filchner sneered. "You saw that snare yesterday. Ain't no way a wolf made it that high. Ain't no way." He rose from the fallen pine, shaking off the ache in his shoulders.

"I'm just sayin," Byrd sulked. "It's the only thing what makes any sense."

Filchner sniffed. "Ain't the only thing."

"What, a bear, then?" Byrd asked. Filchner paused at that and scratched absently at his beard. Bears were tall enough. Vicious enough. Most of them stayed further north, where the climate was kinder and food more plentiful, but in this part of St. Alban's, they ranged far during the early months of winter, grabbing what they could before hibernating. It wasn't a bad assumption. Except there were no bear tracks. Filchner shook his head.

"You ain't tellin me you think someone's movin' in on our claims?" Byrd scoffed. "I mean, look what they done to the catch. Ain't no human does that."

The two men looked long at the tangle of bloody pulp and wire at the base of the birch tree. Byrd was right. "No boot tracks, either," Byrd shook his head. "Just wolf tracks. An' not enough snow or wind these past few days to cover up if a man passed this way. How do you explain that?"

Filchner couldn't.

"Go check the snares on the south trail," he told Byrd. The dismissal in his voice was clear.

"Rue…" Byrd started.

"Go check the snares, Abner." He ordered. Byrd looked stricken for a passing second, then ground his teeth together, no doubt biting back more than a few unkind words.

"Sure thing, Rue." He finally managed, and then he stalked off, the sound of his boots crunching against the snow growing slowly fainter, until only the blowing wind remained.

Filchner cussed under his breath. Byrd was right. There were plenty of wolf prints, but no sign of human passing. But Rue Filchner knew his traps, and the cage in front of him had been more than adequately proofed against wolves. So was the snare they'd stumbled across yesterday, hanging a full fourteen feet off the ground. Whatever was getting into their traps, it wasn't a wolf. Filchner would have laid money on it, except all the tracks said otherwise.

More unsettling was this; looking at the wreckage in front of the trap in front of him, Filchner couldn't shake the feeling that it had been opened before it was broken, like whatever creature had done it just wanted to terrify the trapped critter inside. Higher in the birch tree, about eight feet off the ground, there were a few broken branches and some scuffed bark which could have easily been caused by the cage being hurled through the air.

That scared the living shit out of him.

Byrd deserved more credit than the old trapper had been willing to give him. The kid had smartened up since he first moved out here from the equator. Not enough to see what the tracks weren't telling him, but enough that Filchner owed him some sort of apology. The old trapper's fingers twisted absently around a small grey ring on his thumb—a small keepsake from a battle long lost. Once, it had a shine to it. No longer, though; the rough winters had worn it away.

"Gǒu pì" he cursed his predicament one last time, still fiddling with the ring around his thumb. Then he set off on his own path around the frozen lake, working his way along the northern bank.

_oo00oo_

She was immersed in a darkness so thick and unyielding that it clung to her skin like ink. How long she had been walking, she did not know. All that remained of her world now was the sound of the burning melody from her dream, and as the notes pulsed through the oily black like an invisible flame she could feel the heat of each vibration whisper across her body—a thousand feather-light kisses humming across her cheeks, her breasts, her legs. The sound had become closer than a lover. It permeated her. There were moments where, had she not been able to feel the stead rise and fall of her feet as she trekked towards the source of the music, she would have sworn that there was no more River; that only the melody remained.

She wasn't entirely sure, in fact, that she would remain. At first there had been the dream of the flame, but that had consumed her and now there was only this. And with each step forward, the song inside her grew and she could feel it pressing and swelling in the depth of her until the boundaries of her being grew fragile and strained. She felt like a bubble on the surface of a cascading stream, swirling lazily around in a brief eddy, waiting to be caught by the current. She was afraid that she was going to pop.

She trekked through the darkness for a thousand miles more before finally reaching the source of the song. And then she did.

_oo00oo_

"Wolves, my ass."

A torn rabbit leg dangled from a snare fifteen feet above him. A wolf on St. Alban's could clear a twelve-foot jump if it had lid ground beneath it. Fifteen, though? On unpacked snow? But again, that's what the tracks told him. He had no way of knowing what to make of it.

This was the fifth snare he'd set along the northern trail of the lake. The other four had been untouched, and the line he carried with him contained a few hares and a fox. Whatever was getting into his lines wasn't taking everything, and for that he was grateful. He rested his hand on the rifle at his side, though, feeling its reassuring presence as he trudge along the snow covered trail. Ten minutes passed, then thirty, then an hour. Shortly before noon he arrived at the far end of the lake, where the north and the south trails met once more.

He was alone. And so he waited, sure that Byrd would be along soon enough. The south trail took longer to check, after all. There were more traps.

A half hour later, Byrd still hadn't shown, and Filchner's patience was wearing thing.

"Yīkuài rèqì téngténg de gǒu shǐ," he spat. "Byrd, where in the nine hells are you?!" His voice echoed out over the frozen lake. There was no response. "Gorram backbirth," he muttered. "Damn fool wouldn'a known his way out of his mother's own bī if'n a doctor hadn't been there to show him."

He grabbed his line and pack and began the trek around the southern end of the lake, cursing Byrd for every bit of extra work he'd had to do. He had no idea what kind of trouble the man had managed to work himself into, but as he started to check the lines on the far end of the south trail—lines that Byrd should have already finished—he decided it had better be pretty damn good, or the younger trapper would never hear the end of it. By the time he'd cleared six lines, Byrd still hadn't shown.

"Byrd!" he yelled again. "What the hell is goin' on?!"

Still no response. A gust of wind rolled down from the nearby mountains, kicking up whorls of snow.

"Byrd!" he yelled.

Silence.

For the first time since he'd set off around the south end, Filchner began to worry that something might be wrong. He stopped collecting from the traps he passed, and instead just started checking for signs of his partner.

There were thirty-one traps on the south trail. Filchner knew them all intimately. He used a spare coil of rope from his pack to run the line of game he'd caught up a tree, so that the wolves wouldn't get to it in his absence. He'd cleared out the final six lines on the southern trail already. Now, though, as he set out towards the fork in the trail where they'd parted ways, it was just a matter of glancing at them to see if Byrd had been there.

The twenty-second trap on the line was a small metal cage, concealed under some brush near a stand of birch. It had been left untouched and un-sprung. The nineteenth was a simple wire snare. It had caught a fox, which dangled, limply, fifteen feet above the ground.

The fourteenth was a spring-loaded jaw that looked to have caught, of all things, a mountain cat. It hadn't been kind to the creature, either; its death struggle against the teeth of the trap looked to have lasted a while, if the thrashed snow and brush indicated anything at all. There was still no sign of Byrd, either.

Filchner knew, now, that something had to be wrong. There was no way that Byrd wouldn't have made it this far. And with the weather, and Byrd's experience with the trail, there was no way he could have gotten lost, either. Filchner didn't like the options that left remaining. He quickened his pace.

The tenth trap in the line was another snare. Untouched. So were the ninth and the eighth. No sign of his partner.

The seventh was a cage he'd built himself. There was a hare inside, still alive. No sign of Byrd.

The fifth was a pit snare. Empty. No Byrd. Whatever the hell had happened to him, had happened shortly after they had split ways.

It was on his way to the third trap in the line that he finally find his partner's trail. It ended in the middle of a small, snow-filled clearing, abruptly. Far too abruptly. "Byrd?" he called. He was having trouble making sense of what he was seeing.

The clearing wasn't large; maybe fifty feet across, all told, and covered shin deep in snow. The trap was another cage, hidden in a thick stand of birch on the far side. Byrds tracks emerged from the forest on that side and then wound around the edge of the clearing towards the birch stand. And then they broke pattern and lurched towards the center of the clearing, leaving behind long, deep furrows in the snow. He'd been running from something. And then…

Nothing. His tracks simply stopped—two empty prints in the snow with not a thing to fill them.

"Abner?" his voice cracked. The clearing was completely silent, and he was keenly aware for the first time that he wasn't going to get an answer. He drew the bolt on his rifle and steeled himself against the silence, taking a cautious step forward to investigate his partner's tracks.

"Ab…" something rustled in the bushes to his side and a deafening *CRACK* broke the silence of the clearing. It took Filchner a moment to realize that just emptied his rifle at a fox, and that the sudden shaking of the earth around him was, in fact, the hammering of his own heart. The fox tore away through the brush, unharmed.

"Shénshèng de diàntáng," he hissed, and reached into the pack at his waist, grabbing a new bullet for his rifle. It dropped into the snow, his fingers trembling too much to get a steady hold on it. He took a deep breath and then stooped to grab it, fishing it from the snow and then loading it into his rifle. Then he took a few cautious steps into the clearing, towards the tracks Byrd had left behind.

They were knee deep, with no sign of a struggle at all. After all of that running, halfway across the clearing, it was if he'd just stood there and… what? Then what?

Then he spotted the first flecks of red in the snow.

"Jīdū de shēntǐ," his face went pale and his heart started pounding again. He took a moment to master his fear and was about to examine them further when, impossibly, he heard the telltale crunch of something stepping in the snow behind him.

_oo00oo_

She welcomed the dissolution. With it came a rush of sensation beyond description. Beyond hearing, or sight, or taste, or touch—a medley of new senses, a rush of knowing. She knew Serenity, ensconced in its cave in the lonely mountainside; a steel lightning bug humming with energy, swaddled in a cocoon of stone and snow. She knew the snowy wastes and the secrets buried beneath billions of tons of earth, sealed in by aeons of permafrost. She knew the vast network of silent, patient caverns carved by ages into the crust of the planet, untouched by human feet. She knew the bright glare of Zhu Que shining against the vast expanse of snowy wasteland that covered the southern hemisphere.

She knew other things, too. And these things surprised her. She knew that a thousand miles south of Portage, along the edges of an island-sized continent hidden entirely by ice, when the southern borealis lit the evening sky, spirits of wind and light danced across the snows. She knew that the caves below Serenity eventually led into an aquifer that had been around almost as long as the planet itself, and that in that aquifer, something slept, something immense, and when it shifted in its slumber the motion was such that vibrations of it could be picked up on sensor arrays across the planet, if only faintly.

If there was any sense she kept which could be considered even remotely human, it was her sense of feeling. The planet thrummed with life and she could feel the vibrations and the heat of it rising from her core and suffusing the entirety of her being. She could feel the pulse of life across the surface, so recent, so young, but already accepted as part of the planet. The entire planet vibrated in a soundless symphony.

Absently, she felt a single, dissonant note arising from the mountains nearby, and in her curiosity, her consciousness rushed to understand it, rolling down the mountainside and through forests dense with birch and pine, across the surface of a frozen lake, until she was in front of it. It was wind and the lonely howling of wolves, starlight and the chill of the mountain snows. Something about it seemed deeply familiar. She reached out her hand to it.

And then it noticed her.

The dissonant note magnified a thousand fold, rising into a horrible, keening screech that she knew all too well, and before she was even aware of it moving, it had lunged, ripping into her, infecting her, tearing right into the core of her being.

_oo00oo_

"AAIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Wash was still sitting in the mess hall, nursing a cup of cold coffee, when River's scream tore through the halls of Serenity. He was on his feet in an instant, running out of the mess and into the hall connecting the crew quarters. He almost opened the hatch to her bunk but, God help him, thought better of it. Even on the best of days, River was a murder machine waiting to b e activated; he knew that far, far too well after the crew's experiences on Mr. Universe's moon. He'd almost forgotten that in his haste to get to her.

But her screams continued, the shrill edge tapering off into a deep, tortured wail. Whatever was going through that head of hers right now was…

"Gorram hell, what in the lǎoshǔ chūmò de xiàshuǐdào dìyù is happening to her?!" the hatch to Jayne's bunk opened and he lumbered out of it like a bear emerging from its hibernation.

"I have no idea." Wash said, his lips set in a grim line.

"What in the hell do we do?" Jayne asked. "We can't just leave her in there."

Wash stared at Jayne blankly. What the hell? Less than a year ago, that's exactly what Jayne would have done. And he would have jammed the hatch with a pipe, as well, to make sure she couldn't get out. Now he was searching for solutions. Wash racked his brain for one and found it.

"Wait here, Jayne. Bar the hatch and make sure she stays in there," he said, and then he was off, running down the hall and through the mess, and into the bowels of the ship. It took him less than a minute to tear through the cargo bay and into Simon's office, where he frantically began searching the shelves.

"Come on, come on" he muttered, looking over the labels one after the other. "Come on." Peroxide, scopolamine, rubbing alcohol, topical anesthetic. "Oh, fuck, please don't tell me he took all of it with him!"

He had. "Gods damn it! Tā mā de gǒu yùn." Simon must have taken the sedatives with him. Wash rooted around in the cabinet for anything else that could be of use. Even from here, he could hear the terrible sound of River screaming for the pain to stop. Finally, something caught his eye.

"Ether. Oh, thank God. He didn't take it all." Wash grabbed the bottle of ether and a cloth and raced through the ship again, back to the crew quarters. River was still screaming. He'd never heard anything this bad from her before. Jayne had grabbed the hatch and was holding it in place, but it didn't seem to be needed; she hadn't made any effort to escape her room.

"What've you got, Wash?" he asked.

"Ether," he said, removing the cap from the bottle and damping the rag with it. He held it at arms length but the films were noxious and made him light headed.

"I'll go first, then," Jayne said. "I hold her, you knock her out."

Wash nodded. Left unsaid was the worry that River would fight back. If that were the case, Wash worried that neither of them would be able to handle it.

"On three?" Jayne asked. Wash nodded again.

"Okay. One, two, three." Jayne turned the wheel on the hatch and lifted the door open, opting to jump straight down the hatch instead of using the ladder. Wash followed, stepping quickly down the rungs.

_oo00oo_

Rue Filchner twisted around with a speed that shocked even him, bringing his rifle to bear and pulling the trigger. Another thunderous *CRACK!* echoed throughout the clearing and the forest.

Nothing was there. Filchner was on the verge of terror now, reaching for another bullet in the pouch at his belt to reload his rifle. It was an uphill battle just to keep his hands steady. "Zǔzhòu shàngtiān," he cussed. "What in the hell is happening?" he muttered, loading and chambering his rifle again. "What in the gorram hell is happening here?"

His only answer was another moment of complete silence in the clearing. He looked all around him again, just to make sure. He was alone. There was nothing. Not even a footprint to indicate that there was anything else in the clearing besides him. He looked again at Byrd's last footprints, at the flecks of red around it. How had he not seen the blood? He was keenly aware now of the fact that he would probably never see his friend again.

As he stared at the flecks of blood, something else caught his eye. The sunlight reflecting off of the snow was blinding, but if he squinted his eyes enough, the ground around the footprints and the blood flecks wasn't pure white. It had an odd hue to it. He was having trouble placing it. A gentle breeze started to blow and the powdered snow around the empty boot print started to lift, carried away by the wind.

It was pink. He could see it now. No, not pink. Red.

_oo00oo_

River was curled in fetal position on her bunk. Her moan was like nothing he'd ever heard before. Nothing human. Wash couldn't begin to fathom the pain she was in. She didn't seem to notice that they were there, too caught up in the source of her torment. She started muttering something to herself—a mantra to ward off the pain, perhaps. Wash couldn't make out what she was saying.

Jayne moved softly to the edge of her bed and gave Wash a glance, then reached to hold her down so that Wash could use the ether to grant her some respite from the pain.

Instead, River exploded in a flurry of movement and flailing limbs. Her legs wrapped around Jayne's neck and she brought them down with force, cracking his head against the frame of the bed. She hopped into crouching position on the mattress and saw Wash across the room, looking at her, with a rag soaked in ether in his hand. And then she screamed at him.

This was nothing like her earlier screams. This was fury and defiance and hate and pain all rolled into one, and before he had a chance to process what was happening she had launched herself off of the bed at him, barreling into him with all the force her ninety pound slip of a frame could muster. It was a surprisingly large amount of force, and she used it to jam her elbow right into her solar plexus, driving him into the wall and knocking every bit of air in his lungs right out of him. The rag hit the floor, and Wash would have followed, except that she had her hand around his neck, choking him.

Her eyes were wild, her hair a mess of crazy tangles, and her shoulders heaved with every violent breath she drew. Wash could feel himself starting to black out, the fumes from the ether rag and the lack of oxygen slowly overpowering him. She leaned in closer and he got a good glimpse of what pure insanity must have looked like. It was enough to terrify him.

"It wants." She hissed. He had no idea what she meant but he was able to recognize it as the mantra she had been chanting earlier. River's hand tightened around his neck.

And then suddenly there was a meaty cracking sound and River lurched forward, her head smashing into his nose. The pressure around his neck slackened and then disappeared completely as River slumped against him, completely unconscious. Wash fought to get his breath back against the tightness in his throat and the incredible empty ache in his solar plexus. Blood ran freely from his nose; he thought it might have been broken. He looked up through the red haze to see Jayne standing where River had been, massaging his knuckles and cussing under his breath at the pain in his hand.

"What in the gorram hell just happened here?" Jayne asked.

_oo00oo_

The wind in the clearing slowly began to pick up. It tugged against Rue Filchner's beard and coat and cap, and kicked up vast whorls of powder, carrying them into the forest. And as the snow was carried away, he started to see the full picture of what had happened in the clearing.

There was blood. Blood everywhere, scattered across the snow in large patches of red so wide and far reaching that Filchner had no explanation for it. It surrounded Byrd's last tracks, stretching for fifteen feet in any direction. A thin layer of powder, which must have been brought in by the wind, had concealed the blood, but was being carried back out again as the gusts picked up. Filchner's terror increased with the mounting gale; his face blanched and all of the strength left his joints. It was all he could do to keep from collapsing to his knees.

The blood had seemed off to him, at first, and only now did he finally piece together what was wrong with it. It was spread evenly across the snow, a thin layer coloring the top of it for meters around. If it had been liquid, if it had been any normal attack, the heat of the gouts of blood leaving his body would have melted deep trenches in the snow, and would have spread out in lines and spatters around Byrd as he died. There were no spatters, though, and no trenches. Whatever killed Byrd had left behind nothing but a spray of blood so fine that it rested on top of the snow evenly.

"Wolves, my ass." He cursed again. It was the only thing he could think to say. And then he ran like hell for home, traps forgotten, game forgotten. All he wanted now was the safety of his cabin in the woods—the roar of the fire and the log walls and the sturdy iron bar locking the door.

He ran like hell.

_oo00oo_

Translation Notes

Tā mā de – Translates roughly to "fuck this," except without the sexual connotations inherent in the English phrase.
Nè yì tuó shǐ – Roughly, "that pile of shit"
Gǒu pì – Strictly translated, means "dog fart." However, in usage and tone, it's similar to the English phrase "horseshit."
Yīkuài rèqì téngténg de gǒu shǐ – Roughly, "that piece of steaming shit." Obtained using Google Translate.
Bī – You should have no trouble translating this on your own, given the context.
Shénshèng de diàntáng – Roughly, "Sacred temple." Obtained using Google Translate
Jīdū de shēntǐ – Roughly, "Body of Christ." Obtained using Google Translate.
Lǎoshǔ chūmò de xiàshuǐdào dìyù – Roughly, "rat-infested sewers of hell." Obtained using Google Translate.
Tā mā de gǒu yùn – Approximately, "curse my rotten luck."
Zǔzhòu shàngtiān – Roughly, "curse the heavens above." Obtained from Google Translate.

_oo00oo_

World Notes

I know next to nothing about trapping, and even less about trapping during the winter. Filchner and Byrd's actions, then, are based on my very faulty understanding of what trapping entails, and are likely in error.

Filchner and Byrd's names, like the rest of the characters introduced in this arc, are taken from Antarctic research stations.

My research on wolves indicates that a grown wolf can jump about twelve feet in the air. This is based off of a quick Google search in which I typed "how high can a wolf jump?" into the search field.

_oo00oo_

Author's Notes

Well, it's been close to a year and a half since I updated this. My apologies go out to you. The truth is that, for the first year, I had no idea where to go with this story, and plenty of other things (such as moving to California and attending grad school) to distract me. Towards the end of 2012 I finally understood what was missing; I'd taken the situation on St. Alban's and wound it tightly like a spring, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what kind of event should trigger it so that it would all uncoil. I had originally decided that I wanted to avoid introducing anything magical into the story until at least the second arc, but then around November, as it was getting colder, I found an easy way to resolve my problem.

Magic is chaos. And now that I'd set up the characters and their motivations over the past few chapters, all that I needed to do was introduce chaos. I looked over the previous chapters and realized that by taking a new direction I could tie in numerous references and minor threads that I'd originally intended to resolve in different ways (like the death of McMurdo), and that I could do so in a more interesting and graceful way. And so I introduced chaos, in the form of something large and horrible and predatory and, above all, magical. And with that, I inadvertently switched the genre of this particular arc to survival-horror.

The next several months were spent trying to write what happens next. It culminated in a long chapter script. The good news? This chapter is only the first part of that script, and only a third of it, at that. Expect another large update in the near future.

SaintJimmy84

_oo00oo_

Author's Question

Anybody want to guess what the creature is?