"This was the worst idea in the history of the universe," Sucy said, huddling up to the fire. The fire in the actual fire pit that Lotte assembled with a minimum of sorcery and a maximum of bigness out in the woods. Sucy wafted the heat into her coat. "Stay in me, heat."

"I think this is cool!" Akko said from within a layer of scarves keeping her head warm. "Literally. I'm very cold."

"It's just right for Ithaqua Day!" Lotte said, taking her seat around the bonfire. "We're going to tell scary stories about the Walker on the Wind! In fact, I think I'm going to open up with the classic historical fiction story, Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo.' Ahem!" Lotte held up her phone and flicked through her list of .pdfs. "Do you want the classic, or the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark version? I can show you the pictures when you gotta get spooked!"

"Could you say that again?" Sucy said, pulling a pot from over the fire, "I brewed a potion of cold warding because I have just had it up to here with sweating in my clothes just to be warm."

"Ooh, ooh, me too!" Akko said.

"Of course, friend of friends. Drink deep." She poured herself a tall flask and Akko a mug, threw out the rest of the brew over her shoulder, and the two downed their potion in an instant. "Mm-mm. Feel that warmth." She stripped down to her school uniform and used her jacket as a pillow. "Now, what was that you were saying?"

Lotte adjusted her parka. "Well. If you're gonna play easy mode, I'll just have to play hardball... I mean mode. Hard mode, like on a video game." She pocketed her phone and equipped her wand. "Just a moment."

"Sure thing, Lotte!" Akko said, nesting in her shed winter wear.

The fire sputtered and died down to coals and embers. Lotte loomed over the pit, the dying light lending an eerie cast to her soft features. "When I was a little girl, we spent one Christmas out at the family cabin deep in the woods. My father and I went for more firewood, but at some point, we'd gotten turned around, and the wind blew snow over our tracks. So we had to trudge through the ancient woods alone, on a clear, velvet-black winter solstice. It was so cold out just breathing felt like inhaling needles. It was so clear it felt unreal, like I was dreaming on my feet."

Sucy nodded along. Akko wondered how long it was gonna take the cold resist potion to actually kick in.

"My mother always told me that the spirits of winter would keep me safe if I was ever lost. But the mana of that forest was not mine to use. I mustered what I could to speak with any spirit who would hear me. The wind whispered: 'you are dead.' That was when I heard the footsteps.

"My father covered my eyes, stood over me. But even if he'd covered my ears instead, I could feel them. The tread of titanic feet on the cold earth. The wind howling its fury. There was snow, sudden and furious, whipping into us like broken glass.

"Mother Mormo help me, I looked up through the gap in my father's fingers.

"Those eyes..."

The fire sputtered out completely. The dense cloud cover left them only with imagined light, save, perhaps, that which was reflected in Lotte's glasses.

"They smoldered in the sky like funeral pyres. They left eye-cutting trails in the night as the Walker on the Wind cast His shadow on the sleeping earth. I don't know if He saw me that night. Maybe I was lucky.

"Or maybe... He did see me. Perhaps, that bitter night, He extended a promise to me. To let me live... so long as every year of my life... on the night of His worship... I would bring Him tender prey."

In the sky far above great burning eyes opened.

Akko shrieked and fired off her entire reserves of magic into the sky. The especially well-fed bonfire spirits ducked out of the way of her bullet curtain.

Lotte giggled. "Ooh, I got you! Akko, you scaredy-cat."

Akko's screams gave way to laughter. "You did, you lil' scamp!"

The fire spirits settled back into the pit and burned merrily. "I've been practicing that one for like a month," Lotte said, taking her seat."

"Gotta hand it to ya, that was some showmanship," Sucy said. "That's points, there."

"You better believe it," Akko said, practically hugging the fire. "By the way, Sucy, I'm not feeling the cold resist yet? Or do you not really feel it?"

"I washed that mug with the counter-potion first," Sucy said.

"...hey! I could've gotten frostbite, you jerk!" Akko said.

"I know," Sucy said wistfully.