Shadows in the Snow
Chapter 2- Losses in the Night

kssssshhhhhhhkskskssshhhhhhhhktshhhhhhhh...
Sora's eyes blinked open, and she lay still for a long moment, wondering what had awoken her. The answer came as she became aware of a faint hissing, crackling sound, echoing from another part of the house. Frowning, she sat up.
I wonder what's making that weird noise? It sounds a little like flames...I hope nothing's on fire. I'd better go check.
Pulling back the covers, she swung her bare feet onto the floor, stood woozily up and gave her head a good shake to clear it of sleep before padding into the hall.
A weird blue light was flickering on the wall across from the den, and pooling on the floor between the door and the wall. Sora blinked several times to get used to the light, took a few steps tentatively toward the door, then paused.
I don't know if this is such a good idea... She sighed. Then again, it could be some sort of electrical fire. I have to find out; the whole apartment could go up in flames if I don't do something. Closing the distance to the door in a few resolute strides in an attempt to not lose her nerve, she took a deep breath and stepped inside.
She only got a quick glimpse of something round and blue, the size of a large platter, before the blaze of blue light glaring from it made her hold up her arm to shield her eyes. The crackling sound increased, becoming a roaring like a thousand radios' worth of static crossed with the sound of a huge bonfire on a winter's night. She gasped for breath as a coldness seeped across the floor, chilling her bare feet and legs, like the air that flows from the door of an open refrigerator...but a hundred times colder. Squinting through her fingers, she made out an enormous circular disk of crackling, sparking blue energy, at least three feet wide already...and growing. It was beautiful, in a wild, foreboding way. She wanted to run from it, run until she passed out from exhaustion rather than be near it, and yet something in her wanted to look at it more closely, to study it, to touch it...
Tentatively, she stretched out a hand, still shielding her eyes from the glare with her other arm, and held it a few inches from the disk, poised on the edge of indecision. White pulses of energy like the ripples on a pond began to emanate from the point where her fingers almost touched the blue fire, and tongues of the blue light licked up like flames to snap at her fingers. They seemed to have no effect. Gathering courage from this, Sora slowly reached the last inch, closing the gap.
The tip of her index finger touched the energy.
There was a flash of blue-white light.
Sora was sucked silently into the disk like a leaf into a hurricane.
She didn't even have time for a scream.
And with a sound like the last remnants of a milkshake being slurped away, the disk collapsed in on itself and vanished, leaving only a popping sound of air rushing to fill a sudden vacuum in its wake.

* * * * *

Ken Ichijouji, the Digimon Emperor, chuckled to himself as he watched the foolish Digidestined girl vanish in a flash of light. The screen went blank; there was nothing more to see.
"So immature, these Digidestined. They make my job far too easy... This one should have been given the crest of Curiosity, not Love. Or maybe just the crest of Stupidity..." Still laughing, he turned to a board of buttons. "Oh, well. Either can kill a cat just as well...or a Digibrat." He waved his finger over the panel, smiling wickedly. "Hmm...where shall I have my Dark Portal spit her out? Dense jungles...boiling deserts...vast oceans..." He frowned. "So many biomes, so little time. I wouldn't want her to die in the portal. That would be far too easy. This plan requires suffering to be truly effective." Suddenly, his face lit up in a look of true, manic evil. "Ahh...perfect."
His finger came down at last, jamming an ice-blue button flat into the black metal of the board. There was a metallic phut from the panel, a sound of gears grinding, a crackle of static, then silence.
Ken grinned and tilted back his chair, folding his arms behind his head. "This should be interesting...pity I won't be watching. Even demigods need their beauty sleep." With that, he kicked the panel, which let out a mechanical whine and shut down, plunging the room into darkness. "Ahh, much better." With a sigh, the Emperor drifted off into a sleep as deep as the one he'd woken Sora from, scant minutes before, but filled not with dreams of Tai, but with dreams of conquest...and of suffering.

* * * * *

Blue, crackling, dizzying energy everywhere! Sora wrapped her arms around her head, wailing a silent scream that died in the sound of bonfires and static and insanity surrounding her. She spun through a wasteland of blue, wildly out of control, her legs whip-lashing with the speed of her endless spin. It was almost like the times she'd gone through the digital portals with the younger Digidestined, yet nothing like it. That had been joy and triumph and a sense of adventure filling her to her bones. This was pain and fear and misery rolled into one, and all played out in a mad gyrating world of blue lights and white noise. She would have done anything to make it stop, but it kept going, like a roller coaster gone wrong, or the time she'd let Tai talk her into going on the Zipper at the fair...
Tai...
"Taaiiiiiiii!" she screamed, but the sound was drowned in the flood of static. She felt like she was going to throw up, or turn inside out, or die, and the spinning continued, whipping her hair across her face and her nightshirt across her legs and her soul against the walls of her heart until she wanted to die, just to end the nightmare...
There was a crack like lightning, and it all stopped.
Sora blinked, her arms still wrapped around her head, her eyes still jammed shut, and tentatively listened. No static. No spinning. Just a faint whistling sound, and a feeling like wind rushing past her ears. She opened her eyes.
She was falling, with only feet to go, towards a glittering expanse of white.
She screamed.
There was a burst of stars against the back of her eyelids, and a dull pain coursed through her head, wrenching at her mind.
And then, finally, mercifully, she slipped away into blessed darkness, and there was silence...

* * * * *

"And you say she's just...gone?" Tai's eyes widened, and he looked like he was about to drop the receiver of the phone. Kari stared at him over the top of her rice bowl. He looks like he's been punched in the stomach by a MetalMeramon. I wonder what's up with him?
"Tai?"
He didn't even look at her. He seemed stunned, listening to something the person on the other end of the line was saying. "No. I'm sorry, Mrs. Takenouchi, but I don't have any idea. She didn't mention anything like that to me." Another pause. "Thanks for telling me. You too, Mrs. Takenouchi. Bye." He hung up, still looking like he'd seen a ghost, and turned to Kari.
"Weww?" she said, her mouth full of rice.
"Sora's gone."
*wbpffutttsplurch!*
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?" Kari asked through what little rice was left in her mouth, staring at her brother.
"I mean gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Her mother said that when she woke up this morning, Sora's bed was empty. None of her things are gone, so she probably didn't run away, but there are no signs of a struggle. Her mom thought she might be over here..." He blushed a little. "But obviously she isn't. I don't know where she is, but..." He sighed. "I don't like this one bit." He tossed her a dishtowel from the rack by the stove. "Here, you might need this."
Kari glanced down at the mess of rice littering the table, and blushed. "Oh...sorry about that." She began to wipe the table, but her hand slowed its motion, then stopped, as she watched her brother dejectedly slump from the kitchen and into his room, closing the door. *He looks really worried. I hope Sora's okay, for his sake as well as hers...*

* * * * *

White. White, white, white. Shiiro. Blanc. She didn't question where the words came from, or where she'd learned them. There would be time enough for that later, when she got out of the white. Wrapping her arms around herself, she shivered uncontrollably. Assuming there is a way out, she thought to herself. Maybe everything here is white. Wherever 'here' is... she added as an afterthought. Her bare feet crunched through a crust of white, and she was suddenly buried to her hips in it. Shaking and blue-lipped, she struggled out of the bank, forcing back the tears welling in her eyes for fear of their freezing to her face before she could wipe them away.
She swiped them away with the sleeve of her clothes, then looked up, trying to get her bearings. An impossible task in this wasteland. For all she knew, she'd been crossing her own path for hours. Or minutes. Time was irrelevant in the white. The furrow she made in it as she passed could easily be refilled by the droves of airborne ice that whipped her cheeks and numbed her fingers. She squinted into the distance.
And saw a light.
Forcing the feet that had lost feeling long ago to keep moving, she fought her way through the deep banks of white. The light was so close, yet so far away. It grew as she neared it, and became a window; a great arched window set in a wall of stone, along with many other windows. A great fortress loomed out of the driving white before her, with an equally great door set in its front. She stumbled the last few steps, raised her feelingless hands to catch herself against the door as she fell, and curled one into a numb fist before slamming it into the hard wood.
"Open the door!"
The words were hoarse and faint, coming from her frozen throat. She swallowed and tried again, slamming her fist harder and harder against the unyielding door until she could see it but not feel it bleeding, the drops of red spattering bright against the white at her feet, sinking little dimples into it before being swallowed by more of it coming from above.
"Open the door! Please, I'm begging you, open the door!"
There was a rumble of voices, heard faintly with frozen ears through the thick wood, and then a scrape of wood on stone as the great door laboriously opened. Unable to support herself any longer, and without the door there to hold her up, she fell onto the flagstones inside, her eyes closing. Voices echoed in her icy ears.
"What is it?"
"Stand back, let it breathe!"
"Light a fire!"
"Fetch blankets!"
"Do you know what it is?"
"I've seen nothing like it in my life!"
"Me neither!"
"Here, step aside! Let me through, you foolish menfolk!"
The last voice was vaguely maternal, and she felt herself lifted in huge, soft arms, and wrapped in something warm.
"Poor little cub. It's well nigh frozen. Build up the fire, quickly! Get it something hot to drink!"
The furry arms carried her with a gentle rocking motion, and she began to drift away, her numbed fingers curled in the soft fur of her rescuer's chest. The rocking stopped, and the arms tried to set her down, but she clutched at them, the only warm, good things in a world of cold and white. Gently, her weak fingers were disentangled from the fur, and she was helped to sit up as something warm and sweet was held to her lips. She drank, choking a little, but getting most of it down. A delicious feeling of warmth was spreading from something on her left, and whatever she was sitting on was warm, soft and dry. The arms took the drink away and settled her on the soft thing, before tucking the blanket tighter around her. A soft crooning reached her ears, and she snuggled into the soft thing, her body beginning to thaw.
As she fell asleep, warm at last, her eyes flickered open once before she drifted off, and she saw her surroundings for the first time since she'd set foot in the fortress. A large, gentle white face looked down at her, kindness in its round black eyes.
How ironic, she thought. It's white, too...
Then sleep claimed her.

* * * * *

When Tai arrived at the Takenouchi's apartment, the police car parked out front made the whole situation come suddenly into focus. He'd been worried at first, but somehow it all hadn't seemed quite real. There had still been that niggling feeling that it was all a dream, and that he'd wake up any second, grab for the phone, dial Sora's number and hear her familiar voice reassure him that she was fine. Seeing the police car shattered that hope. As he hurried inside, Kari at his heels, he realized he wasn't worried anymore.
He was scared.
Mrs. Takenouchi met him at the door, looking pale and drawn. She smiled vaguely when she recognized him, an empty expression.
"Oh, it's you, Taichi. You'll be wanting your jacket. Come in, please."
Tai blinked. Jacket? Oh, yeah...I'd completely forgotten about that...
Kari nudged past him, following Mrs. Takenouchi into the kitchen. He shook himself awake and went in after her.
Sora's mother was pouring hot water into three mugs. She looked up as Tai came in. "There you are. What would you like? I have English breakfast, Lady Grey, Garden Herbal, o-cha, instant coffee, hot cocoa..."
"Uh, just tea, please," Tai stammered, dropping into a seat next to Kari and looking around. It had been awhile since he'd been to Sora's house.
"Hot cocoa sounds great, thanks," Kari piped up, trying to be cheery. Mrs. Takenouchi smiled at her, almost genuinely this time, and reached for the tin of cocoa mix.
Tai's foot bumped something under the table, and he bent over to look. It was a tennis ball, rolling slowly across the floor from the push he'd given it. He grabbed it before it could roll away, and sat up.
"Mrs. Takenouchi?"
She glanced over her shoulder, and he held up the ball.
"Oh...that will be Sora's. She does tend to leave her things lying around..." Mrs. Takenouchi swallowed, and turned back to her tea making. "Take it into her room, there's a good boy. You can get your jacket while you're in there; it's on her chair."
Tai stood up, holding the tennis ball and looking a bit awkward. Mrs. Takenouchi seemed to be concentrating on the tea, however, and he felt bad about reminding her of the thing she seemed to be trying to forget for the moment. He was a bit glad for the excuse to leave the room. Hurrying down the hall, he reached Sora's door and opened it, stepping inside and closing it behind him. He felt for the light switch, found it and flicked it on, blinking the spots from his eyes.
Sora's room was surprisingly neat for that of a teenage girl. He wondered if her mother had cleaned it up a bit, or if it was always that way. He hadn't been in there in what seemed like ages... She'd redecorated. The old wallpaper, green and stamped with soccer balls, was gone, and the walls were painted light blue. A painting of flowers hung over the head of her bed, instead of the old soccer posters he remembered. He walked over to the dresser and set the ball on it, then glanced around for his jacket.
A bright red object caught his eye, and he turned toward it. A familiar-looking red envelope lay on Sora's bedside table. Feeling a little guilty, but very curious, Tai went over and sat down on the edge of her bed, reaching for the envelope. Turning it over to the address side, he recognized Sora's name, scrawled in his own untidy handwriting.
Nah...couldn't be, he thought, and slid the card from inside it.
It was a valentine, creased at the folds from many openings and closings. A red rose was printed on the front, with the words For My Valentine scripted under it in gold. Inside, a simple Happy Valentine's Day, love Tai was written in the same messy scrawling of blue ink that 'graced' the front of the envelope. However, on the back in smaller blue letters, was a short paragraph of text. Tai read it quietly out loud, blinking hard a few times as he did.
"I saw this kind of rose in your garden and thought you might like the card. What's it called? I guess a rose is a rose, whatever you call it. It's a nice color, though. It reminds me of the sunset, back in the Digiworld. Remember how nice the sunsets were there? Now with all these modern conveniences like the Digiports, we don't spend many evenings in the Digiworld anymore. I kind of miss them, really. I was wondering if you'd like to come with me sometime, to watch one. We could find a part of the Digiworld without any control spires and make an evening of it. Just the two of us. Call me, okay? Love, Tai."
Sighing, Tai set the valentine down. He'd written it the past winter, in a burst of boldness. Sora had called him, but the talk had turned to sports almost immediately, and they'd never gotten around to the trip. And now it might be too late... he sighed miserably...
Don't even think about it! Tai thought fiercely to himself, snapping out of his wretched daze. There's no way anything bad has happened to her! She'll be back soon, and this time I won't take her for granted, and we will go see that sunset! So there... With a resolute nod, Tai tucked the valentine back in its envelope and set it back on the bedside table, then headed out to get his tea...

__________

Once again, Digimon isn't mine. So...send me your opinions! What thinkest thou so far? Long, isn't it? I hope it's caught your interest. Coming soon, Chapter 3: Awakenings in the Mind!