Hello. Sorry it's been quite long but I've had loads to do ...anyway, enough of me.

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of this story. Not even a character. Not even a chapter. Not even a page. Not even a line.

Authors can't © words themselves, can they?

Anyway...

It was like a dream when we returned. The snow still lay thick and crisp upon the frozen ground. The lake was icy cold, but, strangely enough, I was quite warm and dry as I returned to the real world. I could hear the crackle of feet upon twigs in the forest, and I turned, but Kartik had already melted away.

Felicity emerges, sodden and glaring. She is barefoot and without her dress. I would laugh at her bedraggled appearance but she seems curiously agitated, glancing this way and that for something that I have not seen, have not heard.

"Fee? F-Fee?"

"What?" she is vague and disorientated, whipping her head back round to meet my gaze questioningly. I smile a little uncertainly at her, and then the real danger overpowers me.

How long have I been gone? I cannot remember seconds, minutes, hours. My mind is new, fresh as spring and painfully clean.

"F-Fee? What are you doing?"

"There was someone here."

"Oh?" I am thinking that she heard Kartik, but I do not bother to voice the thought. It will be forgotten, float to the bottom of her mind and further until swallowed up by inky ice.

"Shouldn't we be getting back?"

"Where?" I am irritating her, it is clear.

"The school?"

"But our game?"

What game? What am I playing, unwitting and unknowing? I frown, until she smiles in annoyance and speaks to me as though I were a child.

"Hide and Seek."

The words are familiar – I remember hiding from my mother as a child, alone on the streets of India, giggling and crouching low so she cannot see my shadow. I can taste it, rich spices and heady scents that make your head swim, that make the world twinkle and blur.

India.

"Felicity ... I want to go back to Spence now."

And the way she looks at me makes me feel as though I have failed her.

I am warm and dry once more. I think snow is better enjoyed inside than out. It looks so pretty and peaceful from the gentle glow of the Great hall, where we sip cocoa and laugh about safe things. "The Realms, Gemma! We could have snow!"

I have had enough of snow.