The cold was unlike anything she had ever felt before: it stabbed, it pierced, it went through her coat like a shell through armor. She knew the winter gear wasn't lacking – it had worked elsewhere – but this was entirely different, a cold that ate you up. In the same way that darkness seemed to devour light completely, this country ate up the heat voraciously.

This wasn't a land for men, so perhaps that was why the Sirens had made a base here. Preparing an offensive had been excruciating, and executing it a hundred times more so. There had been some tremendous edifice hidden in the frosty winds, a glacier-white mountain with tremendous guns installed in her sides…

They had done damage, at the very least. She couldn't say how much, or if they had even opened the window for their comrades to exploit – there was something else on her mind, the urgency of red blood on white snow.

(It was all so terribly white. The snow reflected what little light there was. She had heard that during those long arctic days, the light reflecting off the snow could blind – but there was no snow blindness here. Just the bitter cold and the dark, the latter barely pierced by the light of her torch.)

For what it was worth, the blood-stained snow reflected the light of her torch a little less fiercely. Darkness in the light. She traced the trail until the white-on-red of snow and blood was replaced with the white-on-red of blood marring a uniform, the fluid gumming up around the buttons and freezing pink on the torn fabric of Tennesse's dress.

"Erebus…" she gasped, her breath coming out shaky. The torn fabric let her see hints of strong muscle, tanned skin, and white scars rising and falling with labored breaths. "You're…?"

"Fine," Erebus whispered. Well, as fine as one could be in a place like this, but now didn't seem like the appropriate time to complain about lacking warmth.

"And I'm not," Tennessee murmured. When Erebus didn't respond, she chuckled, although the laughter faded into panting and groans. "That bad?"

"... Yes." Erebus said. She took Tennessee's hand – the intact one, the one opposite… – and squeezed it. She couldn't say how much she felt it through the thick leather, but…

"Feels like my left. It's my left, ain't it?"

"It is, but–"

"How's my left breast pocket? There's a letter…"

Thankfully, it was above the worst of it, even if a bit of blood had snuck up onto the letter's bottom corner. "For California?" Erebus hazarded a guess.

"Yeah." A bit of snow was coming to rest on her now, and while some of it was melting, more was piling up. The cold was everywhere. "Take the rest of the stuff in my pockets too."

Erebus didn't mind the blood. That was temporary – hands could be washed, gloves replaced – but the shame of ignoring a dying wish couldn't be blotted out. A tin of on the go hygiene stuff, a first aid kit, a folding knife, military ID, cigarettes and their lighter.

"Is the knife for her too…?"

"It's for you, you dolt–" Tennesse coughed, flecks of red almost blending in amid the darkness of her glove. "You need to get out of here, yeah?"

"But–"

"Christ almighty! I'm practically dead, you aren't."

"A burial–"

"Are you insane?" Tennessee gasped. "It's fuck-off cold here, Erebus. Get out."

"I can't just–"

"You can." Tennessee hissed. "You don't have the energy to do that. My dying wish is that you don't bury me, got it?"

"Y-yes."

"You getting out of this mess is enough for me to rest easy, alright?"

What else could she do? She took Tennessee's heavy cloak for warmth, her badges for California, and made for home. Despite the darkness of this weeks-long night, she could navigate well enough. The problem, again, was bearing with the cold in the meantime.

The snow was ceaseless still, pouring without end into the roiling sea or swallowing up empty vistas, the rare tree reaching up with frail, frostbitten hands from a sea of white. Starting a fire in conditions like this was a hopeless pipe dream, but the mere thought of it kept the lighter in her trembling hand for most of her journey – even when she was more liable to drop the thing into the drink than actually use it to light something.

Perhaps the lighter was one of the better objects she could hold. She didn't have much actual use for it, and if she dropped it she wouldn't have to fumble in the cold or God forbid reach into the sea. The letter and Tennessee's badges were lodged into a pocket she wasn't sure she could even work open anymore.

It was regrettable that cold and darkness were associated, she thought. Of course, heat was a constant companion of light – even the fierce reflected light off the snow – but there were times when heat was paired with darkness. While the space between the stars was cold beyond imagining, the center of the earth was warm and buried. The inside of a womb, where man first emerged from that greater darkness, was warm and dark both. Hiding under blankets was warm and dark.

Oh, she wished for a blanket now, although she wasn't sure if she could trust herself to get back up again after lying down. A sliver of extra warmth came from Tennessee's cape. The navy blue was a bit different to her preferred blacks, but it was dark like ink compared to the deadness around her. Empty paper, doused in enough white-out to bury everything. A mirror for the moon above, sterile as quicksilver.

Where the sea met the snow, there was some meager noise, but otherwise, the world was mute. Well, that discounted her: she made sound, she had a torch that introduced some light beyond the pale moon and the stars who danced overhead. Still, she felt so meager… when she passed by, her sound died away. Her light, painfully visible as it might have been, didn't have infinite range either. A few molecules of water melted by her torchlight might be freed for a few moments before being imprisoned by more snow from above. And then it would be as if she was never there.

She wondered if there were winters like this before life. Barring the trees, she could imagine millennia like this. Nothing but the forces of nature working themselves out, the senseless, unseen violence of waves against rock. Perhaps some part of her had been part of it, a speck of an iota in a snowbank meandering its way into a glass of water…

It would end up somewhere else, eventually. That was the way of things.

(The medals were impossible to forget, though. They sat close to her skin, cold fire against her breast, pressed close by hastily tightened clothes.)

She wasn't sure how long she had been without sleep. A day? Whatever the case, the darkness of sleep grew tempting by the moment, her exhaustion growing more quickly than the temperature… Confusion and drowsiness could have been due to a lack of sleep or it could have been hypothermia. Still, one thing she had been blessed with was a keen eye. Perhaps she couldn't always process the information perfectly, but what she saw was unclouded. Truly unclouded.

Blue-white, like the color of a particularly vexing lightbulb, although the radiance was more meager by a factor of a hundred. Or perhaps it would be more fitting to say it was her radiance. It was fitting, really. If anyone had the will for it, it was her, and Erebus could guess as to what her goal was.

She would need to get her hands on paper and pencil when she returned – she'd have something to do as soon as her hands regained feeling, at least. Hopefully, she would be able to deliver more than one letter to California – Tennessee would have a lot to say before she even dreamt of moving on. She was already working her way to speaking now.

(New ghosts seemed to struggle with that sort of thing – a spectre could have a will or grudge sufficient to leave them lingering, but strength enough to enforce their desires on the world was a different thing entirely.)

In the meantime? Well, Erebus was fairly certain that she wouldn't be getting lost.

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Inspired by the song/poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Hints of inspiration also from "To Build a Fire" by Jack London. Both were introduced to me by Jacob Geller's marvelous "Fear of Cold." Pun intended, chilling video.