I don’t know for sure how long we knelt behind the bush, but we were there long enough for the never-ceasing chill from the snow to seep into my bones, the wolf laying silently next to me, his eyes on me anxiously. Reaching over, I lay my hand on his head and he seemed to calm down slightly. After I got wet and cold, Dallas met my eyes.
“Let’s go,” he mouths, and I take one of the packs, and he takes the other. Leading the way, he stands, still stooping down, hunched closed to the ground. I follow his lead, as close to the ground as I can stay while we run. I’m partially numb and really uncomfortable, but I grit my teeth and go along silently, Bones following. While we’re running, it starts to snow again, and while I hate the fact that more is coming, I’m grateful that it will cover our tracks.
When we’re well beyond the village, Dallas straightens up and slows down, and I follow suit with relief. I’m breathing heavily, and he is too, but our gazes lock and I can’t help but grin. “We did it!” I exclaim, keeping my voice soft and low so it won’t carry. He grins back, letting the pack fall to the ground. “We did. And I have something for you,” he tells me. Mystified, I let my pack fall from my shoulders as I shuffle closer. He turns and kneels down in front of it, pulling something out, though he hides it in the coat so I can’t see what it is.
He turns back to me, and a playful smirks makes it’s way onto his face. “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” he asks, and I can tell it’s obviously a rhetorical question. I move closer until we’re standing close. “What’d you have?” I ask, my voice barely over a whisper. He pulls two chocolate bars out from behind the coat, holding one out to me. I’m so stunned that I don’t reach out and take it, until he laughs, startles me into leaping forward and wrapping my arms around his neck, causing him to stagger and us to fall, snow swirling up around us. Bones danced around us, sniffing at us, and once again I found myself in Dallas’s lap.
“You’re the best,” I inform him, finally taking the chocolate bar from him. He grins at me and I snuggle up against his chest, wanting to find shelter from the wind. He wraps his arms around me briefly, and we sit like that for a few moments before the cold becomes too much. “Come on, let’s get back to the cave,” he says and slowly I awkwardly clamber out of his lap. I turn to help him up but he’s already bounced up. We shoulder our packs again and walk side-by-side, Bones nipping at our heels.
It’s a relief to step inside the cave. It seems like a furnace compared to the cold outside, and I immediately go to poke it and add wood, making it bigger and brighter and warmer, the pack still on my shoulders. Soon, the blaze is even hotter than it was when we got back, and it’s then that I take the pack off. Dallas is sitting on the bed, against the wall, the pack lain out in front of him. Going over to him, I drag my pack along and then sit next to him, curling my legs up beneath me and leaning against him. I take the chocolate bar out of my pocket and put it in my lap, staring down at it with my head on Dallas’s shoulder.
“We should eat them before they melt,” he remarks. I sit up, nodding my agreement, and gently unwrap it. Chocolate had been a luxury before the winter set in, but I hadn’t had any since the end of the world started. Slowly, I take a bit of it. It, surprisingly, is still as good as fresh chocolates were before, melting in my mouth. I let out a moan as it dissolved on my tongue, and glancing at Dallas, who had his eyes shut and his head leaned back, I knew he was treasuring it is much as me. “We could save the rest for a special occasion; store it in one of those side tunnels that stay cold,” I suggest.
Opening his eyes, he turns to look at me, giving me a small smile. “That’s a good idea,” he tells me, wrapping the remainder of his chocolate bar back up. I follow suit and together we walk down the main tunnel until we find a ledge big enough for them. We lay the candy on the ledge after decided it’s sufficiently cold enough to keep them hard and frozen, then walk back to the main room and sit next to the fire.
After a few minutes of silence, Dallas is the one to break it. “I got us a few other things to use that we hadn’t planned for,” he tells me. I look up at him, realizing for the first time that he was actually taller than me. “What is it?” I ask. “A pillow, for one thing. A real pillow. And a sleeping bag to use as a mattress,” he says. My eyes light up. “You carried that. I also got us a couple of blankets.” Hesitating for a second, I reach up and kiss his cheek. “I think I made the right choice with not eating you,” I mumble. Moving sluggishly, I reach over to my unopened pack and open it, struggling with the knots tied. It keeps slipping out of my grasp just as soon as I get ahold of it.
Laughing, Dallas reaches his arms around me and helps me, undoing the knot and spreading the contents out. The first thing I pull out is the sleeping back, then the blankets. At the very bottom of the pack there’s four bottles of shampoo and six bars of soap. My pack alone would do us for a very long time. In his pack, he had six more bottles of shampoo, four more bars of soap, three towels, and the pillow. “I feel like we’re rich,” I whisper, turning to look up at him. Where he’d leaned forward to help me, his face was right next to mine, our noses almost touching. I sucked in a breath that caught in my throat, and he froze.
Reaching out, he pushed a lock of my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. He let his hand cup my face, and my breathing was shallow and hesitant. I knew that anything could shatter the moment, which was precious. Most people didn’t have anyone with them, living alone and like savages. I hadn’t found someone, he had found me, and, admittedly, he saved me by warning me about the two women we’d found.
He leans forward slightly, and just as our lips are about to touch, Bones starts barking at the cave entrance, snarling and yelping. Our noses bump together painfully as we jump back, moving automatically to the entrance. Pushing aside the barrier, I storm outside, my knife making it’s way from my pocket to my hand. In front of the cave, huddled on the ground, is a man dressed in a red so deep it looked like he was wearing blood. For a second, I thought it was blood, and I rushed toward him. Then he lifted his head, and I knew that he wasn’t human.
“Who are you?” I growl. “A lesser demon,” he responds, a twisted smile marring his face. “Demons aren’t real,” I say with much more certainty than I felt. The demon, for I didn’t really doubt him, laughed. “Then explain my existence, and that of my brothers. We’re real, darling Anastasia, and we’re here to warn you.” I freeze, the knife falling from my hand and hitting the snow. “Warn me about what?” I ask, my voice trembling. “The end of the world, darling,” he tells me, “and perhaps even your destiny.” I back away until I bump into Dallas. I relax instantly, his presence calming me after so little time of knowing him.
“What are you talking about?” I demand, automatically snuggling against Dallas. His arm wraps around my shoulder and pulls me closer to him in a wary manner. “Your destiny, Anastasia, to lead everyone on this continent. This is the Dark Ages, and it’s your time to bring light to everyone,” the demon tells me. I shake my head. “No. I don’t believe in destiny anyways. I’m a normal girl trying to figure out what I’m doing in this godforsaken winter!” I say, unable to keep the hysteria out of my voice. The demon cackles. “I’m afraid not, darling! I’ll be back when the snow stops, and maybe then you’ll decide to trust me.”
And just like that, the demon disappeared, with no trace of him having ever been there. Turning to Dallas, I could see that I wasn’t crazy and that I hadn’t been imagining it. “What the hell was that?” I choked out. “I don’t know,” he tells me, leading me back into the cave as it starts to snow harder, the world turning into a white whirlwind that the barrier blocked out.
