Chapter Text
In the present, in the dark light of the fire, Seff finished her food. The plate had warmed slightly in her paws, and she set it down beside the pots and pans. She licked both it and the cutting board clean.
"I'm awake," Rohan announced, sitting up straight and letting the blanket collect in stacked ribbons at her feet.
"How long?" Seff asked. She was aware of the burgeoning routine in her response, and wasn't sure why she felt so compelled to ask; it wasn't as though she was doing anything dangerous while Rohan was asleep, but Seff felt, regardless, that she'd be more comfortable not seeing her cook.
"I woke up just now," Rohan replied, yawning as if to prove the point. She stood up, leaning against the chair. "My leg feels much better, you know. Though my back is freaking killing me." As if for dramatic effect, she bent backwards and inaudibly cracked her back, then her neck, then her shoulders
"That's good. That your leg is better, I mean," Seff said. "I'm going to change your bandages. And maybe we can work on getting you a proper bed."
"Did you only just remember to change them?"
Seff narrowed her eyes. "Sit back down," she said, standing and walking over to where Rohan was. Rohan obliged, and Seff knelt down and rolled up her pants leg. "I should've done this yesterday," she continued absently.
"And you forgot?"
"A lot got in the way. You didn't remind me." She sighed and looked up, meeting Rohan's unwavering gaze. "But, yes, I forgot."
"It wasn't hurting too much. I didn't think to remind you."
"Like I said," Seff replied, "that's good." She unwrapped the bandages and removed the piece of gauze she had placed over the wound. "If it hurts, that means there's probably something wrong."
"Where are you throwing this stuff out?" Rohan asked, wincing, though more at the sight of the dried blood crusted around the wound, Seff figured, than at any sudden pain.
"I have a bin out back," she said. "When it's full, I'll dump it in the woods. Before you ask, pollution is honestly the least of my concerns."
"You'll dump it far away?"
"Yeah," Seff replied. "Of course."
"Good," Rohan replied. "I don't want anyone smelling the blood."
"Me neither." Seff parted the fur around the wound and first inspected it visually, then placed her muzzle close by to check for the sour smell of infection. When she was satisfied with its condition, she took some of the leftover water, mixed it with a little antiseptic on a cloth, and wiped away the dried blood. It had completely scabbed over, so she did not bother with another piece of gauze. Instead, she wrapped it firmly in another bandage and rolled Rohan's pants leg back down.
"Better?"
Rohan shrugged. "I guess."
"Is it itchy or painful?"
"No. Not really."
"Then that's the best we can hope for." Seff took the discarded bandages and gauze around to the door. She pried it open with force that never seemed to diminish, as though the latch froze anew every night, and walked out back in the biting cold. She had forgotten to grab her coat before she left, having shed it sometime in her sleep, and immediately noticed; she forced the dumpster open and threw the bandages away as quickly as she could before rushing back inside, nearly slamming the door behind her. "Are you hungry?" she asked as soon as she returned, the blood rushing in her ears.
"Mhm," Rohan replied. "I can feed myself, though." As if to prove a point, she stood and walked over to where the hay was stored, and took and ate some in tiny bites. "We should go back out."
Seff cocked her head to the side. "Why now?"
"What? Why not?"
"We have food, and I don't want to overexert you while your leg is still healing. Why go out?"
"To look for my parents," Rohan said, with a sudden bite to her voice. "Or have you forgotten about that, too?"
"Right. I'm sorry," Seff replied. "I haven't forgotten."
"Plus," she continued, calmer, "we could always stock up on more food, even if we already have it. And I'm bored."
"You want to do it now?" Seff asked.
"As soon as we can."
"Make sure to bundle up, then. It's cold out there."
"Of course it is," Rohan said. "You think I'm stupid."
"I don't," Seff said. "You're remarkably intelligent."
"Thanks."
She had read once that it wasn't good for a child's work ethic and mental health to call them smart; Wynn had left a magazine lying around on parenting once, because Seff always insisted on print and Wynn found it more fun to leave things around than to directly talk about anything. The child should be complimented on effort, said the header article, not intelligence, to instill the value of studying and focus and avoid the pitfalls of a fixed mindset.
"That doesn't discount what I'm saying, though. Wear a coat."
Seff couldn't recall if she had been complimented on either as a child. Mostly, adults had praised her for being respectfully quiet. She decided she was being a terrible parent, and decided in turn it would be best that she have some hopefully-decent replacements soon.
"Whatever. Of course I'll bundle up. The sun's gone. Do you think I've spent any time here not bundled?"
"Your hood is down," Seff noted. "I had a friend who lost the tips of her ears to frostbite."
This was a partial lie; the friend in question had been an acquaintance by the most charitable definition, though Seff had really seen her with her ears cropped and, awkwardly, asked about it. Rohan raised her hood and tucked her ears inside.
"You never put up yours," Rohan replied.
"I don't have one."
"You don't have a hat?"
Seff shook her head. "If I lose my ears, you can tell me you told me so. But yours look worse than mine."
"Rude."
A few months after she had left out the special feature on childcare, Wynn had set out a medical magazine, stolen from her doctor's office. The back side, afterthought that it was, focused on frostbite, explaining which old folk remedies worked. There were accounts of warm water treatments that would make it better and hot water treatments that would make it worse and treatments that fell in a third category and wouldn't change anything.
Most of the magazine was on something else entirely, on diseases inside that burrowed their way through someone and tore them apart. The front pages were hopeful, referring to early methods of detection and cures, so Seff didn't worry, and she didn't read the innermost articles, since that was where the driest parts were, and she was no scientist. She left the journals and pamphlets to pile up at the house, and absently wedged a claw under her wedding band to fidget with it, and worked on sealing all the cracks in the cabin, and hired an electrician and called out "let there be light" when she finally flipped the breaker.
"I just don't want you to get hurt," Seff told Rohan.
Wynn stacked more magazines on children and babies atop the ones on diseases of the pancreas and liver and quartered stomach, and everything was perfect, and Wynn's parents calmed down, though they rarely called, and Seff and Wynn stayed in the rental house when they weren't visiting the cabin, and when they did go to the cabin Wynn never dressed for the occasion and always complained she was cold, but she always showed up, and those few weeks lasted forever, and every night the moon was full.
"I won't."
Silence.
"You know, I never would have met you," Seff said absently. "Had she lived."
"What?" Rohan asked.
"Wynn died," Seff replied. "A while ago."
"Oh."
"A few years ago. Right after we married. She was young. I was young. We sort of U-Hauled. Did you know that?"
"I mean, I kind of figured. She's not here now. I thought, you know, death or divorce. You sounded pretty sad about it when I asked about her."
"The former," Seff said. "I'm not divorced. If she had lived, I wouldn't be at this cabin."
“Oh."
“We were renting a place from her mom, you know. That's where we lived most of the year. This—" she gestured vaguely around "—was supposed to be for vacations. Summers. That sort of thing. And, we decided, for my work, so I had a place to do it away from home. She didn’t like me as much when I was covered in sawdust. I tracked it inside the house.”
“But she had you build a cabin.”
“And?”
“You would’ve been pretty messy building it. That’s dumb.”
Seff gave a sharp half-laugh. “Guess she was thinking long-term.”
There was a prolonged silence.
“Obviously, that didn’t work out,” she continued. “I didn't have a place to stay besides this. We were renting our main house, like I said, and I didn't inherit any other property. Her parents eventually decided they liked me, after a lot of deliberation on the matter and, like, shitty peace offerings, pardon my French, but not enough to discount their prices as much as they had for their daughter." She scratched at her neck. "And, I don't know if you know this, but freelance carpentry isn't the most consistent source of income."
"Makes sense, I guess."
"So I moved. I don’t know if it happened for a reason. Like, the universe wanted me here, eventually, and decided to kill my wife to get me there. God willed it, maybe.” A bitter note passed through her voice for a moment, then faded.
“I’m not religious,” Rohan replied. “My family’s not. I don’t think anything really happens for a reason.”
“I’m not either,” Seff said. “Parents were, ostensibly, but we really only went to services once in a blue moon. But, you know. Sun’s gone. I don’t know how the world works anymore. The sky could be a painting, for all I know. Big field of stars.” She hesitated. “Sometimes, as a kid, I’d glance up and think it looked remarkably flat. Like a soundstage, kinda.”
“Shakespeare was a wolf,” Rohan replied.
“What?”
“Didn’t he say something about the world being a stage?”
Seff shrugged. “Maybe. Are you trying to imply derealization is an inherent lupine trait?”
"What?" Rohan blinked. “No. What does that mean? Is that a stereotype?”
"Derealization is, like,” Seff paused, thinking of what to say. “It’s when you sort of end up thinking things are all fake. Feeling like you’re watching your own life as a movie. Or, like, you're a ghost following yourself"
"Like a third-person video game?"
"I guess. A little. Not actually seeing that way, but feeling like it." After a minute, she said. "So you do like video games, then."
“I guess. Anyways, that's freaky.”
“It’s kind of scary,” Seff replied. “Mostly I think it’s just unpleasant. It sort of just makes it hard to enjoy life when you can’t really live in the moment.”
“Is that one of your issues?” Rohan asked.
“I don’t have issues,” Seff replied. “And no. I was joking. And speaking hypothetically.”
“Oh. Well, I was too. I thought it was just a funny coincidence.”
“Anyways, if everything’s just painted on, I guess this is all part of the script. Wynn dies. The sun disappears. Everyone else dies. I die, eventually. Maybe I’m only alive because I’m here.” Seff scratched behind her ear. “Everyone except you, I mean. You’ll live.”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll live forever.”
“How long ago did she die?” Rohan asked.
“A few months before everything happened,” Seff replied.
“How?”
“Pancreatic cancer.” She ran one claw along her waterline. “It’s hard to catch until it’s too late, and no one thought she was at risk. She ate healthy. Never smoked. Rarely drank. She was young, too. Just a few years older than me.”
Rohan sat in silence.
“Sorry to make it awkward,” Seff continued.
"And there wasn't a plan?"
"I mean, it was complete random chance. Exceedingly rare. She and I just happened to get the short end of things."
“You can just die like that,” Rohan said, halfway between a question and a statement. “Something comes out and kills you. There's no reason for it, and there's nothing you can do."
“It’s a disease, not a boogeyman.”
“It just happens. To anyone. Was it even in the script? Was it part of the plan? Did you plan for it?”
"I don't know if there is a script, Rohan. I don't know if there's a reason or a plan. I think it's all just us, alone," Seff said. Her voice was strained and weak, and she fought to keep it low and unwavering.
"How's that supposed to make anything better?"
"Because we can make the plans. We're in charge."
"But everything is trying to kill us."
“Not everything's trying to kill you."
"You're wrong."
"I'm not." Seff sighed.
"It's a big freaking world. One person doesn't matter. Not if every disease and monster and cold snap and avalanche is after us. Who cares about one wolf then?" Rohan replied.
"Cancer is rare. When you're young, at least. Don’t be scared,” Seff said. “Not of that, at least. I’ll protect you from what’s important right now.”
“I’m not worried about myself.”
“We’ll find your parents,” Seff replied.
“And what if they’re dead?” Rohan’s eyes dug twin holes into Seff. Both seemed to focus directly on her, despite their placement on the sides of Rohan's head. “What then?
The fire sputtered. The room smelled faintly of smoke, and ashes drifted through the still, cold, woody air. Tears gathered at the corners of Rohan’s eyes. Seff wasn’t sure if hares cried or if it was the smoke or if it was her fault or someone else's or if it really was the whole world.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” She sighed. “But I sincerely doubt they’ve died of cancer in the past three days.”
“You don't get it, do you? It’s not that that I’m worried about. Anything could've killed them. Anything could still kill them.” She stood up and began to pace around in circles. “We should go as soon as possible. Now, even. What’s the hesitation, anyways?"
"I just thought I should—"
"Keep me here? Just so you can tell me about your dead wife? About your issues? I don't even know you, Seff, not really. I'm here because I have to be. It's not my problem to solve.”
“Rohan, I’m sorry if I wasted your time—”
"How many people are dead?"
Seff hesitated. "I don't know. You've been out more than me."
Rohan huffed.
"Too many, I think," Seff offered.
"How did they die?"
"They weren't made for the cold, I suppose. Or they lost access to medicine. Or food."
Rohan scratched at the ground. The sound reminded Seff of an animal with overgrown claws trying to get out of a locked room. Whether it walked on four paws or on its hind legs, she considered, ceased to have any relevance after long enough. To be trapped was to be trapped. "Or something… hunted them, right?"
Silence again.
“I need to find them before it’s too late,” she continued.
Seff sighed. “We can go, but it’s not your job to protect them.”
“So I'm just supposed to let them die?”
“Those aren’t your options. If they're really hurt, what do you think you could have done if you were with them?”
“Are you calling me a coward?”
“Of course not. I’m trying to be realistic.”
“That’s stupid—”
“Just take a deep breath,” Seff interrupted. “It’s going to be alright.” She stood and placed a paw on Rohan’s back, who froze and winced, but did as she was told. “Sorry. Sorry for not asking to touch you,” she added after a moment, and withdrew her hand.
“It’s okay,” Rohan replied. Her voice shook. “God. Sorry.” She sat back down, and Seff followed suit.
"I know I said you could go earlier," Seff began.
"Nothing's stopping me. You don't think I've considered it?"
"I mean, yeah. I'm not going to lock you in here. But you can't just run off on your own," Seff said. "I worry about you. I worry you'll get hurt. Not because I know you, but because you're twelve. If you go, I'll follow you. I won't drag you back here, but I don't want you out there alone." She sighed. "I know I'm not the best option. Not even close. But I don't know where your parents are, and until we find them, it doesn't feel right leaving you out there alone."
"You said I was smart."
"And you are," Seff said. "Smart and brave. But you're still a kid. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. I'm sorry if anyone told you they were."
The firelight danced across the floor and left little bright reflections flashing across each hardwood plank, even though their shine had been dulled from months of dirt and abuse. Seff ran one claw against them, leaving a thin, deep score across the lines denoting separate pieces. She remembered putting them in. She remembered how the sunlight flooded them through the open window.
"Am I going to grow up?" Rohan asked. "Are things going to go back to normal?"
"I can't predict the future."
"I'm going to die," she continued. "Aren't I?"
"Everyone dies," Seff replied. "I won't let it happen anytime soon. It's your job to live. Prove yourself wrong."
Rohan looked for a moment as though she was going to say something obstinate, but decided against it. "We should go," she said instead. Her voice caught in her throat.
Seff nodded. "We should." She stood, took her jacket from where she had laid it down, and wrapped it tightly around herself. "Are you ready?"
"Mhm," Rohan replied, tucking her ears into her hood.
"So, we'll go to your parents' house," Seff said, grabbing the bag, lighting the lantern, dousing the fire, remembering and then promptly forgetting once more her earlier resolution to clean the chimney, and making her way to the door, "and we'll look for them there. And if they're not there, we can go back to the grocery store and see if anyone else can help, or maybe see if they found their way there, too."
"Okay," Rohan said, coming up to her side. Seff growled softly as she forced the door open. She suppressed the slight desire to bark at the exertion, considering it undignified and potentially frightening, although the former issue wasn't generally much of a concern. She handed the lantern off to Rohan.
"Do you remember where your house is?" Seff asked.
"No," Rohan replied. "Maybe in the light, I could find it, but not when it's this dark. I don't really know where I am. I think it might be on the right side of that fork, where the store was to the left. I remember my address, if that helps?"
"Yeah," Seff said. "Actually, it does."
Rohan told her the address, and Seff thought for a moment. "I think you're right. I remember driving up there a few times and turning onto that street. I usually didn't have much reason to go that way, so I'm not sure about it, but it's the best lead I have without a map."
"You don't have a map?"
"I just used GPS, and my car froze, so that's not really an option."
"It froze?"
"It was already kind of temperamental. I think the cold just screwed it up."
"How cold do you think it is?"
Seff shrugged. "Less cold than it should be, in my uneducated opinion."
"You'd like it to be colder?"
"No," Seff said. "But it seems like the sun vanishing should have made it that way." She hesitated a moment. "Do you know why the moon shines?"
"It's the sun's light reflected off the surface."
"And yet there's still moonlight"
"Oh," Rohan said. "Yeah. You're right."
"Why do you think that is?" Seff asked.
"I don't know. Is this a trick question?"
"No. I just want to know what you think. I have no idea."
"We were wrong about the moon?"
Seff shook her head. "Maybe. Or maybe the sun's still there somewhere."
"Maybe."
Again, they came to the hill. Rohan passed the lantern and climbed up it, and Seff followed, still slowly but quicker than she had before. Their footsteps had not faded from before, and no others joined them; it had not snowed in some time. Seff wasn't sure if it would again.
"Do you have any idea what happened?" Rohan asked, handing the light back to Seff.
"No. It's strange," she said, then realized how self-evident that probably was. "The moon is still shining, and the stars look the same."
"And?"
"Well, I imagine if Earth was just flung out somewhere in space, the stars would look different, and the moon wouldn't have any light to reflect. Even if the sun just disappeared, the sky wouldn't look the way it does now." She paused, thinking. "It makes me wonder if it's daytime somewhere else, on the other side of the world. Like the planet's just stopped turning. It seems as likely as anything else."
"Do you think they're okay there? Are they burning?"
"Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's just as cold there." She looked out into the trees. "That's another thing. It doesn't seem like it's as cold as it should be. It should hurt to be outside, I think, and clearly it does for some people, but even as thick as my fur is, I expected worse. There's nothing keeping us warm. I think all the heat should have just gone out into space."
Coming again to the fork in the road, Seff took the path to the right.
"Can you hold the lantern up?" she asked. "So I can read the street signs."
They walked for a bit down another suburban road before coming to a dead end: a barricade, icicles hanging off it, painted red and white and stopping a wall of trees from encroaching any further.
"Damn," Seff muttered.
"Hold on," Rohan said. "I recognize this place, I think. My street is off to the side." She turned around and disappeared off into another street. Seff ran after her, the lantern swinging and leading her forward into the darkness. What she swore were footprints were scattered across the ground in the middle distance, overlaid on the snow-covered pavement in frantic crosses. Her pace quickened.
The light froze in front of a house like the others. The snow covering it glittered. No fresh footsteps led to its door; Seff wasn't sure if that was a good sign. Rohan walked up the porch steps and came to the front door; she knocked twice, sharply, weak and muffled.
Seff followed, and knocked twice as well. No response came from inside. She tried the handle: locked. Rohan went around to the window and stood on the tips of her feet, trying to look in.
"Do you want me to lift you up?" Seff asked. Rohan nodded, and Seff took hold of her and held her up to the window.
"I can't see anything."
"Let me try." Seff pressed her nose against the window, but could only barely make out a darkened kitchen. She took a step back and wedged her claws below the edge of the window, trying to pry it open; it didn't budge, and she stopped for fear of breaking something. "Do you know where an unlocked window might be?"
Rohan shook her head. "I usually kept mine unlocked, but they locked it before we left, to keep out the cold, and it's second-story, anyways."
"We could break one," Seff offered. "I don't see what other options we have. They might just be too scared to open the door." She didn't dare propose the alternative. Rohan looked again as though she might have wanted to say something, but then just nodded.
Seff drew in a breath and punched cleanly through the edge of the window; she repeated herself twice more, at the other corners, then pushed the window in until the whole thing fell away. A small trickle of blood flowed down her knuckles; she looked down and winced, then wordlessly licked it off her hand. It tasted metallic and familiar.
"I'll go through," she offered, then, without giving Rohan a chance to reply, climbed through the hole she had created. She walked around, unlocked the door, and opened it, letting Rohan inside.
The air indoors was a little warmer than the air outside, though it was rapidly cooling. The house was cast in long, flickering shadows from the lantern, and though Seff could see well in the dark, its colors only became apparent with the fire: the walls were painted somewhere between red and yellow, and the floors were red oak. The stairs were bare and made from the same material as the floor, and the banister appeared to be mahogany. Everything was covered in a thin film of condensation, frozen and sparkling in the light.
"Hello?" Rohan called, to no response. "It's me. Um, Rohan. I'm home."
Her voice echoed through the hall and was swallowed up in the darkness.
Rohan walked upstairs. Seff followed behind, taking the creaking steps two at a time, inspecting the air for the smell of rot and decay and general unpleasantness: she was grateful to find nothing questionable, though she also could not smell anything that indicated life. The whole house felt like a museum; not as meticulously preserved as the one she had ransacked before, but just as static and empty, defined not by the presence of death but by the absence of life.
"I'll let you check the rooms," Seff whispered. "I'll stay close behind, so if there's trouble, I can help." Rohan nodded and opened each door, one-by-one, as Seff followed her slowly behind. She looked into the bathroom, made from white tile and once-dewy mirrors, the laundry room, the home office with machines that felt wrong without their status lights enabled, one large bedroom painted in similar shades to the hall, two smaller rooms, one full and painted pale yellow and one gray and devoid of furniture.
All were empty of people.
"I don't think they're here," Rohan said, more resigned than Seff had expected. She had anticipated tears and anger, thrown objects disturbing the serenity of the house frozen in time. She had expected a louder grief than she received.
"No," Seff conceded.
Rohan darted back into the pale yellow room; Seff assumed it was hers. She nearly followed her in, but stayed back. After some time, Rohan emerged again clutching a small pink notebook and a ballpoint pen. "Does ink freeze?"
Seff shrugged. "Check."
Rohan held the pen in her palm for a moment to warm it, then tried scribbling on the notebook; after a second, the ink flowed smoothly.
"So what's the plan?"
"We look for more people, I guess. We go back to the old plan."
Rohan nodded and flipped to a new page. "Do we try the grocery store?"
"Maybe," Seff said. "I don't know. Do you think there'll be people there?"
Rohan wrote something down. "There were people there before, right?"
"Right. Someone took the meat off the shelves."
"Trustworthy people?"
Seff turned around and made her way back downstairs. "I don't know," she admitted. "Is anyone trustworthy?"
"I sure hope you are," Rohan said. Her voice remained level. "Careful. The bottom step always squeaks." She tucked the notebook into her back pocket and clipped the pen to its spine.
Seff pressed on it with one boot. It creaked. She kept going. Her paw left an imprint in the condensation painting the wood. "You're right."
"I'm going to check for food. There might be some left over in the pantry."
Seff waited by the front door until Rohan returned, clutching another bundle of hay and a package of presumably shelf-stable cookies under the opposing arm from where she held the lantern.
"Lot of frozen stuff in there. Unrecognizable."
They left the house together and retraced their footsteps back to the fork in the road.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Seff asked, after they had been walking for a bit.
"No." Rohan took a bite of some of the hay.
"You want to put that in the bag?"
Rohan nodded. Seff knelt down, and Rohan opened the backpack and stuffed the hay inside, bending it in half to fit. Her boot made contact with the snow and sank into it until it hit a firmer layer of ice.
"We can get more food at the store, too," Seff added. "Hopefully."
"I don't want to take any chances."
"Fair enough."
Their footsteps from a few days prior were still embedded in the snow leading towards the commerce center. Seff wondered if gravity would eventually erase them, or if it would ever snow again. She suspected it would do her better to travel through the woods, to avoid being tracked; she feared she'd get lost, and reasoned that the tracks were already there, so there wasn't much point to it anymore.
The wide glass door to the grocery store was still smashed open, and the broken glass glittered in the full moonlight. She had not expected it to be fixed, but as Seff neared it something else took her by surprise. A warm, strong glow poured out through the door and onto the ice.
The building inside, she saw, was painted in vivid colors; she had been to the store before, but now noticed everything; the deep blue of the walls behind the meat counter, the rich yellow of the tiles, and even the grays which felt renewed and bright.
She took the backpack off her shoulders and removed the hunting knife from it, then slipped it into her pocket and took a step closer to the threshold. Rohan hung back.
The door slid open.