If he could only bargain for one more season to live, why did it have to be winter? Why sitting indoors, staring out at wind-tossed fevers of grey and orange cloud, ash and ember, as if the hearth of the heavens, too, were burning low? Listening as the sky’s bad dreams creaked and muttered through the cabin walls, wrapped in a blanket as if shrouded for his funeral already, counting days and trying to convince himself the fateful one might pass without anyone knocking at the door?

The answer was simple, of course – because winter was when his endless coughing had started to bring up blood and the creature had first come knocking. Because without its frigid touch and bargain, he wouldn’t have lived to see the end of winter anyways. It had given him months to live, breathing wood smoke with whole, healthy lungs, but as the nights grew shorter, days cast longer across the snow, he couldn’t help but wonder if there had been another way. Medicine with a cost only in coin, not months of dread and, eventually, his life.

He couldn’t help but wonder if there could still be another way. Miles down the mountain to the next hearth and home, but what if he just left? Fled from the creature and its claim on him? Winter hadn’t yet spent the last of its storms, and perhaps, just perhaps, he could hope one might come along to cover his tracks.