Fractals and Dreams

The stars were crystal clear tonight, with not a cloud in sight. Ilmora drifted underneath their quiet silver light as a shade, exploring the cold world while her usual haunt slept.

Ilmora liked winter the best out of the seasons – not because she could feel the snow on her fingers or enjoy the warmth of coming in from a cold day, but because she could see people’s breath, could hear the snow crunch under their boots, see the ruddiness on their cheeks, and imagine what it must feel like. She only had second-hand descriptions to work from, but it must be nice to change sensations so often, always sensitive to the slightest crack in the door frame that shielded people from the howling wind outside. They were certainly vocal enough about it.

If there was anything she didn’t like about the season, it was the silence of snowfall with no one around. If she was merely a shade on her own, if she closed her eyes, it was the closest she ever got to not existing. It was a death of sorts.

Ilmora offhandedly chased that thought away as she dove through the pine trees. Who had the time for morbidity when she was on the hunt for someone new to bother? It wasn’t snowing quite yet, and wouldn’t for a fair moment yet, and she had her eye on a thin smoke plume clear against the moonlight.

She peered at her quarry from the tops of the pine trees, spying a lone man at his fire. His things were haphazardly strewn around the dry clearing as if he’d shrugged them off to let them fall where they may, only to slump to this campfire and look objectively miserable.

My my, look at you, she said without a voice. Storm clouds incarnate. She drifted down, skeptically eyeing the man’s disheveled state until she floated in front of him. His sleep-deprived eyes were downcast onto whatever he was doing, and gods above did he need a shave. Father had never let a day pass by without trimming his beard, but she supposed not everyone kept to that standard. It was just so...scruffy. She peered at him this way and that, deciding with some finality that he was probably a bum an outcast.

Well, she’d never haunted an outcast before. She glanced towards his cooking pot, spying the broth so thin it was practically still water, with bones floating in it. She narrowed her eyes in a frown. Would bones taste good? Do people eat bones? She never really paid attention when Mother cooked, too bitter about the farcical charade of eating to linger long in the kitchen, so maybe she could ask him.

Only once she was settled in his thoughts as silently as snow, did she say in a directionless, ethereal tone, Are you softening those bones before you make your bread with them? Or is that only a thing giants do. I can’t imagine they’d be good otherwise.