She wakes up to someone calling her name. Except that it is in the short, cherishing form, which she hasn’t got called by since Pouce was gone. Seventeen years ago. Who could that be? Here, in the middle of this snowy place in an alien country, no less?
She shudders, surprisingly not out of the coldness, as she feels none of it. She has been lying on the street, almost fully buried underneath layers of snow, and it’s not the chill that is sending shivers to her spine. It’s the non-chill instead. The surroundings, becoming clearer and clearer in her vision, or whiter and whiter, are making sure that she should get cold, or even frozen already. But no she doesn’t, not by any touch.
She doubts that her clothing is doing its function to keep her warm, as she doesn’t remember putting much fabric on before making up her mind to apparate here. It’s what she did with him last night that is then, she smiles. It was steamily hot, even by her own standard. How could she almost forget how heavenly he had smelt, tasted, and felt? How could she almost forget the kind of warmth that carnal frictions between a man and a woman could create? How could she almost forget such a most basic biological lesson, whereas she’s about to publish her third book of advanced human body healings?
And most of all, how could she almost forget the she she had been in that luckiest part of life she had had him for herself?
The man — now that she can make out — is calling her name again. It’s a familiar voice. It’s No One’s. She springs up, a bit too easily, too hastily, given the mass of snow weighing on her body.
“DADDY, HELP ME.”
An eardrum piercing striek. A little girl. A paralysed face. A pointing index.
She turns around to look back at where she has just gotten up from.
At a blonde hair covering an unrecognisable shape of flesh.
Kaleidoscope Eyed 