• He curled his body around her still form, pressing his cheek against hers, absorbing every trace of leftover warmth he could get. Tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped into her long, tangled hair.

    “She always loved winter.” His head shot up. A woman stood there, tall with impossibly black hair. Her white skin and red lips reminded him of the sight of his love's blood spilling onto the snow. “She never told anyone, but whenever she imagined dying, it was always in a winter forest just like this.” The woman touched the white-blanketed needle leaves of an evergreen.

    “Who are you?” he asked, his voice already hoarse from crying.

    She ignored him. “There was something particularly thrilling to her about the cold. It made her feel as though everything was clean, fresh, new. Reborn.” She smiled. “The poor girl thought that if she died in the winter, she could be reborn into a better life.” Now she looked at him, her dark eyes strangely cold and hot at the same time. “But you and I both know that's a lie.”

    “What do you...?”

    “Surely you, of all people, know what I mean.” Her eyes flashed, and he caught a glimpse of someone burning. “But don't despair. Just because she cannot be reborn, doesn't mean you stand no chance of seeing her again.” She motioned with a clawed hand to something that glinted silver in the snow. “You can take the same path she did.”

    He stared at the woman, then at the object she pointed to. He hesitated only a moment before picking it up.

    “It will be over soon,” the woman cooed, “and then you can be with her again. Isn't that what you want?”

    He looked up at the woman one final time. His tears blinded him to her cruel smile. His own sobs deafened him to the deceit in her voice. The metal in his hand was like ice. The girl's body in his arms was like ice. The woman was like ice, but an ice so cold it burned. He lifted the gun and pulled the trigger.

    The change from ice to fire was so sudden that he didn't register it at first. He smelled burning flesh, heard a scream of pain, and only then felt the searing, blistering heat that surrounded him. The flesh was his own, the scream his own.

    But there she was, beside him, screaming her own scream and smelling her own flesh, just out of reach of his grasping, clutching fingers.