Ean hated the look of sadness that he always saw darkening Lorna's face every time he left. It haunted him from the moment the cabin was out of his sight and during all the time he was working. He knew it was cruel to a degree to ask her to sit in the cabin alone, but he had made a promise to her father, his brother, and Lorna that he would protect her.

For the past ten years, he has managed to do just that, and he was not going to fail now, not when she was so close to adulthood.

Ean had intended on returning to the cabin after a week. Normally when he did work at the town, it only took him a couple of days to get it done, but this time, someone had messed up the electrical systems when they had tried to fix it themselves. He had taken the time to train them, but they had ruined it anyway.

Once the mess was fixed, he made sure to write a new manual for them, one that was idiot-proof because he was certainly not going to be around all the time to prevent them from doing anything stupid.

By the time he was finally finished with the manual, his wrists were sore from all of the typing he was doing for several hours straight across a couple of days. He proofread it a couple of times before he told Hattie that he was as finished with it as he was going to get. Hattie would worry about distributing copies of it to those who were in charge of maintaining the electrical systems.

Ean did not wait a moment longer to leave the town after they gave him his payment in the form of food, basic supplies, and comic books that he was going to give to Lorna, who he had purposefully made sure they were unaware of. He traveled to the nearest small cabin, which he had built with his own hands, and after he made sure the solar panels on top were running properly, he went to sleep.

In the morning, Ean was surprised to find snowflakes drifting passed the window, and the thin blanket of snow on the ground told him that it was sticking. It was an early snow. He had not expected to see snow on the ground for another month or two, but there it was.

The window fogged up as Ean breathed a sigh, and he turned away from it. He went into the bathroom to wash up, but he chose not to wash his hair or get it wet because he did not want it to freeze when he ventured outside. Because he was late in returning to his home, he did not want to waste any time waiting for his hair to dry. There was no working hairdryer in the place either.

Hattie had given him some bread. Ean toasted it in the rare microwave-toaster oven combination appliance, and he ate it plain as he walked outside with it, carrying all of his things on his back. It was much heavier than he was used to it being, but he had done a great deal of work for those people. He might have threatened to never return to help them had they not loaded him up with goods.

The forest was quieter than he liked. He longed for some kind of music player, like the cell phones he had had before the Merge, but those sorts of devices used to short out after a couple of days of use because of the magic in the air. Besides that, they were a waste of electricity. It had to be used sparingly these days, and with winter approaching, it was even more essential because they could not stand watch 24/7 to make sure the solar panels were uncovered with snow. Some towns used wind turbines, but even with them, the wind was not always blowing.

Ean felt his foot slip, and by the time he realized it, he was already falling into a hole—into a lake. There was a thin layer of ice on the top of the water, and it cracked as he fell into it. Ice-cold water soaked into his clothes and assaulted his skin.

His rear struck the bottom, so he knew it was a shallow lake at the very least. He lowered his feet to the bottom, and he pushed up with them to help him swam to the top, and once his head broke above the surface, he gasped for air.

All of his things were wet now, and he let out a string of expletives as he swam his way out of the lake. Ean would have to hurry to the nearest cabin now and get all of his things dry, further delaying his return to his home.

Ean made it out of the lake. There was a steep incline out of it, and he was now even heavier than he had been as he struggled to climb to the top. His chest heaved from the effort, but he made it. He felt his limbs grow number and number as he walked, and his legs wobbled as he stumbled his way through the forest.

When he found the cabin, he was dismayed to find a man standing on top, cleaning off the solar panels with a roof rake. There was no point in clearing it yet because there was not enough light, but at least he would not have to worry about it later.

The man jumped when he noticed Ean approaching the cabin.

"Hey, man!" the man said, and he hopped off the roof. "You don't look so good!"

"C-c-c-cold" was all Ean could get out.

"Right, right! Let's get you inside! We still have some battery left to power the water heater, so we should get this fixed right away."

The stranger grabbed Ean's arms, and he guided him into the cabin. He helped him take off all of his wet things, and he ushered him into the bathroom to take a warm bath while he laid out his clothes on a rack next to the heater to help them dry.

"T-t-taking m-m-my th-things," Ean said as the man grabbed his backpack, giving him the best glare he could under the circumstances. "D-d-d-don't t-t-t-touch th-them."

The man looked offended.

"I just want to help you dry your things, buddy!"

"N-n-not y-y-your b-b-b-buddy."

The man offered no further protest as Ean dragged the heavy backpack with him into the bathroom.

"I'll just boil some water to help you heat up," the man said before Ean closed the door.

Without a backpack, the bathrooms were already cramped for one person, but he was not letting that man anywhere near his things.

The world was full of thieves. They had existed before the Merge, but they were worse now, forming huge groups and living like gypsies while stealing food and supplies from honest, hard-working people.