Lucas banged on the bell by the window into the kitchen. “Hey! Those jalapenos need to get to table eight!”

“Yes sir!” chorused the cooks inside, their collective cries also mixed with a loud yowl from the large orange tabby that was hopping in between the large stew pots, tasting from a new spoon held by a different cook each time.

He looked back over the counter at the heavily-built biker and smiled. “I’ll be just a moment. We’re just a bit busy preparing for the rush later.”

The biker grumbled an apology and went back to his table of similarly-dressed men, each enjoying a plate of cabbage rolls that the Foxhole was known for.

The serving window was suddenly obscured as one of the line cooks tried to get his face through it. “Uh, Mr. Walker-”

“Where are those stuffed peppers?”

“Uh, in the oven sir!”

“Then get back to it.”

“But sir-”

“What?”

“You need to look out the back. Someone’s coming towards us.”

Lucas quickly pushed open the kitchen door and ducked inside, stomping over to the half-open window in the back and peering out across his yard. The cooks working outside to grill various meats and vegetables gave him an odd look, or perhaps looks of trepidation, but he ignored them, instead squinting at the figure in the stark brown uniform, carrying another in police blue, stumbling through the thick snow. “When I get back in here I want a thick blanket ready.”

“S-Sir?”

“Shut up and go get it!” Lucas quickly undid his apron, dropping it straight on the floor and shouldered his way quickly through the back door, and shouting at the cooks to keep doing their thing, broke into a sprint across the snowy field.

Wyland finally stopped as he saw Lucas approaching, falling onto his knees in the snow but holding onto the shuddering form of Marshal Ellis - not Lucas’ first choice for rescue, but an emergency was an emergency.

“What the hell happened?” Lucas put his arms under Ellis to support Wyland, and took the majority of the weight from him. This let Wyland remove his own numb arms, which were covered in tree-like bark, and fall back onto his hunches in the snow.

Wyland was shaking his head. “I…don’t know…” With his trunk-like arms, he pushed himself back to his feet, only to keel over and throw up into the snowbank. “Need…heat…” He pointed at Ellis.

“Yeah I’m on it.” Lucas turned and began trudging back towards the pub, shouting for some of the cooks to open the door for him. He had no idea how long Ellis had been wet, or how long it took for Wyland to even bring him all the way here from the lake, but the assumption was that his time was rapidly running out. He maneuvered Ellis’ prone form into the kitchen and shouted for the one line cook he had been talking to earlier. “I need a blanket!”

The young cook reappeared, holding a thick quilt that Lucas knew had come from one of the guest rooms, and threw it over the Marshal, obscuring his uniform. Together they carried Ellis out through the front room, past the stares of the customers, and into the segment of the building where he and Raya lived. He pushed though into a large room, causing half a dozen yokats to dart out of the way and start hissing, but he ignored them and set Ellis down next to the cats’ large space heater. As soon as he felt the Marshal was okay, he turned around and hissed at all the cats, pointing at the ceiling.

In single file, they dashed - or in the case of one, hovered - out of the room and made a bit of noise hopping up the floors to his bedroom. Only Brynley remained, watching calmly as he swirled in his flask next to the heating element.

“What…?” the cook stared at the door the cats had left through, mouth agape.

“Go back to the kitchen. Keep doing what you're doing. I’ll be out shortly. Now.”

The cook scrambled out of the room, almost tripping over one of the cat beds in the process, disappearing back out into the pub.

Lucas sat in the corner, making a squeaky toy go off, and stared at the Marshal. His shivering had stopped, but he was still apparently delirious, muttering to himself while his unfocused eyes darted around the room.

Wyland stumbled into the room. “Get him out of his coat!”

“Wha- oh!” Lucas sprang back to his feet, throwing the quilt off and dew the knife from his boot, slicing straight through the Marshal’s winter jacket and the shirt underneath, pulling the sodden and freezing cold garments off and tossing them away. He put the blanket back over, and watched as the Marshal’s erratic state phased into a peaceful nap.

Wyland let out a grunt as he tore at the bark on his arms, the wood flaking off like it was dead, becoming simply bits of shaven bark on the floor of the room. His skin underneath was reddened, but otherwise completely fine. “Fuck! I hate doing that.”

Lucas sat back down, glancing at the Mashal and then at Wyland “You good bro?”

“I’ll…be fine.” Wyland also sat down on another very soft cat bed. “I’m seriously hoping I got here in time.”

“I’m not the survival expert here, but he looks fine.”

“Something was pulling him under,” Wyland breathed, staring at the Marshal. “He was swimming up, but…”

“What?”

“Ah, shit.” Wyland stood up and began to undo his belt.

Lucas instantly turned away. “Dude what the fuck! Go do that in the bathroom or something!”

“I need to get this bark off me!”

Hearing scraping, he cautiously turned back around to see Wyland with only boxers on his lower half, actually pushing the dead tree matter off of his legs and rather disturbingly, out of the holes in the legs of his undergarment. “Is this like a druid thing?”

“Drus.”

“Huh?”

“A male dyad is called a Drus. A druid is a kind of mage,” Wyland said absently, still pulling bits of the wood off.

“Does it…hurt?”

“A little. Not physically but when I put the bark on myself I had to rip it off real living trees so…”

“I’m sure they’ll understand. You were saving a life, right?”

“Yeah…no.” With most of the bark gone, he sat down in his boxers and let out a sigh of relief. “Not that all trees are sentient.”

“So some are? The fuck, how am I supposed to get firewood next season?”

Wyland let out a chuckle. “I just resonate with the more magical ones because we have similar magic bits inside.”

"You reckon he'll be okay then?"

"Yeah, but call a doctor?"

Lucas stood up, dusting cat hair off himself. "Want a drink?"

"A non-alcoholic one, yeah."

"Special limeonade it is then." He shut the door behind him as he left, only to find Butler sat on the floor, looking up at him expectantly. "He'll be okay. You mind running the bar for a bit while I call mom?"

Butler let out a quick meow and hopped onto the shelf under the bar, getting out a small tablet which he put on the counter and turned on, revealing their drinks menu. He sat by it with a stylus in his mouth, waiting for the next order.

Lucas leaned in the kitchen briefly to open the fridge and grab a bottle normally reserved for a particular guest, and stowed it under his arm along with a cheap brandy while he dialed on the way back to what was formerly the cats' bedroom. The call went through as he handed Wyland the lime drink, forcing Lucas to hold his phone to his ear with one shoulder. "Hey, how was your meeting? Good? Just want you to know Wyland and the Marshal are here. No, no, they're both fine, I just want to ask about which medical serv-"

At that moment the entire building shook, and the lights overhead flickered, before everything was still again. Through the open door Lucas heard the customers go silent, but then just as quickly returned to their conversations.

He knew better though. No fault lines, protected generator, and on a calm day. "Raya, what the fuck just happened?" he asked into the phone.

And there it was. He wasn't sure how he didn't see it before. Barrett lowered his binoculars and slowly picked the pistol the tengu had returned from the snow outside the entrance to their realm. Being in actuality a sawn-off Topalev Tandem rifle, it didn't have enough parts for the elements to jam, and so he didn't even need to look as he put it back in his holster, keeping his eyes on the point in the rock face in between the trees, on the opposite side of the lake area. It had just been a faint flash, but little escaped him if anything, and now he had what he was looking for: a gap in the story. Even before he had briefed Wyland, he had figured it was a yuki-onna. The freezing, the lack of tangible footprints, the village being this close made it near impossible to be anything else. But he had the sense that there was more, and that had just reared its head. Yuki-onna or not, the Knessant man still had to get all the way out here, and she definitely didn't do that.

Something's coming.

"Hello? Yeah, I hear you now, listen, something's going-" Raya, talking on the phone behind him, was suddenly cut off as the mountain shook beneath the both of them, like a chill had run up its very stone. "Yeah it just got here. What the hell?"

Barrett's gaze traced upwards from where he had seen the faint column of light, almost imperceptible had the Hunt's blessing not granted him vision beyond that of any mere human short of a cognitomancer. Thick, opaque clouds were gathering. "We have to find her," he said, starting back down the slope, ignoring Raya urging him to wait.

The answers he wanted were with the snow lady, and he was going to get them.