Thanks, you two, for your comments! I am SO sorry that this is so very late, but it turns out I am NOT on the computer as much as I thought I'd be during break. So here we are! It isn't super long but. Enjoy :)

Wildsong awoke with a pounding headache. She lay on a very comfortable surface, nice and squishy. Her mouth felt dry. She listened, hearing some movement near her. She slowly blinked open her eyes, which made her head pound harder. She shifted, and squinted through her headache around the room. It was her bedroom, and she was on her soft bed that the bedposts looked like trees, and leaves were embroidered on her covers.

“Hey,” said a soft voice. “How are you feeling?” 

Wildsong turned her head slightly, and her eyes found Swan. “My head hurts,” she croaked.

“I should think so,” Swan said sympathetically. “It looks like you were knocked in the head quite hard. Do you remember what happened?”

“We were in the attic, just exploring,” she mumbled. 

“We?” Swan asked. “Just you and Moon Wolf, right?”

“N-o, Celine too,” Wildsong said, slightly confused. Didn’t she see Celine?

Something flashed in Swan’s eyes, something like confusion and trepidation. But then her eyes turned sad, and she said, “Well, I’m sorry to say that Moon Wolf is gone, Wildsong. And Celine is missing.”

Wildsong’s eyes widened, and for a moment the headache faded. Moon Wolf, gone? Celine, missing? None of that sounded good. 

“It looks like something hit you in the head, you have quite a lump,”  Swan said, and Wildsong’s headache came rushing back.

“I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, turning her head to look at Moon Wolf’s silvery bed that would never be occupied again. Her stomach churned.

“Here, drink this,” Swan put a cup to her dry lips. Wildsong drank the slightly sweet liquid, and then fell back into dark pain.

***

pangolin shivered. Well, actually, it was more of an earthquake. They were so cold, they shuddered violently as the wind whistled and howled, and a torrent of snow came from the sky. Looking at her shaking hands, pangolin saw that her hands looked almost purple in the dark night. 

Earlier that day, or maybe days ago, pangolin had been in the woods after the sleigh ride, just out for a quick walk, when someone had pounced on her, tied her up with her very own scarf, and dragged her somewhere. The person wasn’t very strong, and so it was slow moving. They had never caught sight of who it was, but their footsteps had been short and heavy. At some point, they’d stopped moving, dropped pangolin like a sack by a tree, and left. pangolin had worked for hours trying to untie the impossible knots, and by the time her hands and legs were free, and she could shove her hat out of her eyes, she was an ice cube and night was falling. 

Oh, how they wished they’d just gone in with the rest of the CBers to warm up with lunch. Now, pangolin was shaking and shivering and walking in the direction she thought the person had dragged her. She was so cold. pangolin could literally feel ice forming on her eyelids. Teeth rattled. Breath came out in invisible clouds, now that the snow was falling so hard. It was snowing so hard, and was so dark, pangolin could barely see through her frozen lashes. She definitely ran into several trees, and once she ran into at least the 16th tree, she didn’t rise from the snow to continue on. Wind continued to howl, but on the wind there was a scent carried. Smoke. pangolin rolled onto their stomach, tightened their thin sweater, and struggled up. Using their nose, pangolin staggered through the icy bite of snow and wind, until she saw a faint light up ahead. She went faster, and soon emerged in a clearing, with a mansion in the center. Lights twinkled from the windows, and she heard talking coming from the porch, where a propane heater was sitting between two people. pangolin staggered up to the steps, and slipped on the icy wood, falling to the snow.

“pangolin?!?!” someone gasped. 

“I’ll get help,” another voice said, followed by a door slamming and shouts.

Warm hands touched their face, and pangolin saw Seadragon looking worriedly down at them. pangolin panted, and then all consciousness faded away.

***

When Swan came out with BookGirl, all that was left to see was Seadragon holding a black feather covered in ice. “It was GloomyBear,” she said, handing the freezing feather to Swan, “but it doesn’t matter now. They’re both gone.”

Dead: 6 (Silver Crystal, amari, Endless Parodies, Moon Wolf, GloomyBear, pangolin)

Alive: 4 ( Wildsong, Seadragon, CelineBurningBright (missing or dead?), BookGirl)