As Ion and Naim left that solemn church atop the mountain behind, they found that the eternal storm of dust that had previously raged all around them was entirely gone. Just as the church had changed—as if it had aged a hundred years—the very world was unfamiliar. Where there was dust, now there was snow.
Ion stepped forward and heard a sickly crunch. He looked down. Littering the snow-dusted peak were bones bleached white, a dozen skeletons or more. Ion knelt to examine them. Bobbling heads attached to stubby bodies by a thin stalk of vertebrae. Skinny arms as sharp as knives. Its long mouth ended in an acute point as black as ink instead of white. The creature's once watchful eyes were now nothing but hollow holes in the thing's skull.
"The birds..." Naim rasped regretfully.
Ion nodded.
West—that was their direction; so the pair took to the icy slopes of the mountain, descending to a deep valley bereft of anything but the blankest sheets of cold, cold snow. For the first night they travelled, Ion was perpetually anxious that they might not find shelter before the sun rose. Rise it did, and without a single sanctuary in sight that they might use as cover. But the clouds—forever a thick pavilion of grey over their heads that rained snow at a steady pace—was seemingly enough to block the sun's rays sufficiently as to prevent the stalking shadows from appearing in the world.
Across the valley, perhaps a hundred miles from where they started, was another tall mountain's peak. The snow-capped monolith stood as an imposing tower at the edge of Ion and Naim's view. At night, curious swirling lights of emerald and magenta broke the veil of clouds and spiraled down from the heavens, resting its own inverted peak down upon the top of that mountain. It made a sort of primal sense to the pair that this spot—the top of the mountain across the way—should be their goal.
The egg and its power to bring the dead back to life was ever on their minds as they journeyed on, though only manifested in the silencing of all discussion between them. Where there was quietude, any break in overt communication, there was an unspoken dialogue between them about Vio's strangeness, its divine nature, the mystery they had witnessed, and the miracle they had participated in. Where there could have been a glance, a cough, a sneeze, or a cleared throat—though there was none—that's when they knew the other was thinking of it. But what could be said? Unspeakable, that's what had happened. The impossible made possible—how could it not occupy their minds incessantly? And yet, though the impossible occurred, though a miracle indeed happened, it seemed to slip from the tongue when it might have been questioned, and faded from thought when it might have been pondered more thoroughly.
Ion and Naim would never forget what had happened in that church, and yet the events that transpired there had no grounded reality to latch onto. Naim's death and subsequent life were as real as anything else was. So real, in fact, that they could only be thought of within the realm of reality. But in reality, the dead stay dead, egg or no egg. Thus was the miracle detached from all else, in a realm of its own, as their minds would not fully accept the reality that so closely mimicked fantasy.
Ion's subconsciousness refused to fully bend its knee to the dictates and demands of his consciousness. Ion had witnessed the girl's resurrection through his eyes, and his mind had encoded the information into memory, but his conscious mind was not the ruler of the body which it inhabited. The conscious and subconscious Ion was, in reality, two separate entities. A man cannot order his body to do anything, nor truly influence it. Indeed, a man is trapped in a prison that he is allowed to move, though never rule. Information recorded through sight and encoded into memory had no bearing on Ion's enforced reality, the reality enforced by his subconsciousness, the reality that a miracle could not have happened because miracles were impossible. Thus was the ease with which Ion and Naim were able to pretend it didn't happen at all, to go on living the same as they had. Still, the truth did not lie, and their wonderings about it all still bubbled up wherever there was silence enough for the egg and its miracle to slip into the forefronts of their minds.
Naim was evidence enough for its reality; namely, her hair, and her eyes.
Ion had seen Naim's hair a hundred times in a hundred different settings: moonlight, sunlight, candlelight, and shade. Her hair was a mousy light brown, a bit dry and frayed, but long and straight. It was strange in a way. Ion figured it would have better matched one of a more pale pallor, as Naim's sun-tanned, freckled skin was of an entirely different palette to her hair. Now, it was entirely different. Smoother, softer, and devoid of any color, except when it reflected the silvery rays sent down by the moon. Her skin, too, was more pale; perhaps naturally so from the lack of sunlight now that she lived with Ion in the safety of night, or perhaps some kind of scar from the shock she suffered on the night she had died. From far away, you'd be forgiven to mistake her for an icy-white specter, as her long white hair so mesmerizingly mirrored the moon's stark glow against the black night.
Naim's eyes, too, had changed. Their milky brown irises, which had matched her hair, now matched it again in their new silver tones, distinguished from the whites of her eyes by the sheer brilliance of their whiteness. The young girl had the moon within her hair, and the moon within her eyes.
The whole world was coated in that same whitest-white as the pair went on through the snowy plane they found themselves in. Though the egg had cured Naim of death, it did not cure her of her wounds and scars. Her arms were still badly burned, and thus she could not carry little Vio who she so treasured. The task, then, fell to Ion.
The egg, however, refused to conform to the standards set by the laws of physics. Ion had seen Naim so deftly scoop Vio into her arms every day since the two had met. It never caused her trouble, she never strained to carry it. Ion, on the other hand, struggled to lift the egg from the ground. It was so incredibly heavy that Ion was forced to remove all but the barest of essentials from his pack, leaving room and strength to carry the egg inside it, upon his shoulders.
To Naim, Vio was warm. To Ion, the egg was ice-cold. Not merely absent of warmth, but absorbent of it. The words from the book that Ion had read often crossed his mind as he trudged on with the impossibly heavy object weighing him down. "Take up your cross, and follow me." Ion didn't know who he was meant to follow, but the words seemed to give him strength enough for at least another mile whenever he recalled them.
Even so, Ion's shoulders did not seem to gain more strength as time stretched on. The burden on his back seemed to grow heavier, and Ion's strength seemed to dwindle the longer he was compelled to carry it. The sinking weight of the egg seemed not to cause his muscles to strain, that they might grow in proportion, but his soul.
With no shelter to shield them from the cold, Ion and Naim kept a slow but steady pace as they made their way through the snow-strewn valley, hoping to reach the mountain in a matter of days. Gathering food was not an option, as neither sun-shrooms nor élafim appeared. Two days in, and their food supplies were gone. Their only hope was the break in the clouds at the mountain's peak, that perhaps there would be twilight that might cause élafim to appear at that fleeting moment of mixture between day and night. Water was never a problem; indeed Ion had never been more hydrated as he drank melted snow from his waterskin when the two rested. Even so, the two were ill-prepared for the bitter cold. Resting for longer than a few minutes in such conditions was perilous. Better to keep the blood flowing. Though their limbs cried out for repose, and Naim had never gone so long without proper sleep, Ion continually urged her forward. Four days in, and they were only a little over halfway—barely at the base of the massive mountain.
The night was dark; though the moon, behind the clouds, spread its faint glow across the firmament. The snow just barely caught a hint of that glow, lighting the way forward as they placed one foot in front of the other. The snow was up to Naim's knees, and she was struggling to keep with Ion's pace. Her stomach—empty for two days—had stopped hurting for lack of food, but in its place was a profound lethargy. "Please, Ion," Naim gasped between huffs, "can we stop for a while?"
Ion desperately wanted to oblige the girl. He, too, was bereft of energy, and he so badly wanted to take the pack from off his shoulders, and ease his arm that dutifully carried his iron cross. It would be so easy to say yes, to sit down in the snow and come to an almost-comfortable state of numbness, but the more rational part of his mind refused the urge. "It hasn't been an hour since we last rested," he said.
Naim knew it. They had been stopping more frequently day by day, slowing their progress to a crawl. "But..." her limbs were losing their ability to function. "...I can't go on." She collapsed into the soft snow in front of her.
Ion turned and saw her face-down in the fresh, powdery snow, and collapsed beside her. He let out a heavy sigh and loosed his pack's straps from off his shoulders.
Naim turned onto her side. "Let me touch him," she said.
Ion opened the pack toward her.
Naim reached in and felt Vio's warmth with the back of her hand. A faint smile graced her cracked lips.
Ion tilted the pack downwards, and the egg gently rolled into the snow next to the girl.
Naim curled herself beside it, and wrapped her bandaged arms around it, but flinched as she did. She remembered the pain she felt as she ran down the long stairs with the burning egg in her arms, and the pain from her injuries was still too great to grasp the egg with any amount of pressure. Though in truth, the memory hurt more than her burns. Still, lying beside Vio was a rejuvenating ritual. His warmth was enough to keep her content despite the piercing wind cutting through her thin clothing.
Ion was envious of that pleasure, the warmth he could hardly believe the thing radiated while in her arms. Touching Vio in cold like this was torture to him, as if the egg sucked away any warmth he had left—warmth he didn't even know he had. "I don't understand it," he said, "why is it so different for you?"
"Vio?" Naim asked in reply.
"Life," Ion answered. "A smile comes so easily to you. You're safe in the sun, you don't even know what the daylight shadows look like. And the egg is weightless and warm. It's so—" Ion stopped himself. He was about to say 'it's so unfair,' but he pushed aside the childish notion. "It's so strange. I can't imagine what it's like."
Naim was silent for a time. She didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry," she finally mumbled.
"Sorry?" an apology wasn't what Ion was looking for; he had hoped for some explanation, an inkling of why things were the way they were, perhaps some piece of advice that could make him just like her, something he'd never before considered that could change his world entirely.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I'm sorry that..." She trailed off. What was she sorry for? Sorry for him? Sorry that life was easier for her? Naim didn't know, but she felt sorry.
"It doesn't matter," Ion said. "The world is hard. I guess that's just how it is. It's just so—" he stopped himself again. Hurtful, he thought. "Strange," he said. "Strange that it isn't that way for everyone. Or at least not for you."
"...I wish I could carry him," Naim said. She meant it. The longer she and Vio were apart, the more solemn she became. She felt sorry that Ion had to bear such a burden on her behalf. "I'd take it from you if I could." She looked at her arms. In the gaps of the thin bandages she wore, she could see the red, rough, burnt flesh of her forearms. "I wish things didn't turn out like this."
"I know," said Ion.
Naim laid silent for a while, before saying, "Sometimes... I wonder whether we're doing the right thing. What if it was all just a dream? What if there is no lake?"
"That egg is special, Naim." Ion didn't have to say why.
"I know... or... I believe there's a purpose to it all. Still. I wonder if it was right to drag you into it."
Ion was about to protest the sentiment, but something caught him by the ear. It was barely audible over the soft whistling of the wind, but was undeniably distinct from it. It was the quiet crunching of a boot hitting snow, and it came from behind him.
Ion spun himself around and staggered to his feet. In front of him was a hulking figure carrying a spear, a spear that was pointed right at him.
"Don't move!" yelled the figure. Whoever it was was tightly bundled in layers upon layers of pale fur, surely skinned off an élaf.
Ion's cross was at his feet, but the figure was moving closer toward him by the second, their spear primed for impalement should he disobey the command. Ion acted on pure adrenaline as he rolled to the ground, taking up his cross as he did, before launching himself to his feet again. He swung his cross perpendicularly upon the figure's spear and pulled it forcefully, using the cross as a hook, which wrenched the spear from the person's hands. Ion kicked the attacker squarely in the chest with enough force to land them on the ground, half-buried in snow. Ion pinned them in place with his boot as he pointed the sharper end of his cross toward them, and was mere moments from thrusting it down as hard as he could before a cry pierced his ear.
"Stop!" The cry came from Naim. She would have grabbed the cross herself were it not for her wounds. "Don't kill them!"
Eyes like daggers stared back at Ion, full of anger. The face of the person pinned beneath him was wrapped up tight, all except a sliver to let those glowering brown eyes pierce Ion's soul. For a moment, those eyes broke from Ion's and rested on the white-haired girl who stood beside him, pleading for mercy. "I surrender." The stranger's voice was coarse, but unmistakably female.
Ion held his stance. A trembling sort of anxious uncertainty spread throughout his limbs. She'll make for the spear, he thought. She'll make for the spear and kill us both. Ion again readied himself to thrust the cross into the stranger's chest.
"Ion!" Naim cried again. "She surrenders!"
Ion darted his eyes toward Naim at his side. There was desperation in her face. She didn't want this. She didn't want someone else to die. Ion hesitated, and that was all it took.
The stranger shoved Ion's foot upward, putting him off-balance, before she rolled out from beneath him and lunged for the spear just a pace away. In a mere four seconds, the woman was on her feet with the spear pointed at Ion, though her eyes were fixed to Naim. "I surrender," she said again. Her voice was calm; a poor match for the fire in her eyes.
Ion's cross acted as his own spear as he mirrored her stance. "Who are you?" he called to her.
She ignored him, focused entirely on Naim. She was silent a moment, looking her over, before she asked, "Are you hungry, girl?"
Naim was stood beside Ion, but retreated half behind him when she realized it was her the mysterious woman had addressed.
"Hungry and cold, I'd wager." The woman examined the bandages wrapping the girl's arms. "Hurt, too." She turned her eyes to meet Ion's. "You'd starve, but you'll freeze first."
"That's no concern of yours," Ion haughtily replied.
"It isn't," the woman fired back. Her voice, though muffled through the wrappings she wore, was as sharp as a razor. "Be grateful I'm making it my concern." She lowered her spear and turned her back to the pair as she began to walk away. There was a sense about her gait that bade them follow.
Ion and Naim looked to each other. A word wasn't spoken, but their thoughts entirely matched: "Do we have a choice?"
And so, once Vio was secure in Ion's pack, follow they did.