Her blush was very hard to resist. Eskel was relieved when she turned, casting her gaze out the window, toward a fireplace, back into the cottage where a kitchen had suddenly materialized. Reality coalesced wherever she turned her attention, like shining a light into a darkened room. She does live here, he realized, or maybe she used to. It is home to her. There was something significant about this, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Was it the feeling of being outside of time? The little house lacked modern, Earthly luxuries, and it felt isolated in a way more profound than any cabin in the snow that he had visited. In his head, he recorded as many details as he could, working against the tide of the liquor that was slowly turning his mind to jelly.
“Mine too,” he answered, though he was aware of something hidden in her words. “Less energetic than indifferent to cleanliness…” He rocked forward suddenly, stopped himself with a hand braced on the wall. His eyes snapped shut. When he opened them, he could see the movement had brought him dangerously close to her face. “Sorry. I don’t have much time.” The illusion of cold had left him, the swirling snow outside looked, now and then, like ash. “Is there…is there anything you want to tell me?” It seemed so odd, he was sure it sounded completely bizarre to her (especially if she were, in fact, the dreamer), but he could not think of any other way to discover whatever it was he was meant to know.
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