Winter on the mountaintop was akin to a tundra. Constant blizzards and unbuffered gales ravaged the peaks of Spirane. With half the territory to cover because he was confined below timberline, Tychon’s time was suddenly filled with awkward stretches of nothing between patrol shifts. Melancholy gripped him… He really didn’t have anything but patrol. No friends lived on the mountains, and Masque he hadn’t seen since the confrontation of that loner (Noroi). The event had resulted in crushing his voice box because his throat landed perfectly on an edge of a boulder after being pushed off the path and falling a story. He felt her absence now that he had time to process it. He hadn’t meant for so much time to past… it left a knife of guilt in his gut.

On top of waking misery, his nightmares worsened. They were twisted epics of life events. Sometimes he was born with more mutations than a cleft lip and those pair of criminal wolves (Valfor and Anima), came to eat all of them away. He usually woke to falling to his death off mountain tops, unable to see and unable to call for help. That was why he had lumbered out into the winter evening - he was too tired to go to sleep. His burdened steps lifted high in order to step through the dense snow. Tychon walked… and walked… and walked… and eventually, he found himself at the pool at the base of the mountains.

It was fed by a rumbling waterfall, which tossed up drops of water that froze in the air. Steam sizzled when the ground water met the icy Aplos river. The wide birthplace of the river was where he’d found Daenerys - enjoying a swim - and made his decision to become a member of the pack. His dead eyes drifted further down stream. He’d met Masque further down stream on the banks. His tongue dragged along his hideous mouth-scars, trying to keep his exposed teeth and gums warm with the heat of it… Well, he might get frost bite, but he’d come out this far. He might as well go and see if he could remember where he’d met the annoying pipsqueak (which he wouldn’t, because who could recognize anything when it was under a foot of snow?) since he was apparently feeling nostalgic.

He began to follow the river. Eventually the first few stars of the evening peaked out of an orange and blue gradient and the top foot of river was shear ice. He wasn’t tired enough to return to Spirane yet though… so he kept walking, pretending to be looking for something familiar.