He dipped a hand into the fountain and cracked the thin sheet of ice that covered the dark water, plunging fingers into the frigid liquid beneath. He shivered and quickly withdrew. Experimentally, he attempted to will the water to become just a little warmer, but another test drew another shudder and he wiped his fingers dry on his cloak.

It would appear that he did not, in fact, have some sort of omnipotent power over his own dreams, though his ethereal surroundings were indeed of his own making, vague as they had been in his head.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the thin black twigs of the trees that reached up towards the dark skies like so many twisted fingers, and cut right through his clothing, though it was heavy cloth he had wanted. He shuddered and sighed.

Make a happy place…

This did not appear to be a very happy place.

Drawing his cloak closer about him, he stared around him. Fog obscured much of his vision; what he could see was crumbling stone, wizened trees, and bare, cold dirt. He scuffed at the ground with his boots, taking at least the time to admire them properly. He had thought about them for a while, and they had manifested exactly as he’d wanted, soft dark leather and heavy. He fingered them thoughtfully, looking off into the distance…

He leaned backwards too much, overbalanced, and crashed through the ice in the fountain into the water, his breath stolen from his lungs with a shock of pure liquid ice. Dripping, he hauled himself up as quickly as possible –the old fountain was not deep so much as it was wide – but already he was soaked through from shoulder to thigh, his cloak sodden. Wind gusted through the trees again, adding to the bitterly cold air, and he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut and willing with all his might the air to warm, or for him to become impervious to the cold, but to no avail. A second puff of air drew a trembling groan from his lips as he hunched over to conserve as much body heat as he could, and looked up, and choked, and fell over, fear chilling him more than the wind could.

A s-spectre… What sorts of things are in my mind that there would be a spectre?

It stood, white beside the fountain, no more than five feet from him, staring impassively with large hollow eyes.

He felt sick. He had no hope of escaping it, assuming that he had no way to alter his surroundings through mere willpower alone. How could one escape what was in his own mind?

The spectre drifted forward several paces towards him, its features very…human. Almost alive.

He sat up with effort, cold making his limbs stiff even as his body was wracked with violent shivering. “Speak,” he croaked. “Be you spirit, or – or – ” He could not finish his sentence.

The thing drew closer yet, and then it was kneeling beside him and regarding him with annoyance in two very brilliant deep blue pools. “Spirit?” it – she – said, then snorted, sounding human enough. “Your mind has been addled by the cold. Or something other, that would provoke you to jump in the fountain on a night such as this.”

He could only stare at her in numb amazement. She had to be a figment of his imagination – no human ever looked like that, paler than moonlight and hair spun silver. He reached up to touch, only to find his fingers incapable of bending and his hand shaking terribly, frozen.

“Fool,” she said again, and slid a hand underneath his shoulders, a hand he could no longer feel. “Get up!”

Everything seemed very hazy, and suddenly very natural. He did manage to clamber, clumsily, to his feet with the aid of the spectre-girl, who, he dimly noticed, wore a dress of such fine, sheer white linen that he wondered she too did not feel the cold.

When he finally regained his senses they were standing in the corridor of the crumbling stone castle he had sensed but not seen behind the fog, the castle the fountain had belonged to. The spectre-girl stood beside him holding a lantern that did not hold fire, but something that shimmered with the impression of sharpness, like if he reached out and touched it, he might be cut on shards of light. For the oddest reason, he was no longer cold.

‘Who are you?” he whispered, the words rolling from his mouth to drop, softly, into the quiet air.

The girl pursed lips that were paler than any he had ever seen. They only made her eyes stand out all the more. “How can you not know me,” she said sharply, “when you called me?”

He could only shake his head, mute.

“Ah.” Her eyes softened and she reached up, drawing back when he flinched lightly. “Very well then,” she continued briskly, looking away. “An easier question. Why are you here?”

He opened his mouth to answer, when he felt a dull thump against his shoulder, enough to make him stagger under the blow – yet when he glanced over his shoulder, there was nothing there but stone walls and frost. “I am – ” he began, then grunted when a sharp pain raced up his right arm. He clutched it, eyes widening. “I thought – ”

She laid a cool hand to his cheek, then bent to scoop something from the snow underneath their feet, scattering the fine white powder across the ground. More snow drifted in through the gaping holes in the wall to his right. “Poor child,” she murmured, and raised her cupped hand. He leaned forward and blinked at the pearls she held, several white as the snow in which they stood. The rest were in varying shades of soft pink, and he touched one, cautiously.

“Where…?” he asked. Even as he finished the question a single pearl fell from his lips to drop into the girl’s waiting hand. It was a much deeper pink than the others, almost red. He had never seen a pearl in such a colour.

The girl touched a finger to his lips. He fell silent, and she pulled her hand away, fingertips red. Her skin was so pale, the red so bright… “I suppose you don’t want to go back,” she said.

Something crashed into his side and chased the air from his lungs and the sight from his eyes. When they returned, he was on his knees, weeping diamonds into the snow. “No, please,” he whimpered, and watched two perfectly blood-red orbs roll from his mouth.

“Anthony.” Cool hands raised his face until he was drowning in blue. “Will you come with me?”

Did he have a choice?

He shuffled after her, constantly haunted by phantom blows that he began to feel as he began to thaw. He might have walked for hours, or mere minutes – it seemed the walls were always the same around him, untouched ground covered with leaves, snow, or dust the only indication that they were not walking in circles in the castle corridors.

She led him to a door set at the end of a grand hall now reduced to rubble, miraculously still standing. He sidled up to the large wooden thing and pressed his hand to it as she was doing, and beckoning him to do. The door was warm. On an impulse he looked behind him to see a single pair of footprints, occasionally accompanied by a red pearl. Glittering diamonds followed the footprints as far back as he could see, and absently, he wiped at his eyes before he closed them and pressed his cheek to the door.

“Mm… What’s behind the door?” he whispered, standing there, but he thought he already knew.

His silvery companion set her heels and put her weight into pulling open the right door, fingers curled around the iron handle. “Life,” she replied simply when the opening was just wide enough for a boy to fit through. She reached in and brought out a small yellow flower.

He smiled and reached for it, then shuddered soundlessly as a deep pain wracked his body and his fingers curled convulsively. “It’s not much longer, is it?” he sighed once he was capable of speech again.

“Mm.”

“Are…are you coming with me?”

The girl smiled and showed him a handful of his tears. “Silly boy. I can’t go; I have to wait here for the others, too. Besides, I like the cold.”

“But…don’t you…” He could not muster the strength to beckon at the green past the doors he leaned against – it was almost as if they were all that held him up now.

“One day I will. Just not yet. Tears sparkle more than flowers do.” Deep blue eyes slid behind silvery lashes as she leaned in to bestow a kiss upon his bruised cheek, then caught his last tear as it slid down his face. “Go on.”

“Yes…” He licked his lips and smiled in the face of the dazzling warmth that welcomed him from beyond the doors. “…Thank you.”

He passed forward into light.

A/N: This is dedicated to Agdistis, who requested a oneshot as inspiration for drawing. I can't believe I actually managed to write something. Writing well on cue is not a common occurrence for me. I wrote on cue; I guess it's up to you to decide whether or not I wrote well.