It was a strange dripping sound that woke her, but it was the sun that kept Lenore awake. It took her a moment to even realize it was the sun. The storm had abated at some point in the night. She threw her arm across her eyes to block out the light; she was tired enough that she wanted to keep sleeping. But as the events of yesterday began to trickle back to her, her eyes snapped open.

Victor had come back.

She lurched up, impeded by one of the blankets she'd dragged down from upstairs and realized she was lying on the couch.

A shiver went up her spine. How had she gotten here? The couch still gave her the creeps, so there was no way she had crawled up here on her own, even in the face of limited options. With another shiver, she went to throw off her blanket when she froze.

On the floor, right beside the couch, lay Victor.

He was cocooned in his own blanket, his head on a throw cushion, fast asleep. Last night, they had stayed in the living room to be close to the fire, their only source of warmth and light. Lenore didn't remember falling asleep, but the last thing she did remember was lying on the floor by the hearth, talking with Victor. In the low light of the fire, he had looked almost as he had before, perfectly normal... Aside from the times when one of the phantom wisps would catch the light. In the morning sunlight, they were still there. The wisps kept close, pushing in and out, in time with his low breathing.

Looking down at Victor, asleep and so close, as though he was protecting her, she had to wonder.

Had... Had it been Victor who put her on the couch?

It had to be. A smile pulled at her lips. Though the couch itself still unsettled her, she was touched by his gesture. It was almost funny that he thought she'd needed comfort more, though he was the one whose life had turned into one big void.

They had spent the night talking. He asked a hundred more questions about what had happened while he was, about his mom, Fiona, and even school. Lenore gave him as much info as she could, but it still amounted to not much. On his side, he had just as little. He still had no memory of the past few months. As far as he knew, he'd stepped into the woods that bordered her yard and then stepped right back out.

Lenore reached down to touch his cheek. She told herself she needed to wake him, though some part of him just wanted to check if he was still real. Mere inches from him, she stopped herself. He was sleeping so peacefully. She didn't want to disturb him.

He needed all the rest he could get...

Especially with everything the day ahead held for him.

She knew that as soon as they were able to reach someone to alert the authorities of his miraculous return, it would set things into motion, and the inevitable investigation would begin. Poor Victor would be whisked away, forced to do interviews and answer questions, and maybe even have to submit to an examination.

Lenore winced, dreading it for him.

Maybe she should let him rest a little longer.

As she tried to pull her hand back, his wisps shifted. They rose up as though they were reaching for her. They wound around her fingers, trying to keep her close. Where the wisps touched her skin, a strange, pleasant tingle spread out. She twiddled her fingers, playing with the tendrils. Lenore muffled a giggle as they twisted and danced further up her arm... It was almost like the wisps were alive like they had a mind of their own.

It was almost... cute.

Victor stirred, pulling Lenore back to the present. She shook her head, shook off the tendrils, and leaned back from Victor. The fog reached for her a little more before snapping back into place. Lenore felt bad for playing with it while Victor was asleep. Wasn't she trying not to disturb him? She shook her head again.

There were better things she could do to keep herself occupied.

To start with, she should check her messages.

Lenore looked around for where her phone ended up and found it on a nearby side table. She shimmied down the cushions until she'd reached the edge of the couch, grabbed her phone, and got up, tip-toeing around Victor's sleeping form. As she slipped from the room, she looked back at him, half worried about waking him, half afraid he'd disappear if she took her eyes off him.

But he hadn't yet. That had to be a good sign.

She stepped into the kitchen and quietly closed the French doors behind her. She tried the light switch, but the lights stayed off. The power was still out, not that she was surprised. She left the switch in the 'on' position and went to sit in the breakfast nook.

Checking her phone, she saw it was nearly dead. With the power out all night, there had been no way to charge it. But she still had a sliver of battery left, just enough battery to check her messages. Now that the storm was done, she had reception again.

But there were no messages. No texts. No voice mails.

Nothing.

Lenore frowned down at her phone. She was sure there would've been something from her mom. She hadn't made it back last night, so Lenore figured she'd been forced to hole up somewhere in town after the weather got worse. Maybe Terra had found her after all, and she'd gone to stay with her friend.

Though that all sounded perfectly logical, her stomach twisted with worry. She pulled up her mother's number and called it, and it began to ring, like usual. Lenore waited as it rang again and again...

As she waited for her mom to pick up, she looked around the kitchen. Maybe her twisting stomach had more to do with hunger than worry. She hadn't had much to eat since late last night, and that was just what she'd been able to scavenge from their nearly bare pantry.

But then her gaze went to the window that overlooked the yard...

Lenore's mouth dropped open, and her eyes went wide. She nearly dropped her still-ringing phone.

Outside, all the snow was nearly gone. Only a few scattered mounds of white remained, and the eaves of the porch were dripping heavily, the tap-tap-tap of melting snow loud and rhythmic. Lenore suddenly remembered the sound that had woken her in the first place—

"Hey," came her mother's voice from the other side.

Lenore scrambled to put her phone to her ear, almost dropping it again. "Mom? Mom? It's Lenore. Where are you—"

But her mother's voice just continued on. "You've reached Amelia. I can't take your call—"

Lenore cursed under her breath. Voicemail.

"—so just leave a message," the recording of her mother finished, punctuated by a loud beep.

"Mom, where are you?" Lenore asked. "I need you to come home as soon as possible. Something... Something strange has happened. I need your help. I'll explain everything when you get here, but I need you to get home—"

The call ended suddenly with a sharp beep. Lenore pulled her phone back, wondering why her message had been cut short. She got her answer as the screen went black before flashing a big empty battery. She cursed again.

"Thought that was you," came another voice.

Lenore let out a shriek and whirled around.

Victor was there, standing at the threshold of the French doors. His wisps trailed along the glass as if it were exploring the surface.

"Sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to—I mean, I didn't want to wake you."

"It's okay," he said, stepping further into the room. "I was more worried when I woke up and you were gone. I was worried you had gone missing on me, now."

He let out a little laugh, but Lenore couldn't force the same. He had been trying to make light of what happened to him since last night. She figured it was his way of coming to terms with it, but Lenore couldn't find the humour in it. This all still seemed too tenuous, like something was waiting to come along and rip him away from her once more.

"I-I was just trying to call my mom," Lenore said, changing the subject. "But my phone died." She jammed at the power button, but the screen just kept flashing the big empty battery.

"Where's your charger?"

Lenore shook her head. "Upstairs, but it doesn't matter. Power's still out."

"Right, right," Victor said, looking around like it was all coming back to him. "And you don't have any battery packs or anything?"

She grimaced, feeling dumb. "I... I forgot to charge them."

"You would've made a terrible Boy Scout." Victor clucked his tongue but then grinned at her to show he was teasing.

Despite herself, Lenore had to laugh at that. "Yeah, in more ways than one."

Victor seemed pleased to make her smile. "Well, if you can't charge your phone, then... Does this place have a landline? It's old enough."

"Sort of," Lenore said, grimacing again. She pointed out the other kitchen door, the one that led into the foyer. In the nook of the stairs was an old wooden phone bolted into the wall. It was old enough that its cord was braided fabric, frayed from age. It was a relic that her grandmother had never gotten around to removing, and neither had her mother. "But I don't think it works anymore."

"Right," Victor said, sucking a breath in through his teeth. "Well, I guess we'll have to wait until the power comes back. You'd think they'd be right on it as soon as the storm was done—"

He then turned to the window, and his humour disappeared.

"The snow... The snow's gone!" he cried. "How?"

"I don't know," Lenore said, her brow pushing together as she looked out the window alongside him. "I... I guess it melted."

"Can snow melt that fast?" Victor said, sounding unsure as he took another step closer to the window.

"I guess," Lenore replied, just as unsure. It didn't make any sense how all that snow could melt in a single night. And yet the scraggly brown grass that was peeking through the last muddy piles of snow was proof that it had. For a second, Lenore fretted that they had somehow been asleep for much longer than just a night... But that made even less sense. "What else could it be?"

Victor stepped back from the window, his eyes tense and full of trepidation. "W-Well, if the weather's better, then they should get the power lines up again soon, right?"

"It's not the power lines," Lenore said. "It's our house. The wiring's old and a fuse went out and—"

"That's an easy fix!" Victor said, brightening instantly. "Why didn't you say so last night?"

"It wasn't that simple," Lenore said, shaking her head. "The fusebox is in the cellar, and the only way to get into the cellar is from outside, so it's impossible to get to during a storm—"

"But the storm's gone now," Victor said, a new hopeful grin spreading across his face. "So, why don't we go down and check it out?"