Mid-speculation, Fenn felt his legs give. There was no warning. Only the sudden realization that the floor was swooping up to his face, and the split-second panic of grabbing the bed by one of its canopy poles. Clinging to the frame, breathing heavily, he made a pair of split-second observations. There was no frost on his hands, nor the pole. And he shouldn’t be this exhausted.

This didn’t

feel

right.

Fenn’s head snapped up, eyes widened. Despite being out in a breezy abandoned castle in the middle of an autumn tornado, he realized that he didn’t feel the cold anymore. Even if he was immune to the harsh bite of it, normally, he still had a sense of the temperature around him. So why did air slowly grow hotter and hotter around him, pressing much too heavy and dry on his skin? And what heat was this within him? Explanations raced through his mind as he let go of the bed and eased himself into a sitting position. Did he have a fever? Had he come down with something awful? Was there some odd magic in the air?

Maybe he just needed to lay down for a bit.

When he touched a hand to his forehead, he found a thin sheen of cool-but-unfrozen sweat. Fenn stared at the clear liquid on his fingers. Fever, he decided. Definitely fever. Sighing, he stretched. His bag was slipped off his shoulder. Casting it aside, he set about peeling his icy cloak off of him, and then attempted to do the same with his shirt. With his uncomfortable warmth, he couldn’t stand to wear them any longer. For a moment, the boy simply shivered in his threadbare sweater and stared at the pile of green cloth on the dark carpeting and wondered if he was coming down with anything deadly serious. His heartbeat fluttered warily. His back crawled with an itchiness that shook him all the way down to his nails. Eventually, the sweater was wrestled off as well and pushed aside.

At least, Fenn thought as he lowered his head, the musty rug wasn’t much different than sleeping on loose soil. Here he was, sick and shivery in the middle of nowhere. “Fuck,” the fae mouthed. He was not used to being ill. It did not happen often. He did not like it.

The mobile above was still. There were no frosty breezes to disturb it from its place.

As his eyes fluttered shut, the young puck reached out into the empty air, faintly wishing that his fingers would meet dark, coarse fur; he wished that Daugi was here. Having her to hold onto would have been a Thaynesend at that moment. Fenn didn’t have anyone to admit it to, but he was a little frightened. A bit fearful. Afraid that, in the rain and the aloneness of these suffocating stone walls, he would die. But perhaps he was just being overly dramatic. He was good at that… he was very good…

Heaving a sigh too warm and too dry, Fenn’s eyelids slid closed.