The man breaks through the dense, vertical tangle of jack pines. Stumbles into a large coppice. Trips on the chop of a rough stump. Rights himself firmly. Witnesses many stumps which protrude like stepping stones above a pond of flat snow. They lead like pavers toward many large wood tangle aerie, similar to the one he witnessed with the little black boot. They're weaved of savaged trees as if something has torn the boles apart like pieces of paper and flayed rope.

In the distance, what looks like the central nest has a long gar protruding. Something's impaled upon it. Silhouette of something. Hard to really tell. Too much distance. Vision is a world of white light upon camouflage snow. The sky seems an eternal synthetic vapouring iodine halogen.

And Old Sol is like a priest that's made the darkness confess. Shadows cower and explain their sins. But beyond is the true interdiction. Horror manifests in the remnants of the ordinary. In the way the eye of a hurricane is unsettlingly calm.

Notices the air is changing around him. Becoming warmer. Like all this winter is somehow now useful for heat. Or his body is so cold, flesh pretends.

The man moves. Steps upon a stump. And another a foot away. Uses the stool pavers as what they seem intended for. From one to the next, he balances. Holds his hewing axe. Looks down and then forward, over and over. Jumps when necessary. Avoids sinking a mukluk into the unblemished snow. Follows the awkward stepping path to the first nest. Many stumps protrude like severed fingers from the sides. Seems like an art carving of a frozen explosion made by Mother Nature fucking the moisture out of Father Time.

Jumps upon its stump sewn ledge. Climbs above. Teeters. Hurls himself down into the snowless circle. Wreck of trees. Not just trees. Bones. Tethers of fur parkas. Remains of animals. A wolf flayed at its face past its shoulders like a banana. Peels of snout. Branches sprout from its body like spider legs. Bits of death like hardened lumps of shit.

A naked, wine dark stranger sits leaning. Facing him. Stares at him from the other side. Unblinking. Eyes like glassy ice. Vampiric. Almost glowing. Frozen to death like death is only the material world. And yet it's warm here.

Small branches protrude from the blue mouth like a miss-grown beard. Curl along the lips and down over the chin to the chest.

He whispers to himself. Chanting certainty.

"Not my fate. You're fate. No. No mine. Christ. Not my fate."

The wine dark stranger doesn't say anything. Eyes don't blink. Can't.

The man steps toward the naked dead. Breaks brittle sticks under mukluks. Olden pine needles latch to his attire like burrs.

Something cracks wooden behind him.

Turns. Nothing there, like the noumenal buried under the phenomenal.

Something bristles the other way.

Turns back. Nothing.

Watch's the stranger lean into a slump position and fall over like a statue. Ridged. Solid. The icy dead eyes are missing.