Kipo always woke up at the crack of dawn, every single day, like clockwork. Even before, when she hadn't had a bed, when the sun got up Kipo did too. At this point, no matter how long Kipo stayed up, she'd awaken at the same time, and get up to watch the sun peek up from the treetops of the faraway forest.

So, when Kipo opened her eyes and it was still pitch black, she was confused. Feeling puzzled, Kipo yawned and sat up. Why had she gotten up so early? Late? What time was it and what on earth could've gotten her up?

However, as soon as the blanket fell down from Kipo's shoulders, she got her answer. With a startled yell, she reached out, grabbing the blankets quickly to cover herself again. It was freezing, like her skin was turning to ice as soon as it touched the air.

Despite being, well, asleep, most nights, Kipo was certain that this wasn't normal. There was no way it could get this cold at night; Kipo was already starting to see frost creep in from the dark corners of her room.

Kipo shivered. What was the reason for this sudden temperature drop? There's no way winter could just appear overnight.

But Kipo could really say that for sure. Despite this planet looking like earth and having the same constellations as earth, Kipo really did have no clue where she was. For all she knew, this was just how it worked here.

Now Kipo couldn't stop shivering. Despite the heavy blankets she held tightly against herself, she was still starting to feel the chill. Kipo swung her legs over the side of the bed. She needed to find a heat source, and quick.

Reaching her hand out of the blankets (and wincing when the cold hit her exposed arm like a baseball bat) Kipo quickly grabbed her jacket, and shrugged it on underneath the blanket. She grit her teeth. The jacket, of course, was cold, just like the rest of the room.

"It'll warm up, it'll warm up," Kipo promised herself, and she stepped out onto the floor in search for her shoes. It was immediately regretted.

The floor was so cold it was almost painful, and Kipo cried out when she felt the sharp chill sink through her socks and into her feet. But she resisted the urge to pull her feet back up, and stood up, hurrying to her door, where her shoes waited patiently. It felt like she was stepping on nails. Kipo made a note to herself to always keep her shoes nearby from now on.

With her feet now moderately less cold than before, Kipo started out. She might need to go through the house again, there must be something there to warm herself.

Kipo started looking through the closets first, there were two, and while they were filled with sheets and pillowcases, there was no coats to be found. Kipo took as many sheets as she could, wrapping them around her and her blanket, and continued on. These sheets would be useful for keeping her warm.

There were five rooms in The House. There was a washroom (with working plumbing, thankfully, though Kipo wasn't sure how long that'd last), a kitchen (the previous owner had left both perishable and non-perishable food items in there. Kipo took the perishable ones, and then just tried to never ever go in the kitchen. It stunk of rotting food), a bedroom (the MOST used room in The House, for obvious reasons), the living room (which, apart from some couches and a broken tv, was pretty much useless) and the room with the corpse. As Kipo passed by it, she consciously averted her eyes. The door was closed, yet Kipo still couldn't bare looking at it.

Kipo doubted that there'd be anything in the kitchen, and even if there was, she'd be incredibly hesitant to go in there, so she started off towards the living room.

The living room was a little bigger than the bedroom, but not much. It was clear that The House only inhabited on person (probably the corpse in that room, but Kipo shoved that thought away), so the supplies Kipo was able to scavenge were rather sparse. Kipo had only been living in The House for a couple weeks, yet she'd already had to heavily ration what was left of the non perishables. She considered it a treat her herself, on what were admittedly unspecial days. Kipo would just say 'I think I did good today' and she ate of can of whatever was in her little pile.

Kipo shook her head, shaking away her thoughts. She only needed to take one look around to figure out that there was nothing of use here, and her standing there did nothing to help her chill. Eve her extra sheets were starting to get unhelpful. Kipo was starting to shiver again.

Kipo sighed, taking a quick look at the window. And then she looked again, panicked. The sun was starting to rise, and just like Kipo, the long necks should be starting to get up as well.

But the scene outside was empty.

A slew of horrible possibilities ran rampant through Kipo's mind: they all got attacked, the cold somehow killed them, they just got up and left...

Kipo shoved open the front door, barely even noticing the cold air as it surrounded her. The pound of her shoes on the hard dirt matched the quick, panicked beating of heart, and in her panic, Kipo felt like she could breathe. Where were they?!

Kipo hurried around the house, looking around the plains in search of that particular colour and look of the long necks. It was only when Kipo got around to the back of the house that she finally found managed to find it.

Kipo stopped suddenly, breathing heavily as relief swelled within her. Thank goodness, they were safe. Kipo sighed, feeling herself smile in relief.

Kipo stepped forward again, ignoring the cold in order to get closer to the long necks. Just because they were there, doesn't mean they were safe, or unharmed. They were in a weird pile up, stacked on top of one another, and Kipo was worried. She'd never seen them do that before...

Kipo quickly hurried up to the long necks. The pile up was tall, almost as high as some of the skyscrapers Kipo had saw in her home world. But a quick count told Kipo that they were all there, and they were all breathing. They were just asleep.

Kipo stepped back, blinking up at the odd sight. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Her best guess is that they were hibernating, which really did mean that it was winter.

The realization suddenly reminded Kipo was just were she was, and what she was wearing. Kipo shuddered and tugged her layers closer. Her fingers felt like they were about to fall off, and the rest of her body was in pain. Kipo needed to get inside again. She needed to find a source of heat.

But just before she left, Kipo made sure to reach out and pat Velvet on the side. It felt like she was touching pure ice, yet it moved up and down in the rhythm of breathing. It was an odd sensation.

Kipo patted her friend anyway. "Sleep well," she whispered, and hurriedly shuffled away to go back inside.

It was very painful now, and Kipo could start to feel tears well up in her eyes. She'd never really been a place this cold, and it felt like every step made her entire body rock with pain. Who knew that winter could hurt this much? AT this point, Kipo almost started to regret her panicked decision to run outside.

Eventually, however, Kipo finally managed to reach the house, and she reached to the knob with shaking hands. Then she froze.

The cold was awful, but surely it wouldn't be so bad that Kipo would start hallucinating. But then that would mean that Kipo really isn't imaging anything, and that there's something in The House.

Kipo frowned. For a split second, Kipo imagined that this was a human burglar, because back home, that usually would be what signs like this would mean.

However, Kipo quickly reminded herself that there were no human beings here, and if there were, then she'd definitely have already seen them.

This would probably be a small animal, or something along the lines, so, with that in mind, Kipo lifted her hand once again and opened the door, stepping inside.

The creature looked up immediately, panicked brown eyes fixed on her as it froze in the middle of rifling through one of the closets, the one nearest to the living room. It had two legs and two arms, and a human looking mouth, nose, eyes. It had clothes-

No. Kipo blinked, and then lifted her hands to rub at her eyes. They hurt, and were filled with ice, but when she lowered them, the scene hadn't changed. This really was a human.

"Oh!" Kipo gasped, and she nearly dropped the blankets. The boy, perhaps shaken out of shook, jumped, and then shuffled back.

"O-Oh n-no, I am so sorry, I had no clue that s-someone lived here, I am so, so sorry," the boy babbled, still backing up. He was waving his arms in a panic and soon enough he would run into the couch behind him. Kipo winced. "I-I'll leave right away, I am NOT here to hurt anyone, I'm s-sorry-!"

He was really close to that couch now. It'd be pretty painful if he knocked into it, Kipo thought.

"Please d-don't get mad, I sincerely thought this house was abandoned... no offence, I don't know if this is some sort of w-weird style, but-."

"It's okay!" Kipo cut him off quickly. She wasn't going to interrupt, but it was clear that he wasn't going to stop. "Really. The House technically IS abandoned you know. I found it a few months ago."

The boy froze, staring at her. "O-Oh. Well, that's...uh... good, I guess-."

"Actually, that's not true..." Kipo realized. "The original owner is still here, they're just... well..."

The boy's eyes widened, and Kipo hastily decided to change the subject.

"I'm Kipo Oak," she told him, cheerfully. She started to drop the sheets to waved, and was suddenly reminded of the painful temperature of the room. "Are you cold?"

"Hello, Kip- What?" The boy seemed to be rather disoriented by the abrupt change in topic. "I-Uh-K-Kind of? It's fine, though, you don't have to-"

Kipo ignored him, shrugging off a couple blankets to give to the boy. He took them sheepishly.

"It's cold," Kipo noted. "We should make a fire."

The boy looked down at the floor practically covered in weeds beneath them skeptically. "Is... Is it safe?"

Kipo clapped her hands. It was painful. "Probably? I guess we'll find out. But in the meantime, we'll have to use these blankets and keep moving."

The boy looked overwhelmed, and while Kipo felt bad, she also felt really, really cold.

"I'm going to find some grass outside," Kipo told him. "Can you look around for matches? I think there should be some in the kitchen. Just a warning, it, uh... it smells kind of bad. You don't have to look, I'm sure we can find a rock or something, um..."

Kipo's mind blanked. "Uh... yeah. You got all that?"

"Um... sure?" the boy looked nervous. "Yeah, I...I think... I'll go look in the k-kitchen, I guess."

Kipo grinned, relieved. "Okay, good. I'll be right back. I'll be quick!"

The boy nodded, and Kipo hurried to the door. Her joints protested painfully. However, before she could open the door, she paused. "Wait...." Kipo turned back to the boy, an apologetic smile on her face. "I forgot to ask... what's your name?"

"Huh?" The boy's head snapped up from where he had been staring at the floor. "Oh, it's, uh, W- Wirt?"

Kipo beamed at him. "Nice to meet you, Wirt!" And then she hurried out.

Collecting grass and finding matches took far longer than Kipo would have assumed they would. To get the grass, she had to wrap her bare hands around the freezing cold stalks and pull as hard as she could. It didn't take long for Kipo to lose the feelings in her fingers, and it took even less time for them to start to burn. Kipo went back inside after that, with her meager five pieces of grass.

Kipo and Wirt worked as a tag team, where one would look for matches, and the other would get grass, and by the time they found a damp box of matches (Kipo wasn't sure why it was damp), they'd collected a sizeable pile of grass. Of course, it wouldn't last them long, but at that point, they didn't care too much. Kipo quickly moved to dry the matches, and with them, she easily got a small flame started, coaxing it to grow into a fire.

For a minute, neither Wirt or Kipo spoke. They just stared at the fire, bathing in the warmth and the light. Soon enough, though, they had to back away. The process of warming up as beginning to become painful.

"...So..." Kipo said after a minute. "Uh... Wirt. Your new here, right?"

"What, i-in the Unknown?" Wirt asked. "Well, no. I mean, THIS is new, these... plains, but I have been in the unknown before. O-Once."

Kipo titled her head at him. "The Unknown?"

"Huh?" Wirt asked. "Oh yeah. That's what this place is. Maybe. Actually, that's just what I assumed, I... I don't know anything."

Kipo hummed to herself. "The Unknown... so that's what the name of this parallel dimension is?"

"Parallel dimension?" Wirt repeated, frowning. "Well, that makes sense, I guess."

"I don't really know anything either," Kipo admitted. "I just... woke up here one day, with my clothes all torn up and no idea of how I got here. Everything was so different here, yet, also the same as back home."

Kipo rubbed the back of her head, laughing nervously. "I, uh, actually thought I was the only person here for a while. I'm pretty glad you've showed up, Wirt."

Wirt gave her a small smile back, his cheeks lighting up in embarrassment. "Heh, uh, thanks, I guess.... I-I'm glad I, uh, found you too... uh...."

Kipo stared at him. "You said this is the second time you've been in the Unknown," she pointed out. "...Were you alone last time?"

Wirt smiled once again. "Oh, no, a-actually, I was with-"

Wirt cut himself off with a gasp, and Kipo watched as his face suddenly twisted into panic. Kipo started as Wirt suddenly jumped up.

"GREG!"