Something you never want to encounter in the snow blanketing the isolated land where you live alone is a set of unfamiliar footprints.

The only thing worse would be a cry for help coming from the direction they lead.

Unfortunately, I have both.

“Help,” the panicked male voice cries again.

“Pretty sure that’s my line,” I grumble despite heading in his direction, not unlike like the scary movie heroines I usually chastise for their supreme idiocy.

_‘I’m just checking it out to sate my curiousity_,’ I lie to myself.

I trudge atop his trail with big stomping steps to mark my territory, as it’s currently way too cold to pee on it at the moment.

But I almost do so anyway within my thick thermal snowsuit as I stumble upon the exact situation that I feared.

The tips of two pairs of mittens and the top of a brown mop of hair are all that remain visible of my visitor, the one currently dangling from the edge of the dangerous crevasse.

“Maybe I should’ve actually kept those warning signs up,” I mutter aloud to myself again.

I hadn’t really noticed how strange these solitary conversations were until I received company.

Company that rudely dropped in unannounced.

Company that can apparently hear me.

“Hello?” He croaks, bright eyes peek up over the edge of ice with a sigh of relief when they find me, “Oh, thank goodness. Please help me, I’m stuck!”

“You are?” I ask sarcastically as I forge ahead.

He huffs a laugh that turns into a hiss. “I am.”

I reach the edge and peek down.

He really is.

Luckily, he’s only dangling about a foot above a ledge, but if he drops to it, it’ll be even more difficult for me to lift him up.

As if I realistically have any chance now.

Beneath the ledge is an endless slippery cliff into an abyss of oblivion that I’m convinced leads to the fae world within the earth.

The scientists I bought the land from cheap just grunted when I’d asked.

I took that as a yes.

The stranger dangling to his death rudely demands my attention once more.

“It feels like the walls are closing in,” he mentions without any of the alarm I wouldn’t have blamed him for.

Because he’s right.

The walls of ice are much closer than normal.

“Oh, you wanted to get out _now_,” I try to joke, but it falls as flat as he’s about to be.

I’m on my knees and reaching for his forearms before I can think better of it. He nods a bit manically and grips mine back, but then they’re suddenly pinned along with his.

I learn very quickly how creative at cursing he is.

“Alright, alright,” I attempt to soothe, with all the tact of an agoraphobic hermit, “tell me about yourself.”

He stares up at me strangely.

I give him crazy eyes communicating to comply.

He swallows with great difficulty.

“M- my name is Matt? An - and I like the outdoors?”

His nerves melt into a smirk.

“Well… I used to.”

We both huff at that, the heat of our breaths seem to combine in the air between us. The ice there, pinning us in place, makes a great cracking noise.

At least, I hope it was the ice.

We simultaneously scan each other in mutual concern and then relief, especially when he realizes the breaking of the ice restored some of his freedom at the point of our connection.

“What’s your favorite food?” He asks frantically, as if sharing personal fun facts is really what broke the ice.

But I’ve got nothing better to do, so, I answer, “All of the forms that potatoes are offered in are my favorite food. I don’t discriminate.”

His breath of a laugh inspires mine, and again the ice cracks like it’s laughing, too.

Our eyes are both way too wide, but at least we’re not alone in this delusion.

I pull a bit on his arms, but he’s still wedged in there too tightly. I refuse to acknowledge that he’ll be too heavy for me no matter what.

Leaning into our insanity, I ask, “What’s your favorite color?”

He stares right into my eyes and announces the hue he finds there. “Green.”

“You’re way too smooth to get squished,” I accidentally say aloud.

He luckily chuckles, and suddenly, I’m flying.

With a deafening thunderclap, the ice breaks entirely, forming a shelf that tilts in place, like my frozen water wheel, and deposits us both on the forest floor at my back.

It then shifts and settles into a glacial monolith before me.

“Well,” Matt’s voice is a groan behind my head, “that’s one way to break the ice.”

We dissolve into a fit of exhilarated giggles until I finally sigh, “Let’s go, nature boy.”

We retrace his steps, his brow furrowing more the further we get. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” he admits.

I pat his arm awkwardly as we emerge from the trees.

He looks up at my house across the horizon of arctic tundra in horror as his memories come back to him in a rush.

I sigh, reach for his neck, and encourage his head violently into the bark behind him.

Really wish he would’ve remembered when we were closer.

Grabbing one of his ankles, I begin dragging his body behind me. He won’t remember this part anyway.

I determine on my walk that I won’t restore the warning signs.

The result got this leftover prisoner of the scientists to trust me based solely on learning surface level information about each other which ushered in a sense of connection.

He even expressed attraction, which I can use.

Breaking the ice, I decide to call it, seems conducive for captive morale.