Soren
The shop was too warm. The soft colours painted on the walls were meant to put patients at ease, but all they did now was fuel Soren's urge to escape.
He cautiously looked around the small shop. Mrs. Gable had gone to bed. The girl had left, but not without giving a list of instructions that sounded more like a prison sentence than a medical plan.
"Don't let him move," she'd told the older woman. "His heart is hanging by a thread."
Soren didn't care about the thread. He cared about the cold. He cared about the one thing in Oakhaven that didn't care if his light was yellow, amber, or broken.
He stood up. The world tilted.
His vision swam with grey dots, but he forced his legs to move. He couldn't take his coat because it was still drying by the fire, and he certainly didn't have his lantern.
He paused by the door. A flicker of guilt ran through the him. He realized he was being selfish. If he just vanished, they would waste their limited oil and time looking for him in the snow. They had been kind.
Soren found a piece of scrap paper and scribbled a shaky note in charcoal. 'Don't look for me. I'm where I belong,'
He left the note on the table and quietly slipped out the door.
He reached the Great Stair.
One step. His knees shook. Two steps. His breath hitched. Huff. Huff. Huff.
On the third step, his strength simply vanished. His foot caught on a jagged piece of ice, and he went down.
He hit the stone landing four steps below with a sickening thud, his shoulder screaming in protest. He lay there for a long minute, his face pressed against the frozen rock.
Stupid, he thought. They'd all call you a fool. To leave a warm hearth to crawl back to a rotting shack was madness. They didn't understand.
To them, a home was a place with heat. To Soren, a home was the only place where he didn't have to pretend to be alive.
He dragged himself up, using the iron railing to hoist his shaking frame.
By the time he reached the Low-Quarter, his strength was nearly gone.
He pushed open the door to his shack. It groaned on its rusted hinges.
"Pip?" he rasped.
A small, orange blur launched itself from the shadows. The fox collided with its chest, whining low in its throat, its cold nose burying into Soren's neck.
Soren collapsed onto his sleeping mat.
He didn't have the strength to check the lantern he'd left behind.
He didn't have the strength to start a fire. He just pulled the fox into his arms, his fingers tangling in the thick, familiar fur.
Pip didn't ask why he was shaking. Pip didn't ask where his light had gone. The fox just curled its tail around Soren's frozen ribs, offering the only warmth it had.
Soren closed his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the fox's ear. "I'm so sorry, Pip."
He fell into a black, dreamless sleep, clutching the fox like a lifeline in the middle of a freezing river.