He sat in the wreckage of an alien plane among the winter pines. An old bird on its terminal journey to re-engage with the earth, indifferent to the will of its passengers. He was wearing two jackets. One jacket was hers and the other belonged to a dead man, but he wasn't wearing hers. He couldn't leave her naked, stripped of all the dignity she deserved. He had buried them both as best he could; first you and then the pilot. He couldn't bear to look at their wooden faces frozen in agony, though they still haunted his dreams. The thought of staying on the plane, the place where they had died, made his stomach turn. He forced himself to stay because he knew his chances were better there. Beyond the halo of his fire loomed the immense darkness of the night, threatening to swallow up the light and whatever hope it might bring with it. He thought about how much the fire had improved his situation, but it hadn't come without a fight.** The long hours of suffering and deadly temperatures had devoured all but his most basic instinct for survival. He continued only thanks to her. Abby, he thought. The light of my life. Why did he have to go? Why not me? He brought his hands closer to the fire; its warmth reminded him of her heat. Lying next to her, holding her. The snow danced and tilted through the air in its very vigil, stopping and then picking up speed with the howl of the wind, as if chased by some banshee or demon. She was faithful to her god and he took her… took her instead of me, she thought. God knows I wanted it. Eh... Sir. What kind of gentleman allows his people to be taken like that? And the way she left… A cloud of her breath drifted across the fire. He bowed his head in his hands... in the middle of the paper... too afraid. He had always been too afraid. But now it was different. He wanted to end it all, but when he actually got close to death he was scared to death. He could smell it. Death had a smell. That was the strange thought he couldn't get out of his head. He had approached the threshold and seen the bottomless abyss. He wanted to believe that something good could hide beyond that door, but experience told him otherwise. There was no coming back from that. No second chances. When he died, his father's face had been one of startling horror. He knew what was at the bottom of that pit. Yet Abby had faced death with a preternatural integrity that she knew only she was capable of; how much can you expect anyway. Nobody dies gloriously. All dignity dies with our disappearance. Death always wins in the end, he thought. Death is a disease and the world is destroyed.