For all the reputation of Puckworld’s ruthless frigidity, most days in the valley there was sunshine.

On that morning, the light had broken over the eastern hills, turning neutral grays of early dawn into golden, earthy tones. It was a different kind of sunlight at this altitude; aloof rather than nurturing, it broke through morning fog and melted the previous night’s frost, but the air remained crisp and sharp. Overhead, the Ashta belt glimmered with light, a string of rough pearls in the sky. There were a few flighted birds out, tiny swooping shadows that chased each other, making their first calls of the morning.

There were faster routes between Greon and Metro. But, there was a sort of charming anachronism to the old roads. The valley was not quite the middle of no where, but it was close enough to it that one could pretend there wasn’t a massive city on the other side of the hills. The days were nearly silent, and the nights were dark enough that the sky was starry, unbroken, and deep. Following the old road, you would see another soul maybe once or twice an hour, passing anonymously through. They would even occasionally mark the chance meeting with a nod or a wave.

The road itself was built when efficiency didn’t necessarily mean a straight line. It followed a cut in the valley created by a meandering, frozen stream, that in centuries past may have been a river. No one had ever installed smart markers on the road, and the absence of their constant thrumming beat was strange, but welcome. The only sounds left were the wind, and the birds, and everything else could be forgotten, for a few precious minutes.

This was a moment of selfishness that Winterwing allowed himself—well, maybe closer to an hour. An hour of being nothing but wind, following old pavement. Somewhere behind him was the childhood neighborhood around the lake, with its little disappointments and melancholy. Somewhere in front were the usual anxieties of being an adult, complete with employment and productivity and opinions about things too big in scale to really have informed opinions about.

He couldn’t remember why he had first taken this route. No one had told him about it, and the tiny community in its bends held nothing worth seeing. Maybe he had gotten lost, or he had just done it on a whim. Whatever the original reason, he looked forward to the detour now, when he could manage his time well enough to use it.

The speeder ran well, the morning was brisk but not freezing, the wind whipped but did not bite, and the twisted mess of his brain was blissfully quiet, if only for the space of that hour as the horizon slowly shifted.

He was basking in this calm, separated from thought and feeling the warm of sunrise, when he realized that he had just seen a body discarded on the side of the road.

The speeder wasn’t designed to halt immediately, not where there were no smart markers to guide it to a stop. Inertia carried him into a long, sliding skid off the pavement. There was nothing but golden grass to catch him, and it bent with a rasping whisper as he came to a halt. He looked back over his shoulder, disbelieving. He must have seen wrong.

The sound of wind was replaced with the roar of nothing, and the unbroken trilling of the morning birds.

The body was still there.

Anxiety caught up with him then, as if it had been chasing just behind the whole time. He did not want to be the person who had to investigate, and knew that there might not be anyone else that passed by for hours.

It might not be a body. It might be a person. If it was a person, they needed help.

So, he stood up, worked his way through the grass, and stepped onto the pavement. There was a moment’s hesitation, a feeling that someone was observing him, and he stumbled into a quick step that spun him around in a circle, to see every direction.

Nothing but road, and field, and frozen stream.

He would tell himself, later, that he had no choice. The answer was obvious. He would never have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t at least tried. He would not, could not leave a person to die of exposure.

He straightened himself and walked to the body.

The scene wasn’t as gruesome as his mind had been preparing for. He had assumed they had been thrown from a vehicle, and was expected pieces pointed in wrong directions, scrapes and blood. There was none of that. She was whole. Her clothes threadbare and stained, her hair caked with something that smelled bitter and rank, and she was far, far too thin. A gray-brown film of dirt covered her.

Breathing, not bleeding. Nothing askew, merely silent and unconscious. A person, then, not a body.

Winterwing pulled out his screen, and frowned in disbelief. The display read NO SIGNAL.

He didn't know that was even possible. There was not supposed to be a single corner of the planet where someone could not make a call. It was one of the basic services always expected. Even on the old roads, in the little valley with the forgettable town, he should have been able to call for help. Even if the link was only audio, he should have been able to.

He looked around again, as if he had missed a vital clue the first time. There was still nothing out of place beyond the body and his speeder, and nothing that could have been of use to him. There was no indication of where she had come from. He could not hear the tell-tales of traffic reverberating and echoing in the valley, announcing someone’s approach or departure. He wondered how long she had been left there.

He knew that he shouldn’t move her, that he could easily hurt her more than help. But, he could not find within him the rationale to leave her there and try to find someone, or imagine how long he would have to wait for another person to pass by. The isolation that he had been basking in moments prior became a problem.

He could feel that anxiety curling around him, as he tried to weigh possibilities. He knew he was procrastinating, that he was trying to avoid coming to a decision. There was no actual decision to be made. He had already made it, when he had chosen to investigate, when he had reflexively stopped, no, even before then, when he had decided this morning to come this route.

He gave up on denial, and stripped off his jacket. The speeder was not made to accommodate two, but it would carry the weight.

She did not wake to gentle prodding, nor when he picked her up and starting walking, awkwardly wrapping the jacket around her. She didn’t start screaming, either, which he was thankful for. It was harder than it should have been to walk the distance, because he had given up training years prior. It was easier than it should have been, because she was far too thin, and even with the jacket around her, he could feel sharp angles of bones under paper-thin skin. She dangled limply, smelt of sick and days of sweat. Even if she had not been on the road itself for long, it seemed obvious she had been somewhere far worse before that.

It was the sound of the speeder itself, or maybe the wind as it lurched to movement, that finally caused her to stir. It was not an easy ride, with one arm wrapped around her and the other guiding along the road without a smart system. She showed just the barest bit of awareness though, someone resurfacing before slipping back down under, and uttered what maybe was a question, but came out more as an inquiring mumble.

“We’re going to get help,” Winterwing said, and knew it was more for his benefit than hers. She didn’t answer, did not acknowledge that she had heard.

“What are you even doing out here?” he asked. There was no indication she understood. The hills around them erupted into gold as the sun fully breached the valley, and the air smelled of an organic clean, and still he had seen no other traffic.

Most of the world had moved on, and left for the city centers. There were still those strange spots, where the roads intersected, where places like the little forgotten town sprung up. They were tiny, usually disappointing, pretending at a liveliness that they could not sustain. It was not much, but it would have a medical facility. It might amount to no more than a single doctor, but they would be able to call for the assistance that he couldn’t.

NO SIGNAL, the screen still confirmed.

She may have said something as he shifted awkwardly.

“Hang on, little bird,” he said. He could see the dark shadows of the town now, the sun not yet touching it.

Her eyes were barely open again, seemed to look straight through him and upward, to the cloudless sky, at the sunlight bouncing off the Belt. He thought, for a moment, that those eyes were just a little too blue, an unnatural cyan, glowing as his shoulder cast shadow across her face.

This thought vanished as they blasted from empty fields of grass into what could charitably be called the main street of the tiny town, and he had to focus on finding someone to ask directions.