The blizzard found you a mile from the trailhead. You ducked into the warming hut and shut the door against the wind. Inside it smelled of woodsmoke and cold iron. A thermos sat on the sill, still warm. You drank without thinking.
The first wrongness was your fingers. They went slim inside your gloves. The leather, loose a minute ago, now hung off your hands like another person's skin. You flexed. Something at your throat rang once.
A bell. Gold, resting in the hollow of a collar you had not put on. You reached to pull it off and stopped. Your arms had gone soft. They were pale now, smooth where hair had been. The sleeves of your coat slid past your wrists, then past your elbows, the whole heavy thing loosening as your shoulders narrowed under it.
You sat down hard on the bench. The wood was freezing through fabric that no longer reached your knees. Your hair spilled forward, longer, the color leaching out of it until it lay across your lap like spun frost. Your chest pressed against the coat from the inside. The buttons strained, then slipped. Breathing felt different now. Slower. Warmer.
You should have been panicking. The thought arrived and dissolved like a flake on skin. Outside the wind kept screaming and you kept getting quieter, the weight settling into a body you had never carried. You had to plant your hips wider on the bench. The cold did not bite anymore. It pressed in like a hand. The bell rang again when you shivered. You did not reach for it this time. You only listened, head tilting toward the sound, and let the cold finish what the thermos had started.
***
The door scraped open against the snow. A man fell more than walked into the hut, his hood crusted, his breath visible. He shut the door with his back and stayed against it before he saw you. When he saw you he stopped breathing. Then he set his pack down carefully and crossed the room.
He knelt on the floorboards in front of the bench. He did not know how to touch you. His hands opened and closed. You did not stop him when he put a hand under your skirt. He was so cold you had to hold your breath. He kissed you above the bell at your throat, then again, lower. You held the back of his neck and pulled him closer.
He stood and you slid forward on the bench until your knees were against his hips. Your fingers found his belt. He pushed into you. The bell jingled. You felt it deep, like a vibration in your belly and chest and throat. You put your hands on his chest and pushed him back. He slid out. You stood and turned and leaned forward onto the bench, looking back at him.
He came up behind you and his hands found your hips. The bench was cold under your palms. The woodstove ticked once as the iron cooled. He pushed back into you slowly, the way you only push into something you want to keep. Then the thought arrived in your head fully formed, and it wasn't yours, and then it was. What had you been before he touched you. You could not remember. His thumbs pressed against the small of your back. The bell at your throat rang in time with him. The old self watched from somewhere small, and then from nowhere.
He finished. He stayed inside you for a moment with his forehead pressed to your spine. When he stepped back you straightened up off the bench without hurry. You did not reach for the coat that had become too large. You put the thermos back upright on the sill. There was one swallow left. Outside the storm had stopped and a single bird was calling somewhere over the snow. The bell at your throat was warm.