[The hour is late - probably not very long before lockdown. The sky is already changing colour when Kesara slips out of the house to face what is outside. She has her tablet held out before her, recording the escapade, the opening of the door, and the scene outside. White and gray and empty at first with the swirling blizzard, with the wind and the girl's heavy, hesitant breathing for accompaniment. No one is following her. She hopes no one has noticed her being gone, of all the kind people that she travels with now. They should probably not approve. But she knows what she needs to do.

The scene resolves itself into the many misshapen things that crowd outside, five of them - one for every one of the unfortunates huddling indoors, minus the two that have been banished already. They are a motley sort and none of them are pleasant to look at, but she does not linger on most of them and they do not linger on her. They seem to shift aside, as though making right of way for the one among them who has first claim. She has a personal demon among this pack, and she and it both know what is happening here. It comes shambling forward to show itself. Display itself.]

Yes, you come out here.

[Kesara's voice is small, and it might perhaps tremble the slightest bit, but that might be the cold. She tilts the tablet up to capture the full of the thing. It looks like a woman - it has a woman's eyeless face, mounted on a shrivelled, dried frame of bones and blackened skin. A corpse baked by the desert for months, then risen. When it walks the seams of its flesh split where it swings its legs and opens its jaws, and red sand pours out. Its clawed fingers are as long as its forearms.

Kesara's breath rasps into her throat, and then she snaps:]

How dare you. [A breath, and a rising hiss and cry.] How dare you wear her face like this! You unnatural - fiendish - you farce, I know you aren't her, she would never hurt me, she would never hurt me! And neither will you, do you hear! You will not hurt me and you will not mock her like this!

[She turns the tablet around even while the creature moves towards her, and it captures her face, drawn with concentration and bright with fury, as she tinkers with it. The humming sound, and Kesara's sudden faraway look, convey that she has just run Winter's app. She stares for a long moment, a quick sequence of emotion in her eyes - flickering joy, pride, then bewilderment - and fierce, angry triumph.

She turns the tablet back around. The blizzard is empty. The dessicated corpse-monster has vanished.]

I've finished it. It's gone. I had to finish it.

[And she had to show that she did. It was proper. It was crucial.

She keeps the video running, to let people see her return to safety, as she turns back to the door with a very straight back and deliberate pace.]