The first snow had come. A chill had crept through the air, turning it bitter and cold. Frost had already begun to form on the flaccid stalks of plants, a thick layer of ice sheltering the bark of trees. The ground was no longer dirt or grass, but a thick blanket of dead leaves, smelling of crisp autumn and decay. The first snowflake fell, tumbling, dancing, like a shimmering atomi specter, from the pregnant grey clouds above. It fell, swaying to and fro as it went, into the outstretched palm of a man, clad in volumes of thin, white sheets. Masquerading, as it were, as a ghost. His face, and primarily his eyes, was shielded by a mask of white china. Simple, plain, and unmarred of dirt and cracks.

The Demon tilted his head downward at his hand, as if to watch the snowflake melt, but the china covered his eyes and made vision impossible. The image of the snowflake formed in his mind's eye, exactly as it was in his hand. It bubbled to a half-liquid state and slid toward his fingertips. Collecting, growing, on the very ends of his nails. Finally, he shook his fingers, and the droplet splattered to the ground. He did not need to see. He already knew.

Long strides led him from the busy Victorian streets, the crowds of masquerading civilians, into a sheltered alcove between factories. Not so much an alleyway as it was a yard. He was guided blindly by his knowledge, slipping between the cracks in the wood and carrying himself above the cobbled streets toward a bridge. The water tumbled beneath it, rushing and wild with the howling winds that caught the Demon's hair, his clothes, and sent them cascading behind him, ghostly tendrils of white and red that intwined themselves with the blowing leaves of autumn.

He knew what was to come here as well.

The water, like his snowflake, changed, rising into the air as a mist. It was not thick or unusual, but it vibrated with something that felt like life. The Demon understood, he could not explain, but he knew what it was. What it meant.

"You're here to take me,” he said. It was all he could say.

The mist shivered, and the Demon knew the affirmative it would reply with.

"Take me,” he said. He could not agree. To say that, to admit he may have wanted to go, would have been voicing a knowledge the mist did not have. "Take me,” he ordered.

And it did.