Chapter I

 Many would've said it wasn't a particularly cold day, although Quincy wouldn't exactly agree with that as he was staring down at his feet clad with bright white tennis shoes, which were almost completely lost in similarly coloured snow. The plan was that he would need to stand there only for a few minutes until his uncle would pick him up. It's enough to say those few minutes agonizingly slowly became two hours and fourteen minutes. And he was still there, in the middle of a small North Dakota town where buses come few and far between, and this middle of nowhere wasn't even the most middle-of-nowhere-like it would get.

The boy scanned his surroundings for the umpteenth time that day. The long road possibly leading to the outside world, or perhaps to a different world obscured in milky fog. The bus stop, which consisted of a metal plate with bus timetables printed out on now wet paper, making the times indiscerible. The tape on one of the corners of the sheet got unstuck and was now flapping aggressively in the harshly cold wind. A house behind the stop, of which he became painfully aware as two dogs yapped and barked incessantly at him once he first stepped off the bus, but have since quieted down. Boredom might've made them bark longer than they would were they small city dogs hidden in between an expensive wallet and a pack of tissues in their owner's bag, but nobody, not even them would've wasted their energy for over two hours on something that made no sense to do. It seemed funny to Quince, as that's what he felt he's been doing for the past few months. Yapping for no reason.

The countryside looked the same whichever way you'd go, miles and miles full of nothing, except sleeping plants hidden under the everpresent white mass, and the howling wind. Still, he had no issues discerning that noise from the loud hum of his uncle's truck's engine. He rolled by slowly, coming to a full stop in the middle of the road. Quince could count the cars that came by as he stood in the snow on one hand, so unsurprisingly no other cars appeared in that moment. His experiences from the city of getting into the cars as quickly as possible still made him open the door as fast as he could and jump in.

He was greeted by warmth, which felt blissful after such a long time of feeling his toes turn into icicles. He shivered aggresively, feeling his jaw tense up.

"You okay there kid?", he heard a calm, warm almost as the the inside of the car voice say.

Quince cast a glance at his uncle. The man changed quite a lot since the last time the boy saw him at Christmas three years ago. The Santa beard was gone, but his once chestnut hair has gotten some new silvery streaks. He rubbed his large, flat nose as he drove off, squinting his kind brown eyes painted with deep wrinkles at their edges.

"Yeah, just freezing", Quince said through his teeth that seemed to have been wired shut by the icy weather. Thanking all that's good and fair in his head he put both his hands on the  warm airflow blowing in his face.

"Sorry for the delay, this old lady didn't want to start for a long while, had to get Maurice to come and do his magic", uncle Rob explained with his elbow nonchalantly placed by his side window (?). "Mary will get you a hot bath and some dinner. Your cousins are looking forward to seeing you again, it's been a while since they saw you last. And you haven't seen Riley before, have you?"

That much was true. He remembered seeing the pictures of aunt Mary's newborn daughter on his mom's phone around a year before, everyone happy that she made it. She was born premature, nobody quite knowing if there'll be a celebration or a tragedy. Not that Quincey didn't care, he just wasn't especially taken in with the child's beauty or her fight being succesful, seeing as he had a lot on his plate by then.

They drove for a few more minutes in silence, interrupted only by the hum of the engine and squeaking of wipers on the front windshield, barren landscape flowing by outside. Eventually they took a turn into a ground road surrounded by evergreen trees his uncle had planted years back, and pulled into the driveway.

*

Setting down his dufflebag and backpack on the ribeye blanket on guestroom bed, he heard a familiar vibration of his phone's notification. It was a quick checkup message from his mother, simply saying "are you there yet?".

He didn't bother with a reply.

Instead he pulled up his Instagram, met with a drawing someone he was following made. I depicted a Ghibli style rabbit with a girl in a yellow jacket jumping on a green grassy hill. He gave the pricture a quick two-tap and moved on to his direct messages, finding the conversation with his friend Nel. White text signifying Quice not having had read the latest message said "lol". His phone, older even than his stepfather's new car has died in the cold, along with Quince's hopes that he wouldn't have to get a new one. Before its death he's managed to send Nel the so called "tea" that he's by all accounts been stranded and now he was going to die. Indeed, "lol" was the response he could have been expecting from his bestie. Nel, the ever-changing nonbinary bicon used to say that if you don't like yourself as you are, then change into who you want to be and stick to it until you don't remember the old you. Fake it till you make it, if you will.

Quince wished it would be so straightforward for him too.

The boy left his brick of a phone to charge by the bedside and, having checked the time, jumped in the upstairs shower. His fingers were partially blue after being in the cold for so long, but heating in his uncle's car and the warmth of the water has turned them pinkish. His now wet hair gotten light brown, he rubbed all the water out of it harshly, only casting a glance at his own reflection before straightening his hoodie and going downstairs.

"Quincy sweetie, you must be starving. Come here, I heated up some soup for you", he was met with his aunt's warm, although a little crooked smile from one of the strokes she's had, which has taken a toll especially on the grimaces of her face. The sincerity of her smiles and the beauty of her red wavy hair have outshined her shortcomings fully though.

"Thanks auntie."

"It should warm you right up", she said after a little while, her back to the kitchen counter. He's already sat down, slurping on the hot broth, not quite knowing why he was being watched so attentively. It's not like he was going to pour the soup on himself or throw the bowl and start crying, in contrary to her youngest. Force of habit maybe. Then she smiled again, this time like she was stopping herself from saying something, and left the kitchen, only patting him on the back in the process.

So that's how it was going to be. Circling around him, curious, concerned glances, not quite knowing what to do. And he just wanted to be left alone.