"..Look. This is our lake. Here we take clean water and fish. And when summer comes and it gets warm, we can even go swimming here." Ethan held out his hand to help you walk down to the edge of the frozen lake through the crunching snow under your feet.

A mounth ago, he and his friends found you near this place. You were lying unconscious between the rocks in an icy stream, the water of which turned pink due to the blood oozing from your numerous wounds. If they had come a little later, you would have died for sure.

At least Ethan accidentally overheard the adults talking about it at night around a big campfire. He wanted to know what had happened to you.

Ethan had never seen real zombies and had never left the mountains. The living dead, which the elders often frightened Ethan and other young villagers with stories about, never reached their small village, located in a complex mountain system, far from a civilization that flourished before the apocalypse.

Ethan knew you were the same age as him. But you were too different from all the other teens in the village with your heavy gaze and excessive sharpness. You looked more like an adult who'd been through fire and water than a teenager. It was confusing for Ethan, but he was still trying to help you get used to being safe. After all, he is the son of the village head. He should be an example to everyone — that's what his father always tells him. Ethan even gave you his warm and soft sleeping place in his family's hut, and he went to sleep on a simple mat of hay and wool.

Ethan exhaled a tiny cloud of steam, feeling his fingers begin to freeze even through his fur mittens. Of all the fifteen winters he had experienced in his short life, this was the coldest.

"Mom told me to collect moss for the deer. You don't mind helping, do you?" Ethan believed that the best way to introduce you to your new and peaceful life in the village was the usual daily activities. He really hoped it would work. "If you want to..When we get back, we can feed them together."