Cold. Cold cold cold. What sort of cruel fates decided that it would be best to take a young man whose entire life had been lived either in the tropics or within a large and well heated academy and drop him into snow within his first days of arrival? There was some sort of cruelty going on here, and even if Nida didn't entirely believe the whole 'our world was created by a terrible Sorcerer who murdered and ate his creations' he was starting to think that maybe cursing Hyne might not be the worst thing to be doing.

This wasn't his fault, of course, being out in this cold. There had been things to do, and he'd gone out before the storm had started because for all of his experience with the outdoors it wasn't like he had a lot of practical experience at reading 'hey I'm a pending snow storm' in the clouds. So all he'd done was to go out and spend a little time with the few people he knew here and instead of making it to their place he'd been stranded in an empty hours for a few days. At last things had let up enough for him to tromp back through the snow toward the inn.

So there was Alister's answer. It wasn't a lamppost. It was a shivering idiot, cursing under his breath because at some point he'd fallen into a mound of snow and now his peacoat was wet from melted snow, his pants felt almost frozen to his skin, and the poor young man didn't really seem like he was handling this well.

"There a fire lit in there?" he called out toward Alister when he saw the man. "I want to feel my fingers again."