Aimless didn't always manage to make it back home before winter, and she could never decide if doing so was better than wintering outside.
Inside her little cabin it was warm, her bed was soft, and she cuddled with Hunter, her hound, out of affection and not necessity. Inside her little cabin there was a little mask on the wall.
An ordinary, lighteight, masterfully crafted mask made of wood in the likeless of a human face. It had been painted with a beautiful, shiny white paint that made it look as if it was made of porcelain.
She had met its owner, a girl who called herself Alma, years before the cabin was built. She had been older than Aimless at the time.
Thinking about how she was the eldest now made her feel weird.
When Aimless met Alma, the days were only starting to get shorter and colder. When Alma was wiped and Princess drowned, the lake had just started to freeze over.
She remembered seeing her mask floating in the water and almost jumping in to retrieve it on impulse. She surely would have joined them in the afterlife had she given in. Instead she managed to fish it out with a stick.
At first she thought of burying the mask, giving Alma a proper burial, but in the end she couldn't bring herself to conceal the only proof of her earthly existence.
For three years she wore it as if her own, it wasn't little to her then, but later became awkward and small. She had met her family while wearing it still and by the time the cabin was done, it had earned its place on the wall.
Had Alma survived a little longer they would have found a suitable sloth den or cave to winter at, Hunter would have grown his coat and a few months later he would shed it, and Aimless would have made of it a warm, soft cloak for her.
Maybe they would have become friends or forming a family, maybe they would have joined the same family, maybe she would have helped built a cabin that would've been both of their's, maybe not, but either way she wouldn't be the only one who remembered braiding her hair.
Alma was a prolific wanderer. Her silver thumb ring, bow, coat and the little leather bound book she kept there were of such fine craftsmanship and materials they must have been made by others who had known her, to speak nothing of her mask.
Aimless hoped- prayed, -that some piece of her still lived with them in a too loud laugh, a little hummed melody, a weird way of tying their boots. She knew a little piece of her would live in the way she braided hair.