With this thought, Unana walked along the connected ice floes and somehow imperceptibly found herself in the middle of the fog. The "bridge" kept changing direction, as if trying to lead her into a trap.
"There's someone coming," a voice came from the fog.
Unana stopped. The voice said something else, and then disappeared. Unana continued walking and soon heard:
"Don't be afraid, it's my little sis."
"Yueret," Unana immediately recognized her brother's voice, though she still doubted it.
"Is she a fire bearry?"
"Yeah, she's brown."
"Brown…" Unana frowned and thought. "Why am I brown? I'm yours..."
"I'm your little sis bear cub!"
Unana found herself on a small icy "island", next to a man in a white-blue bear suit, whom she immediately recognized as her big brother.
"Yeah, I see," Yueret said.
"You called me brown," Unana looked at her brother as if she was about to bite him.
"I spoke with Hotuka."
Yueret pointed his hand into the fog, where the silhouette of a bear-like creature was visible.
"Let's go," Unana grabbed her brother's hand. "She'll eat us."
"No, she doesn't eat bears. She summoned you to help melt some ice thing."
Yueret told his sister what had happened to him in this space. Unana seemed incredulous at such an incredible story and tried to drag her brother back, but there was nowhere to go. The "bridge" had broken up into separate ice floes, which were drifting further and further apart.
"Yeah, that's your little sister," the low, sleepy voice said from behind. "My nose can smell it."
"Big sisters smell different," Yueret continued mentally.
Unana turned sharply and saw a white-blue bear girl standing next to her brother.
"Ears..."
"What's wrong with them?" Hotuka reached her "paw" toward one of her ears.
"Your..." Unana touched her "paws" to the ears on her hat. "Are they real?"
"Oh, that's what you mean," Hotuka lowered her hand. "There are holes in the hood for them. This head doesn't just slip on."
Unana carefully approached the bear girl and began examining the ears sticking out of the holes in the hood.
"They are real!" Unana's mouth dropped in surprise.
Unana's hand reached for Hotuka's hood, but retreated at the last moment.
"I won't feel anything. Nothing here is real. If only I met a bear girl in the real world, and then…"
"Unana, this is a bear, not a dog, it can bite," the big brother's voice made the little sister take a step back.
"Did you mean to say "it can bite off"? Hotuka looked first at Yueret, then at Unana. "If someone touches my ears, I usually bite, and sometimes I bite off hands and such. It's my habit."
"Is it because of the dolls?" Yueret asked.
"Yup, it's because of the non-living creatures," Hotuka scratched her ear with her "paw." "They tried to take my ears."
Unana grabbed the bear hat with her "paws", as if trying to check whether its fake ears were in place.
"They want to tear off my arms, legs, and head," Hotuka continued. "They think I can be disassembled like them."
"They want to disassemble to kill you?" Yueret asked.
"Yup," Hotuka looked at the snow. "Non-living creatures are very difficult to destroy. At first, I didn't know how to do it, so I froze them, but now I know."
Hotuka looked at Unana, who had reached for the bear ears on her hat and was holding them so they wouldn't disappear.
"You must burn them," the bear girl said. "If you do, I'll give you four boxes of ice cream and five boxes of sawdust cakes."
"Why so little…" Unana frowned.
"I thought so," Yueret recalled how he'd accepted a smaller reward from the bear girl.
"Besides, they're not real," Unana continued. "I've eaten sawdust cake, and it's not tasty."
"You..." Hotuka looked warily at the youngest of the "cubs." "You're not a bearry..."
The icy aura surrounded the blue-white bear girl. The eyes on her bracelets, shaped like miniature bear heads, glowed blue.
"She came here from another world," Yueret instantly appeared in front of his little sister. "Me too… We were brother and sister there."
"What do you mean, 'we were brother and sister there?'" Unana's paws landed on her brother's shoulders.
"Ah, then I understand," Hotuka scratched her ear with her "paw," and instantly returned to her previous form. "You're temporary bears."
"She reacted as if she saw creatures from another world every day," Yueret thought.
"The barrier over there," Hotuka pointed her paw into the fog. "There's an ice bridge there. Walk across it, or the seals will eat you."
"Are there seals here?" Unana cupped her cheeks.
"Don't touch them!" Hotuka and Yueret shouted simultaneously.
"Oh okay."
"They're not real anyway," Unana thought and sighed.
***
"My creator, there's someone there."
Halankuo peered out from behind the thickets of coniferous bushes that covered a significant portion of the mountainside.
"There's nothing there. You imagined it."
"No, it's there!" the metal hand grabbed the creator by the hair and turned her head in the right direction.
Only now did Halankuo notice something blue on the opposite slope, beyond a small, turbulent river, peeking out from behind the same coniferous bushes.
"It's a doll," Halankuo sighed. "Thank you, Kyotyoryon. But let go of my head, or it'll come off."
"I'm not doing anything. My skill is doing it."
"If you don't remove your skill, I'll become like that doll."
"Don't, my creator..."
The metal hand released Halankuo's hair.
"Let my metal cut it," Kyotyoryon sat down on the ground.
"You can't cut anything that sticks out."
"They're soft... I meant it could be a doll's head."
While the creator and her character were deciding what not to do with the "something blue" in the bushes, it simply vanished.
"Uh, it ran away," Kyotyoryon said. "It was scared of me."
"You don't even know what it is."
"I know. It... It... It's afraid of me."
Halankuo tried to answer, but a voice from behind interrupted her:
"Sis, you've forgotten your sis."
Halankuo turned around and saw a blue-haired doll holding a shovel.
"Your head helped us find you," Sitihi pointed her shovel at the opposite bushes, where something blue had appeared again.
"So, it was the doll's head?" Halankuo asked.
"Yes, your head," Sitihi lowered her shovel. "It's a spare."
"Don't say that," Halankuo turned away. "I'm not going to become like you."
"Yes. I know. But your head is still there. I can't throw it away. It's like another weapon to me, even though I already have a shovel. I only have one hand for the shovel, and the other hand is extra. But with your head, it's not extra."
"It's definitely Sitihi, I wasn't mistaken."
Sitihi looked at the opposite bushes, which were swaying slightly.
"Kyotyoryon," Halankuo thought and looked around and didn't see her character.
"Sis, there's something there," Sitihi said.
"I even know what it is."
Halankuo emerged from her hiding place and soon reached the opposite bushes. The crooked branches, covered with dark green needles that almost trailed along the ground, moved unnaturally, as if a very large animal were hiding behind them.
"Maybe it wasn't Kyotyoryon? If it were, these bushes wouldn't be here anymore."
Halankuo summoned a wrench and decided to go around the bushes to see what was behind them...
"This... what is it?"
The wrench fell from Halankuo's hand.
"No, I didn't imagine it."
A large head, the size of a house window, covered in black fur, stared at Halankuo. Curved white horns protruded from where ears should be, and a large, wide nose was the only thing that stood out against the fur.
"It's big," Halankuo took a step back. "It's about the size of a Metal Bird.'"
The animal turned its head toward the bushes and soon discovered the head of a blue-haired doll trying to hide there.
"No, it's not edible," Halankuo thought.
She somehow knew what this strange creature would do. She looked at the animal's head and turned it around.
"This is some kind of fur bull," Halankuo thought.
Under the mass of fur there were four hooves that seemed to stick out straight from the body.
While Halankuo was examining the hooves, the animal's head turned again toward the doll's head near the bushes. A thick, pale red tongue protruded from its invisible mouth and slowly reached toward its target.
"Sis, it's going to eat your head now."
Halankuo noticed her "little sister" nearby, pointing a wrench at a blue-haired head lying in the bushes.
"Sis, your head's stuck," Sitihi said. "This bush is holding it."
"It seems to be moving on one's own."
The blue glow enveloped the doll's head, but it couldn't free it from the coniferous bush's embrace. Meanwhile, the fur creature's tongue drew closer.
"It's hungry," Halankuo guessed. "Sis, do you know what fur bulls eat?"
"They eat hair," Sitihi turned her head toward her "big sister." "It eats hair, that's why it's so hairy."
"You sound like Kyotyoryon. By the way, where is she?"
Halankuo opened the map of the Mausoleum of Nature and found a character mark just up the slope from the creator's mark.
"She didn't go far," Halankuo sighed. "You can even walk there."
"Sis, your head..." Sitihi pointed the wrench at the fur bull's tongue, which not only stopped it but also made it curl up into a tube.
"You take care of the head. You're the keeper of my head. I'll go look for Kyotyoryon."
Sitihi agreed. Halankuo walked up the slope, between two long stands of coniferous bushes, and soon spotted her character.
Kyotyoryon was running down the slope. Short blades protruded from the bracelets on her arms, and the tip of a blade-like tongue hung from her mouth. Her bulging eyes with round pupils stared ahead.
"Kyotyoryon, is there someone there?" Halankuo asked.
The spirit of metal noticed its creator but couldn't answer. Her legs continued to carry her heavy body for a moment, after which Kyotyoryon fell to her knees.
"If I had known it was going to fall out, I would have shortened it," Halankuo thought as she approached the character. "No, I have to do something about it. I can't force her to wear a mask all the time."
Halankuo was so lost in her thoughts about solving the blade-tongue problem that she didn't hear the noise coming from the top of the slope. Luckily, Kyotyoryon was nearby, so she grabbed her creator's hand and pulled her into the nearby bushes.
Halankuo only came to her senses when she saw a branch with dark green needles in front of her and realized she was stuck in the thicket.
"Kyotyoryon, why..."
The spirit of metal did not hear the words of its creator. She stared at the space between the two rows of bushes, as if expecting something.
"That sound..." Halankuo noticed the growing noise and thought. "Where is it coming from?"
While the creator was thinking, Kyotyoryon somehow managed to lead her through a row of bushes. Here, at higher ground, Halankuo could see that the space between the rows of bushes looked very much like a dry riverbed.
"So that's it..."
Halankuo's thoughts were suddenly interrupted. The noise became so loud it made it impossible to think. The girl covered her ears with her hands and, a few moments later, saw the dry riverbed fill with something white…
… A few moments later, Halankuo saw a huge mass of ice flowing down like a mountain river.
"It's an ice river. Why am I not surprised?" Halankuo thought.
Of course, after the Southern Continent, there was little that could surprise Halankuo here on the Northern Continent. The girl saw ice on the frozen river every winter, and in the spring, she watched it quickly drift away downstream…
But Halankuo was unprepared for one thing. A blue-white bear girl was descending across the flowing ice. She not just descending, but waving her paw, as if trying to say something…
…The noise gradually died down. The glacier stopped, but the bear girl was no longer on it.
"Kyotyoryon, did you see?"
The spirit of metal looked at its creator, her tongue hanging out completely, now resembling a very thin sword blade.
"It should be fine now," Halankuo said, sending the tongue back into her mouth with her gaze. "You can speak."
"There was a white-blue dog, like a brown one," Kyotyoryon answered.
"Is that a dog? I saw a bear."
"It's the same thing. But she wasn't quite a dog, she was a human."
"I saw something like that too."
Halankuo looked at the glacier, which still occupied the riverbed between the rows of coniferous bushes. Now it resembled a normal frozen river, only without the snow on its banks.
"If that ice is there now," Halankuo's gaze shifted downstream, "That means that creature is there too. We'd better not go there."
"I couldn't tell if she was evil or not," Kyotyoryon admitted. "But she looks like a fire-dog bear. They just painted her a different color."
"Yeah, it does look like it. It could be a paired creature."
"What is it?"
"They're two creatures that used to be one."
"Like brown dogs that aren't quite dogs?"
"Yup… It's probably the same with these creatures. In the wild, there are two types of bears in the north. One is brown and lives in the forest, the other is white and blue and lives where there's ice."
"Dog-bearry went home."
"Exactly… That's north. That's where the sea is, and that's probably where the mainland ends."
"There's nothing there?"
"Yup... There's only water there, which then drains off the edge of the world."
The tip of Kyotyoryon's tongue emerged from her mouth.
"I was joking," Halankuo corrected the character's tongue again. "Actually, I don't know what's there. Even the map doesn't show those places."
"The dog-bearries are hiding something there."
Silence fell. Halankuo looked at the character and tried to imagine a dog-bearry, but she couldn't.
"Sis, you're forgetting something," the familiar voice broke the silence.
A blue-haired doll with a purple aura landed on the ground next to Halankuo. One of her hands held a wrench, the other a shovel.
"Thank you, Sitihi," Halankuo took her wrench. "Where's your head, I mean, mine?"
The doll turned its back. The blue-haired head was strapped to its back like a backpack.
"I didn't have time to put your head in my inventory," Sitihi explained. "The ice river came too quickly."
"Have you seen the dog-bearry?" Halankuo asked. "Um... I mean, have you seen the bear girl?"
"No," the doll answered. "I was busy. That furry bull didn't want to let go of your head, and only when the icy river came did he run away."
"I only have Kyotyoryon's evidence," Halankuo thought. "That seems enough, but not quite. If only Sitihi had seen the bear girl too..."
"I could ask your head," Sitihi continued. "She was active at the time and could see the creature you spoke of."
"How would you ask it? It doesn't speak."
"It doesn't speak to me. Maybe it will speak to you. It's your head, not mine."
The head on the doll's back activated with a blue flash, causing its eyes to glow briefly. Its mouth opened, and a black, rubbery tongue, like a ribbon, dangled out.
"Ask anything," Sitihi said.
"Um…" Halankuo opened her mouth and only then realized that she didn't know what to say.
"My creator, this head has a tongue like mine, only it's made of something different," Kyotyoryon approached the weapon-head and began to examine the black tongue, which almost reached the ground.
"This is rubber," Halankuo answered. "It's a different material, not like metal."
Kyotyoryon looked at Sitihi's head, then back at the weapon-head.
"Someone cut off this head."
"Yeah," Halankuo shuddered. "Sitihi, do you have my body that fits this head?"
"Yes," the doll answered. "When I was in the crypt, I took it."
"Get it out."
"Why? You are not a doll. You don't need this body. Do you want to connect your body with your head and make it talk?"
"Yeah... We should try. Maybe it will talk?"
Sitihi pulled a stone coffin with symbols carved into it from her inventory.
"My creator, your name is written here," Kyotyoryon read the inscription on the coffin lid. "Will you go to a place where there is nothing?"
Halankuo tried to reply, but Kyotyoryon stepped between her and the coffin. Several long needles appeared above the metal spirit's horns.
"Kyotyoryon, it's not what you think," Halankuo said. "It's just a place where the body lies for the head with a rubber tongue."
"But this place can take you," Kyotyoryon made a disgruntled face.
While the creator was trying to convince the character, the coffin lid slid aside...