(with apologies to C S Lewis)

This story was written in response to a challenge on JetC10 in November 1997, to write a scene where Janeway and Chakotay are stranded in the snow ....

All the usual disclaimers plus a couple more ... the setting is the copyright of C S Lewis' estate, or whoever's entitled to it, as are the non-Voyager characters. The idea's mine, and I'll put the toys back where I found them when I'm done.

".... Far from the land of our ancestors".

The words died away as Kathryn looked about her. Somehow, she thought, they were even further from the land of his ancestors than she'd imagined they might be. A silence surrounded them, as deep as the snow they found themselves in. She glanced to her right, to reassure herself that Chakotay was with her, not willing to trust the warm reality of his hand in hers.

He was looking around, taking in the place they found themselves in. When his eyes met hers, he smiled. "This is an interesting spot you have for vision quests, Kathryn". His voice was warm, echoing softly in the stillness.

She frowned, her brow creasing a little in perplexity. "This isn't my quest space, I thought it was yours?"

"No ... there are some similarities, but it's definitely not mine."

"Could we have been sent somewhere different, as this is a joint quest?" asked Kathryn.

"I don't know ... this is a new experience". Chakotay was looking at their joined hands as he spoke.

"Oh" came the soft reply, then silence. They each looked a little more closely at their surroundings, Kathryn trying to identify where they might be, Chakotay simply taking in the scene. Snow fell gently around them, the flakes dancing on the crisply chilled night air and settling with an inaudible sigh on the drifts that ebbed and flowed around the trees. Mostly firs, he noted absently, watching the snow bend a juniper branch until it almost touched the ground. So still, but the energy held there was tangible, waiting to fling itself free and send the branch souring.

A little way off, he could see a light. Touching Kathryn's shoulder, he pointed it out and they made their way slowly through the drifts. Kathryn stumbled slightly once, catching his shoulder to hold herself upright. Chakotay slid his arm around her waist - just to support her. She didn't protest, and he decided not to think about moving it.

Closer, and they could see the light. "It looks like one of the streetlights in the historical section of London" remarked Kathryn. Chakotay nodded in agreement. The black wrought iron rose gracefully from the snow, the light a warm yellow-gold sparkling on the small drifts of snow that nestled in the nooks and crannies of the design, then spreading and fading across the anonymous white that blanketed the ground beneath the trees. Icicles dripped and reformed as the snow close to the heat melted, fell, and froze again once beyond the circle of warmth.

For a while they stood, watching the snow cascading in the light, until Kathryn shivered against Chakotay. He suddenly realised that they were both trimmed with snow, and that the temperature was dropping. Should they retreat from the vision, or press on? He wasn't certain what they'd found themselves in, but equally wasn't certain where a joint quest would lead. It wasn't something often practised amongst his people and the tales of earlier quests lay hidden in his memories, only fleetingly available to him.

The shared vision had begun as a way to get closer, away from the crew. Now he tried to pull back, his uncertainty overwhelming him, to his quarters where he knew that he and Kathryn sat together, but nothing of the grey walls came to him. A quick rush of deeper uncertainty, and he tried harder. Nothing. This world would not release them.

He took a sharp breath, and avoided Kathryn's eyes as she looked up when she felt his chest rise and fall with it. Suddenly he noticed a pair of footsteps leading away from the lamppost. Surely they hadn't been there before? The snow would have wiped them away ... still holding Kathryn, he walked towards the steps and began to follow them.

"A child ... and a deer?" asked Kathryn, seeing the trail. Chakotay looked down as they reached the indentations, strangely free of snow. A child, certainly, those steps and marks too small for anything else. And, yes, a set of cloven steps.

"Not a deer" he said, puzzlement colouring his words, "it's walking on two legs, whatever it is." Slowly, cautiously, they moved alongside the trail. Chakotay listened to the still air, wondering where the owners of the footsteps were. Behind them the snow drifted silently into the marks, filling them and erasing them. He could hear nothing save the occasional shiver as snow overburdened a branch and slid to the drifts below, and their steps.

Kathryn was silent, concentrating on her footsteps and the trail, almost too preoccupied with her stability to notice Chakotay's wariness. Almost. She had noticed, and wondered at it, but he would tell her if there was something wrong. Wouldn't he? Here, she had to follow him, their roles reversed by his experience and culture. Trust. Always it came down to trust, the trust she'd abused by questioning some time ago. She shied away from that line of thinking, having gone over it too often to be prepared to follow it again. It had happened, it wasn't going to happen again, and now she needed to close what remained of the space between them. Shore leave in a cabin a few weeks ago had splintered that space, but she still needed to find her place within the two of them.

She closed her eyes for a moment at the still new sensation of their relationship, then snapped them open again when she caught the toe of her boot on the snow. She managed not to stumble, but felt Chakotay's hold on her waist tighten then relax. Clearing her mind of the problems she wanted - no, needed - to resolve, Kathryn forced her attention back to their surroundings. The chill in the air was invigorating, and she could feel it burning through her lungs with a clear purity. The snow crunched underfoot, the sound loud in the quiet around them. The dark indigo sky showed no signs of dawn or dusk, the stars like crystals ringing in the silence.

The ringing grew louder, and Kathryn stopped when she realised it wasn't her imagination. Chakotay halted too, his hold on her drawing him to her side. In the far distance they heard bells, and as one retreated to the shroud of a sweeping fir. Chakotay held his breath, then relaxed marginally as he realised their tracks were being filled by the snow. The sound of bells grew louder, and they heard a growing slither of sound until suddenly, in front of them, swept past a sledge drawn by two reindeer, white as the snow they sped over, with horns gilded and sparkling with the fading light of the lamp. They wore harness of scarlet leather, covered with bells. The sledge was driven by a dwarf dressed in white fur with a red hood, tasseled in gold. Behind him, on a higher seat, sat a woman. She too was in white, with white hair and white skin. Her mouth was a slash of red in a cold beauty of a face. The snow slashed up behind the reindeer's hooves, caught and thrown by the runners of the sledge.

In a moment they had gone, only the retreating sound of bells and the vanishing ruts signaling that it was more than a mirage. Kathryn remembered to breathe, a cloud of silver holding and then dissipating. "What was that?" she wondered. When Chakotay replied, she realised she'd spoken aloud.

"I'm not sure I want to follow and find out." He gave no more explanation, unwilling to tell Kathryn that the woman had reminded him of Seska - unsure why she had, simply aware that something in her countenance had filled him with a cold far worse than that of the landscape. To his relief, Kathryn chose not to press the matter, unaware that she'd had the same reaction. They crept out from under the sheltering branches, and he paused for a moment to admire a pine cone, almost black, and hung with the filigree of a frozen cobweb. Kathryn caught his hand again, and they headed again in the direction the trail had followed. The footsteps tangled with the tracks of the sledge, peeking from the drifts in places enough that they could follow. The smooth forest floor gave way to a series of small hills and valleys and it was in one of these valleys that they saw the footsteps part from the runner tracks and head off. The snow was finally smoothing them over, but enough remained that Kathryn and Chakotay found themselves beside what seemed an unusually large rock. The footsteps seemed to lead to it, but now the snow had won, and they couldn't distinguish them any more.

Chakotay peered around the rock and realised where they must have headed to. Quietly, slowly, he tugged on Kathryn's hand, giving her a quick look to remain silent. Gingerly, he led them into the cave hidden behind the rock. Inside, they stood blinking the warmth of a fire. No-one was there, and Kathryn and Chakotay looked at each other, wondering. He spotted a door in the reddish stone of the cave and let go Kathryn's hand to open it, again slowly. Again, no-one there. He returned to Kathryn.

"Could they have left again?" she asked, musing, then began to consider. "But the tracks were fresh ... and there were none leading away". Her voice tailed off and she looked around the cave as though expecting to see someone in the shadows. She shivered again, cold once more creeping into her now that she was still.

"Come closer to the fire" Chakotay urged, deciding to leave the questions in his mind until they'd at least warmed up. In a corner was a pile of pine branches, and he dragged some closer to the fire. They would be more comfortable than the floor, at least. Kathryn was still shivering, and he was concerned about how cold she'd become. Her fingers were like ice as he took her hand again. She seemed frozen in place, unable to move closer to the fire, until his touch on her hand brought her back.

"This isn't quite what I'd had in mind as a quest" she managed to say, her jaw stiff with cold and tense as she tried not to let her teeth chatter. She wished Chakotay would move closer to her, the fire insufficient to thaw the bone-deep chill in her. But he was fetching wood from a stack just inside the entrance to the cave.

The fire grew warmer, brighter, as he piled the dried and seasoned wood onto it. The flames flickered over the uneven walls that curved into a roof and back into themselves over them, a roughhewn dome chipped into shape. The red of the stone seemed closer to copper in the heat, as though smelted by light, and Kathryn watched the retreat and advance of the shadows as she hugged herself on the pines. She'd stopped watching Chakotay as he built the fire, mesmerised instead by the flames, and was startled to feel his arms around her. He brushed his hands over hers, then slid his arms around her. His voice, too close to her ear not to disturb. "You'll be warm in a moment." She leant back against his chest, the warmth before and behind her soothing and finally thawing her.

Chakotay rested his head on hers, and took comfort from the fire and the simple act of holding her. The soft rise and fall of her body against his reassured him by its steadiness, a lulling rhythm that had him almost asleep. He smiled softly when he realised she had fallen asleep, and let himself feel what he held in check at all other times. He gently brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen out of place, feathering across her face, and briefly kissed the top of her head, savouring the scent of her.

Kathryn stirred at his touch, awakening. He stroked her arms softly, murmuring nonsense to lull her back to her dreams. The soft purr of his voice lulled her more fully awake, instead, as heat crept into her. She stretched slowly against him, deliberately pushing back and rubbing against him as she did so. Part of her mind wondered just what she was playing at, half-buried in snow in a place that had its reality only in their shared consciousness, but relinquished its objections as she felt his answering arousal. Outside, the snow still fell, the drifts at the edge of the cave rising imperceptibly as the flakes flickered past in the shadows from the fire.

Chakotay held still, very still, as he felt Kathryn moving against him. Forgetting to breathe, he watched her stretch slowly, arching forward towards the fire. Her hair ... gods, her hair ... glowed in the light, her skin a pale gold in profile against the flames. She smiled, knowing he watched her, confident that she had his complete attention. He started to speak, but she touched his mouth with her fingers, not wanting to break the spell of the fire and snow that held them. His mouth was warm under her fingers, or perhaps her fingers were cold on his mouth ... Kathryn briefly wondered which it was, then felt the kiss of his lips on her hand. His face was a dark bronze, her fingers reflecting his heat and she watched herself trace his mouth ... his cheekbone ... his tattoo. So often she'd traced the blue-black lines, and yet she never tired of it, following them until they vanished into his hair, then running her fingers through the dark softness. Chakotay rubbed his head briefly against her hand, then answered her pressure, his head dipping to hers.

His mouth *was* warm. Kathryn sighed with pleasure, her breath mingling with his in soft warm puffs that melted in the cold air. He nibbled the slightly chill from her lips, sucking with a delicate grace on her lower lip, nipping quickly as he let it slide from his mouth, then taking her mouth fully with his, meeting and retreating then sliding to taste each other. One hand holding his head to her, the other retraced paths not followed for days, delighting in the feel of his muscles under the dark fabric he wore. Too long, she thought, knowing that nothing else had been possible with the pressures of life. But now ... now she would make up for it. His thigh was taut under her fingers, and she braced herself on it as she turned fully to meet him, her back now to the fire, knees touching his on the scented bed of pine.

Chakotay's arms slid round her, accommodating her movements as she turned. Once she'd settled, he drew his hands down her arms to her waist and held her for long moments as the kiss heated and grew more demanding until, gasping for breath, their foreheads touching, they held each other quietly in the stillness of the night. The need to touch again, to hold, rose. Chakotay began to trace small circles at her waist, and Kathryn smiled.

The cold still pervaded the room, despite the fire, and she suddenly realised that her hand was cold where her fingers still threaded through his hair. Away from the flames, the chill winter night was making its presence felt. Too cold for what she wanted ... needed ... but worth trying anyway. Kathryn eased her fingers from his head, the cold trailing on his skin as she tucked her hand into his top. Chakotay gasped at the ice and fire of her touch, his hands clenching at her waist. She murmured a soft apology and he kissed her briefly, an absolution.

"Just warn me next time" he whispered, laughter in his tone.

"Mmmm". An indistinct reply as she cuddled into him, sitting on his lap, trying to keep to one side to let the fire warm him as well. Chakotay drew her closer to him, one arm around her shoulders, the other still at her waist, still tracing patterns as his fingers smoothed the fabric against her skin. She couldn't feel the cold on her back any more, the heat from his fingers spreading through her. That he could do this, with such a simple touch ... and she could do the same to him ... was a constant source of wonder in the moments that she allowed herself to contemplate it.

The fire cracked and spat, and she started a little, in his arms. "What ..." she stopped, distracted as his fingers slipped up from her waist at her movement, then started again with a catch in her voice as his hand curved over her breast. "What are we supposed to do on a quest like this?" She was absurdly proud that she'd managed to speak, her breath erratic as he rubbed her nipple to an aching hardness.

"Nothing ... just let it happen" he managed to answer, his attention focussed on her, on the outline he caressed. The soft mound and the contrasting hardness of her nipple under his hand was a distraction he could lose himself in. He let his hand wander, smoothing and teasing, over her, drawing a gentle line between her breasts before turning his attention to her other breast and repeating the teasing and touching, delighting in the soft mewling sounds and gasps she made.

Kathryn burrowed her face into his neck, kissing the skin there, and felt the delicious warmth of him against her. She closed her eyes and let him take over her other senses, the scent of him, his quietly broken breathing, the spice of his skin on her tongue, the push of his erection against her hip. The last held her attention, and she let her hand drift to his stomach, then slide between them as he sucked his breath in. She cupped him, through the fabric, and he pushed into her palm, trapping her hand between them both. She felt him rest his chin on her head as she opened her eyes, watching him rocking his hips against her touch. His hand stilled on her breast, and she could feel him tremble.

Chakotay slowed himself with an effort. "Your turn" he whispered into her hair, his hand brushing over hers and then over her thighs. Now, as he began to rock gently his hand moved with him, rubbing the delta of her legs, smoothing the fabric of her trousers into her outline.

Kathryn gasped at the friction of cloth on an already sensitive nub. Under her hand he grew harder as she held her hand still and let him move through her hold. Too much, too little, all at once, and Chakotay let himself drop onto his back on the pine branches beneath them, taking Kathryn with him so that she lay on top of him. She held still in surprise, then settled, her hand taking up the rhythm of his hips against her now that they were still. Chakotay reached down to take her hand, to move it somewhere less demanding. His chest rose and fell in a quick movement as Kathryn caught his hand and held it against his erection, a sparkle in her eyes as she watched his face. She laced her fingers with his, and stroked him with their joined fingers, aroused laughter in her face as she did so which quickly became simply arousal as he returned the favour, slipping their hands from him to her, delving their fingers against her. Kathryn moaned and parted her legs a little in an involuntary welcome.

Chakotay kissed her, her mouth now warm and her lips swollen and wet from their earlier kisses, and stilled their hands, untwining their fingers and reaching for the fastening of her uniform. The cold still crept around them, and Chakotay took care only to open enough to slip a hand in against her skin. The trail of his fingers over her breasts again had Kathryn squirming against him, her breath hot and shallow in his ear. A small nip on the lobe had him surging against her, his hips pushing up into hers, hard. He felt her fingers open his uniform, echoing his care as she moved slightly to one side of him, her hand pushing through the opening in the fabric to finally hold him, her palm curling around his erection.

He was hot against her fingers, so hard that she wondered how he stood it, the silk skin taut over his length. Kathryn explored him with touch alone, relearning him, following the veins that stood out under the sheath of skin and drawing a finger up over him, smoothing the drop of moisture at the tip into the groove that had him shuddering as she traced it. The shudder fueled her own arousal, already coiled tight within her. Kathryn wondered whether she would climax simply from touching him. His hands were still on her, his concentration too focussed to permit movement. A deep moan had her shuddering against him as it echoed through her and it seemed to give him strength to move because she suddenly felt cold air against her stomach, then his hand, stopping the chill and quickly finding the damp warmth between her legs.

Chakotay sighed as his fingers slipped into her. Hot and enfolding. He savoured the feel of her, rubbing against the nub that stood proud at his attention, slick warmth trailed to ease the friction. He felt Kathryn thrust against his fingers and the pressure of her hand clenching around him. Tight, and he let himself imagine that she was holding him inside her, forgetting the chill that allowed no closer touch. A quick brush of her thumb over the tip as he pushed into her grasp and he felt himself fall into her. The last remnants of control had him sliding his fingers hard into her, pushing into the slick heat until he felt her grip him in a flurry of contracting muscles and heard her cry his name. He moaned something that would have been her name if he hadn't been so enveloped by her and felt himself surge into her palm, the friction dissolving in a warm slickness.

Kathryn heard his cry over her gasps for air just as she felt him lose himself in her hand, the wet warmth spreading over her palm, and dropped her head onto his chest. It rose and fell with the thunder of his heartbeat under her ear, a comforting movement that had her on the verge of tears with a profound emotion. She felt his hand in her hair, holding her to him, and quiet words of love punctuated by a trail of kisses on her head. His hand slowly slipped from her and she felt as though she'd lost a part of herself for a moment. A brief moment of chill, and he closed her uniform. She regretfully did the same, relinquishing him and closing his uniform, her fingers lingering over the damp outline of him. Eventually she looked up, knowing he was watching her in the silence. His eyes were full ... emotion, tears ... and she knew they were all reflected in hers.

A soft kiss, a prayer and a blessing, and the crisp snap of the fire. Chakotay gathered her in his arms, holding her close against the night. They drifted to sleep, pressed together in dreams as in reality, until he awoke with a start at the sound of footsteps. Outside the cave, tripping over snow. He sat up, still holding Kathryn, a finger on her lips as she stirred and woke at his movement. A moment's distraction as he took in the sleep-blurred softness of her eyes, then he turned his attention to whatever was coming their way. He relaxed as a small creature peered over the snowed that had drifted in the entrance to the cage, then jumped when it spoke.

"Mr Tumnus ... oh no!" It was a beaver. Chakotay wondered briefly whether this was Kathryn's spirit guide. It seemed unlikely ... and besides, in his experience, spirit guides tended to be cryptic but not that *cryptic*. Kathryn looked equally puzzled by it.

"Oh no ... oh no ... they've taken him!"

"Taken him where?" asked Chakotay, wondering *who* Mr Tumnus was. The beaver started, as though he hadn't seen them.

"To Cair Paravel ... a Son of Adam and a Daughter of Eve?" The beaver's eyes shone brighter. "Then you must be the ones - come on, come on, there's no time!"

"No time for what?" Kathryn asked, unwilling to move from the comfort and warmth of Chakotay's embrace at the urging of what she supposed to be his spirit guide. But the question went unanswered as the cave grew dim. Kathryn blinked, opening her eyes on the grey walls of Chakotay's quarters. She felt a moment's chill air around her, then the comfortable warmth of Voyager's environmental systems. Next to her Chakotay was blinking, his hand tightening in hers. "Why did we leave?"

Her curiosity was unhappy at a return to reality without answers, and Chakotay couldn't help. "I don't know ..."