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	[u]Weather[/u]: It is still cold in a way that is positively unseasonal, but at least it isn't still snowing. The wind is painful along exposed ears and fingers, which hasn't shown any signs of abating. In fact, the arrival of the sun seems to have made the gusts less frequent, but longer lasting.    

	[u]Time[/u]: Dawn. There is finally a complete, gorgeous, round sun on the horizon. The details it reveals aren't necessarily as picturesque.  

	[u]Ambience[/u]: The chill in the air is most certainly due to the weather, but the newest guests of the Vineyard do their best to bring that feeling to the bone. The sun is now fully above the horizon, but just barely, still barely painting the countryside with a hint of color but perhaps more importantly, better illuminating the features of the apparently deceased persons standing before the group in their opulent finery. Dead, glassy skin reflecting the sun as if solid, dull ice, visible only from hands and faces as they were the only parts exposed. Nevertheless, the better look in the broader light of the new day reveals husks of once-humans who, while amazingly preserved, appeared to be desiccated by time and intention while simultaneously frozen solid. 

	The snow remains present, giving the most constant color available upon the land, textured in the places where it was trodden upon, while the braziers in the fields nearest to the Estate House dot the landscape in a series of regular, even rows. Behind the group is the proof of the party's diligent work, and ahead is another fragment of an ongoing mystery.     

[center][color=darkgray][h2]*****[/h2][/color][/center] 
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	If the night was a bustle of activity and teamwork, then this morning gave the immediate feeling of quiet and solitude, at least in comparison. Even Lizbeth was nowhere to be seen, when she was previously rooted to the spot when Victoria and Kathryn had come to check on her. The workers took their leave prior to the most recent events of the early morning, and Cecily herself took her leave while it was still dark out. The reinforcements from the villages departed mostly without comment, as well. So now, despite the fact that this was a successful, profitable vineyard spanning a more than respectful amount of acreage, a feel of emptiness settled over everything within sight. 
 
  	The figures standing atop the hill with the party were no longer hidden by the night, nor by conflicting firelight. Any looking in their direction saw them plainly, even if distance muddied the details. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that it was so quiet, aside from the early hour and overnight push of labor. 

	A number of moments after the scroll left the hand of the singularly tall Corpse Diplomat and those present did what inspections and observations they might, certain subtleties began that, when taken apart could be brushed away as imagination or happenstance; the wind, perhaps, or the product of a mind left exhausted by a full day of work followed by a full night of it, all without rest. Tiny, incremental things which, when pressed together in a shortened span of snowballing time culminated in the tall, dead creature turning its head directly at the lady who first took the scroll. 

	And then it smiled. 

	It was a painful thing to watch. Its tissues (or what remained of them), lacking of the necessary flexibility of life, slipped back to bear its teeth fully into a cruel mockery of gratitude or mirth. The ends of its mouth widened impossibly with a sound like rope groaning under a herculean weight before, as overstressed ropes do, it snapped. But unlike the thready pop of hemp fibers popping, this was the loud and unmistakable glassy crack of ice - thick ice - fracturing along previously unseen fault lines, many within a fraction of a second from the last. 

	Simultaneously, all of the members of the diplomatic entourage shifted position to stand loosely, shoulders thrown back and arms at their sides as if waiting for a chambermaid to gently take their housecoats. Splits fissured their exposed skin where they had not existed before; cracks multisecting their ice-brittle flesh. What pale flicker of awareness might or might not have been present died away in this moment, leaving them standing upright in dead submission to the elements and their natural state of being. 

	Before the last hint of anything remotely sapient darkened within the recessed sockets of the lead diplomat, it remained locked staring into Kosara's eyes.   

 	A single set of footprints led back to the Coach House. Within, a startled girl named Lizbeth sat in the taproom, chair pulled into the corner, staring at the door far across the room. She was breathing heavily, both from the sprint she executed to get there and a streak of utter terror that claimed her in that moment.