“A frost-paguro, I think, I have heard them called.” Farciya huddled closer to the warmth that the creature’s burning body offered. “I thought they were legend, but in a dreaming that can contain the sound-gaunts, I suppose it is not too farfatched that they exist.”

“What else have you heard of them?” Tiris said, himself bundled strongly against the cold and as near to the dead thing’s greasy flames as he dared get.

“Wild stories. That they are dreamers lost to the great snowy wilderness, that there is a mound of severed left arms in the deep wilderness where they make their sacrifice for survival.” Farciya shuddered. “But also that they are simple beasts in a shape we find terrifying, searching for food and warmth, the same as we.”

“That word, ‘paguro.’ What does it mean?”

“A joke, I think. It’s an old word for crab, I suppose because one arm is so much larger than the other.”

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