Seth had not expected it to get this much colder on the slopes. But, despite the wind biting through his puffer jacket like the teeth of some hidden beast, he was wowed by the gorgeous forever of the peaks. He hopped, turning with his snowboard to face Jessica.

“That’s a long way down,” he said as he pulled his goggles over his face.

“That’s the point,” she grinned. And then she was off, spraying powder as she sped down the slope.

Seth swallowed, looking around. Only a few other people were at the top of this one, and they weren’t yet getting ready to go. Hesitating, he wondered what this view of the world looked like with his third eye open, how the sprawling view of the mountainous wilderness would change under supernatural sight. A gust of wind whipped a spray of powder into the air as he breathed in, chilling the inside of his nose with the frosty non-scent of ice. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened all three.

The world snapped into that high-fidelity focus, where the colors were richer, deeper. He could see faint auras around the few other people at the top of the slope. And then beyond… His breath was taken away. Each mountain gave off its’ own distinct aura, one that he hadn’t been able to see from ground levels. The mountains glowed a dark shade of earthy, woodland green, mixing into the atmosphere and dispersing into the air. Forests on the side of the mountains flickered with dozens of individual auras.

It was beautiful.

Jessica was already halfway down the slope, and so he started to close his third eye, but as he did so, he felt the impression of something shining up, like when you hold a flashlight under your chin while telling a scary story. Seth looked down. Depth perception of auras was a bit difficult, but he could tell this was below the surface of the mountain. It looked like it swam through the stone—a orange aura around a black core, moving fast and wiggling side to side. He got the impression it was maybe a couple hundred feet below him, but it was bright, like Jessica’s aura… and that meant it was powerful.

The aura twisted, turning left, and swam off through the stone towards another peak, dimming and fading from sight. Seth closed his third eye and looked up. A middle-aged man who had the look of someone who comes to their winter home to ski rather than renting at a lodge, nodded at him. “Don’t worry, kid, your feet are in the right spot,” he laughed as he teetered on the edge. “This is an easy slope, you’ll be fine.” He pushed off with his ski poles.

Seth watched him go for a minute, then glanced back down at the ground. No, not worth it right now. Magic things existed in the wilds, right? Why not underneath a mountain? He leaned forward, and the slope caught him, gravity adding to his momentum and pulling him down the mountain.

It was a manageable speed for the first few seconds, but then the wind began rushing past his face at a speed that he was entirely not accustomed to. Wasn’t this supposed to be the beginner’s slope? He kept his knees bent as he sped downhill. The lane was straight, but that didn’t help much with his sudden realization that falling right now would hurt a lot.

Seth lowered his weight out of instinct to preserve his balance, and found himself accelerating even further past his comfort zone for unprotected high speeds. But then, he slowed. The slope began to even out, and Seth risked a cautious lean of his body to turn off to the side in the landing area, where Jessica waited, holding her snowboard beside her.

Seth slowed to an anti-climatic stop, and bent over to undo the buckles holding his feet in place before snatching his snowboard up and walking over to her, his boots crich-crunching through the snow.

“So,” said Jessica as she lifted up her goggles. “Did you like it?”

He looked back up the slope. “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. Need a bit more getting used to it, though.”

“Well, it’s only nine, and that was literally your first run of the day, so you have plenty more ahead of you.” She started to turn and walk towards the ski lift platform.

“Uh, Jess?”

“What?”

“I saw something.”

She sighed and turned. “Seth, I know there’s something going on. But we don’t know what. We just need to leave it be, we’re only staying her for two weeks anyway.”

“It was under that slope.” He pointed at the mountain.

She raised her eyebrows. “Under?”

“Yeah, an orange and black aura.” Seth looked around, but the nearest person was that middle-aged man, and he was a good thirty feet away, waiting for his friends or family to finish their trip down the slope.

Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose. “Was it, by any chance, wiggling back and forth? Making maybe a sort of swimming motion?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Fuck!” She screamed, kicking the ground and sending a spray of powder into the air. She glanced over and offered a smile to the middle-aged skier before turning back to Seth. She whispered, a look of concern and annoyance masked behind a smile on her face. “Fuck.”

“Fuck?”

“Fuck.” She shook her head. “And you sure there was a black part of the aura?”

“Yeah, really sure.”

“Right. Well.” She looked across the landing to the gondola that headed back to the resort town. “Have you ever- No, of course you haven’t.” She licked her lips, a little bit chapped from the cold air. “You’re getting your wish. We’re looking into it tonight.”

“Why the change of mind?”

“Because what you saw describes something. I’ll need to make sure you were right before we go, but if you were, then we have something very serious on our hands, and I’m willing to get just about anything it has to do with the conjuration aura you witnessed yesterday.”

“What did I see?”

Jessica’s eyes darted to the man, who had his phone out to record as one of his friends finished their descent. “Not here. You’ll get your class time in the hotel room.”

“Is it safe for us to be out here?”

“It… Yeah.” Her voice had an off-center pitch to it, and Seth could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “I mean. Look, I just want to hit the slopes. Is the aura still there?”

“No, it went off that way,” and he pointed towards the peak it had went towards.

“Then we should be fine. Should be.” She slapped him on the shoulder, trying to force a smile. “Come on. One more ride. We’ll be fine. It will all be fine.” Jessica walked off towards the ski lift, and Seth found himself wondering what had her so scared. He followed her and got into the ski lift just as it took off from the platform.

They rode in silence, suspended some fifty feet above the ground, up the side of the mountain. Jessica looked off in the distance. Seth almost wished his third eye had stayed closed. Nothing had happened that affected them. Maybe he should have just ignored all of it.

“Holy shit,” said Jessica.

Seth followed her gaze to the peak he had seen the subterranean aura swim off to. It wasn’t even a mile away from them, plainly visible across the massive, open distance between mountains. The avalanche was something to behold. Streaming down the far slopes were sprays of powder intermixed with rolling boulders of snow, all racing towards the bottom at breakneck speed. Seth’s eyes darted to the bottom of that mountain—it ended in a small valley, and he couldn’t see any residences from the ski lift.

“You said the aura moved over towards that peak?”

He nodded.

“Fuck.”

The ski lift continued to move.