Tobias's fingers find the door latch before he has fully decided. The night air hits him the moment the door swings open — sharp, frost-bitten, smelling of pine and cold earth. His boots crunch on the frozen grass as he steps out, nightclothes thin against the chill. The ember at the oak's base pulses once, as if it noticed. The tiny figure has not moved. Closer now — twenty paces, perhaps — Tobias can make out bark-coloured skin and wisps of mossy green, those violet eyes bright as two small moons. It watches him cross the frost without blinking. Then, when he is almost near enough to reach, it turns and slips behind the root, the ember trailing after it, and vanishes into a narrow gap in the oak's base. The gap is just barely the width of a child's shoulders. Tobias stands at the edge of it, breathing hard, the cold forgotten.