Menthol opened his eyes. His blurry vision resolved to see concerned faces looking down on him. The most notable of the faces was that of a blue dragon. Her facial fins flapped as she concerned herself in his well-being. She held a flask left with drops of some bluish fluid.

Menthol found himself to be choking. He quickly sat up and expelled the offending liquids onto the floor. Aside from a soapy solution, he also expelled a lot of unhealthy-looking phlegm. He coughed until all his airways were free of obstruction.

And for the first time for years, he breathed deeply and freely. He did not wheeze just to get a measly amount of air into his lungs.

"Hey," the dragon said. What was her name again? Meta-something? She reached out her hand to help him up. "You okay?"

Menthol grabbed her hand and let himself up, but he could not find himself parting with her hands. It possessed a property he had thought was forever lost.

The dragon tried to pull away her hand from his iron grip, but his skeletal hands possessed surprising strength. "You can let go now," she said. "Hello? Is everything alright?"

He held onto her hand tightly, deeply examining its property that had totally enraptured him. Then he realized that it was because it was WARM. WARMTH was a thing he thought was of the past. It was a thing that he lost sensation of. Each essence of it had been sapped and continued to be sapped from his body. It was until now. WARMTH could finally fill him again.

Menthol jumped to embrace her. His arms wrapped around her light body, joyously savoring every bit of WARMTH she exuded. WARMTH! He could not describe it! He just wanted to get as much of until every bit of his body thawed. Tears welled from his eyes as he continued to wrap around the dragon.

"Is everything okay?!" The dragon somewhat panickily asked.

"WARM!" It was all he could say. "You are WARM!"

"Yes. I mean, I am warm. I'm a dragon and reptile and all, but that's magic rather than actual cold--"

"What did you do?! Why are you WARM?!" He shouted just for the heck of it. Ecstasy flowed into him like molasses, and he was savoring every moment of it. He just wanted to squeeze all the WARMTH he can from the poor dragon that was being squeezed tightly.

"Ack! You were shivering quite badly last night, so I thought to give a help you sleep better with a little bit of a comfort spell, but it kinda backfired. You shivered even more. Your temperature dropped. It dropped so low that you started getting frosted over, which is kinda impossible and you could have died, but I'll take what I can get and you're still alive."

Menthol flicked his ears in mild interest. He loosened his grip around the dragon. The emotions that welled up within him had began to overwhelm him. The joy of being finally free from the freezing shackles of irremovable cold had made him descend into hysterical laughter.

"Ten years. After ten years of miserable cold, you finally finally make me feel WARM again. Emphasis on WARM, all caps, colored orange!"

"Er, why don't we sit by the fire where it's even warmer," the dragon suggested. She patted the pale man at the back of his shoulder.

The man's ears in turn shot up. He scrambled towards the fire they cultivated inside the library. The dirt around the fire was dry and WARM. The fire emitted an aura of blessed WARMTH.

"WARM! Fire is WARM!" Menthol laughed. The yellow liquiform that sat by the fire inched slightly farther away from him.

He reached for the flames, aiming to get as much of the WARMTH as he could. He put his hands in the fire for a second before he had to pull it out. A burning pain had bloomed from his hands.

"HOT!" He shouted, all caps, cherry red letters. "Around fire is WARM, but fire is HOT!"

The dragon rushed to his side to tend to his burned hands. "You shouldn't your hands into the flames," the dragon advised. "You should only go near a fire but not in it."

Even with the pain, he continued to smile, giggling with delirious joy. He felt another form of WARMTH: the HEAT exuded by burning things. Yet there was another kind of WARMTH that he could scarcely remember.

He swivelled his head round in search of sources of WARMTH. A yellow liquiform held his hands before the fire. Plantfolk in crude clothing huddled in piles. A hoard of firewood was gathered nearby. Rotting bleached bookshelves stood as flimsy dividers. A forest of slender trees grew from the mounds of decomposed wood. Luminescent fungi colonized rotting matter. Columns rose to hold the domed ceiling, and marble walls stood against the harsh snowy weather outside.

Outside...

The doors and windows were covered in tarps. The tarps shook as the icy winds outside sought to intrude upon the library.

The winds were noticeably weaker. Menthol's mouth hung open. Hopeful curiousity latched into his mind. Could it be?

Menthol stood and slowly ambled towards the covered exit. He dragged his feet across the floor. He touched the rough frosty tarp that faithfully covered opening. The wind wasn't pushing against it as strongly as it had.

Menthol burst through the covering. He tore the tarp off from the doorway and ran to the snow-covered street outside. He stood in the middle of the street atop meters-deep snow. The fierce blizzard that ravaged the outside like a storm of knives had weakened to a soft flurry.

He twirled around in search for something. His ragged breaths shook his body and formed foggy clouds in the air. His joints twitched in anticipation.

It was then that buttery rays hit him. He turned his gaze skyward, and saw the skies that been permanently darkened with clouds cracking. Canyons of blue carved themselves into the stony clouds, breaking them apart. A sunny orb peered through the cracks and blessed the earth below with its radiant sunlight.

Menthol laughed, spread his arms out. He laughed in jubilation and rapture. The WARM rays intoxicated him. He knelt into the snow in a fit of frenzied laughter.

"The sun!" He pointed to the sky, disregarding the danger of looking directly at the star. The sunlight struck him, filling him with euphoria. Sunlight possessed a different kind of WARMTH. It was akin to standing in the presence of fire where one WARMED without touch. The sun's WARMTH was RADIANT; the sun possessed RADIANCE.

"It's so beautiful. I've never thought I'd ever see it again," Menthol said. He fell to his back and continually stared at the sun until a black spot had formed in his vision.

Then a dark cloud moved to block the sun. "No!" Menthol sat up and exclaimed. "Don't you block its RADIANCE!"