Heating enough water to wash properly required a source of heat, a source of water and some sufficiently large container. Caius managed to blow some life back into a few embers from the night before and build them up into a small fire. He had snow or the stream for water. And he reckoned he could improvise a container using the waterproof blanket.

  Wait. Was being waterproof the only special thing about the blanket? Caius certainly didn't recall the cold, unfeeling ground leeching the life out of him. He folded the blanket over his hand and, lifting the pot so the blanket wouldn't get close to the fire, pressed his hand against the hot metal.

  Nothing.

  He literally could not tell that the pot was hot through the fabric of the blanket. Putting the blanket down, he could feel the heat coming off the pot just by holding his hand near it. Eyebrows raised, he studied the blanket with new appreciation.

  Materials like that didn't exist. Waterproof, extremely insulating and still breathable fabric? Caius could imagine some people chopping off a finger in exchange for that. Mountain climbers and some other extreme sport enthusiasts sprang to mind.

  And he was about to use it to make a washtub. Caius found himself grinning.

  But before he went completely overboard he would do a small scale proof-of-concept. He carefully leveled the top of a nearby pile of snow to the best of his ability, then made a hollow in the middle. Not a massive one, maybe big enough to wash a shirt in if he was careful.

  After lining the depression with the blanket, he gingerly poured hot water from the pot into the hollow.

  That was extremely awkward, he didn't have a good way to grip the heated metal pot. Except for the blanket, he supposed. Maybe he could heat up some rocks from the stream and just scoop them out with the big wooden ladle-like spoon?

  Caius needed to leave the hot water in the blanket for a while to see if it melted the snow underneath, and he also needed more firewood. So he made his way down to the stream where he had collected the deadfall the previous evening.

  While he was down there, he examined the snow shelter he had dug. It had collapsed during the night. The image of being woken up in the middle of a snowstorm because his shelter collapsed on top of him was remarkably unpleasant.

  There were some particularly smooth stones visible in the stream, so he fished out a few. But how to carry them... He held a particularly smooth and pretty rock in his hand as he considered his options. His clothes didn't have pockets, or that would be the obvious choice.

  Caius looked down and saw the roomy leather pouch on his belt. He damn near palmed his face, which would have unfortunate because he was still holding a rock. After finding the pouch he had intended to check inside, but had gotten distracted.

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  He didn't know what to expect as he opened the rough buckle and checked inside the pouch. There wasn't much inside. Another coin purse, fuller than the first he'd found and made of leather. A little bag of nuts, another sewing kit. Dried fruit of some kind, wrapped in cloth. Quite a bit of dried fruit, the man might have had a bit of a sweet tooth.

  Caius pushed aside a deep sadness. He packed some of the smooth stones into the pouch after rubbing them mostly dry on his pant leg.

  The supply of deadfall wasn't exactly running out, but Caius had definitely picked out all the best by the time he had another bundle together. Not really a problem, he was planning to move on soon.

  Building up the fire into a merry blaze and putting the rocks in to boil, Caius was briefly reminded of a children's fable about the virtues of sharing. "Rock soup is always better with some potatoes in it." he muttered with a smile at the memory. Not that he was going to waste any of the half dozen potatoes he had on a reference.

  While he was in a childish mood, he admonished the rocks. "Get nice and hot, you hear? I want you boiling."

  The next moment, something happened. Since arriving, Caius had observed several odd flickers of light. He had originally attributed them to the sun being briefly blocked by something, but now...

  With eight or so rocks in the pot, he could clearly see them all flashing with an inner light for a moment right after he spoke. Actually... one of them was still glowing?

  "What in the goddamn?"

  Caius' brain caught up to his rather blasphemous choice of words, and he sent up a silent prayer of apology. The sentiment, however, remained.

  But no matter how hard he stared at the rocks, nothing changed. One of them was glowing. Actually... that was the pretty one? Caius almost picked it up to examine it, before he came to his senses and firmly stopped himself from sticking his hand in boiling water to grab a hot rock.

  He scooped it up with the big wooden spoon and examined it closely. It was still pretty, almost smooth enough to look polished. Caius identified it as a piece of basalt. Basalt was actually the only kind of rock Caius could identify. He only knew the chips in his tinderbox were flint based on context.

  It was definitely glowing, too. He held it in the shadow of a tree to make sure it wasn't an optical illusion, which it wasn't.

  Caius dropped it into a snowbank to cool off so he could examine it more closely. In the meantime he dumped the water out of the cloak and examined the snow underneath. As far as he could tell, the snow hadn't melted much if at all.

  So his plan seemed feasible. All he had to do was make a nice big hollow in the snow somewhere.

  Caius checked on the pretty rock. It had melted a lot deeper into the snowbank than he had been expecting. Sighing, he stuck his arm down the hole to fish around for it. His fingertips brushed against something...

  The next moment he pulled away with a hiss like he had briefly touched a stovetop. Because that's what it had felt like. Sighing, he went to go collect the heatproof cloak so he could collect the still hot rock.

  What looked an awful lot like steam was coming out of the hole in the snowbank. But that couldn't be right...

  Caius dug the rock out, careful to touch it only through the cloak. He frowned at the rock, then let some snow melt in his hand and dripped water on it. The water hissed and boiled away. Boiled? It hadn't been that hot before...

  Caius thought back to when he had scooped the rock out. There had been some water in the wooden spoon along with the rock, and that hadn't been boiling. It was just the rock.

  The rock he had jokingly talked to earlier. Caius distinctly remembered using the word "boiling," because he had still been thinking about the fable. And now the rock was indeed boiling hot, and seemed to be staying that way. It had definitely been cool when he fished it out of the river.

  Hadn't he said something about the blanket the previous night too? The supernaturally amazing blanket.

  "What the hell is going on?" He asked aloud.

  Naturally, there was no answer.