"Sure." Anything to keep other people from feeding entities. Winter doesn't want to have to shoot newcomers for diving headlong into becoming avatars. "We were snowed in, last winter. Or. There was an illusion of snow. It all disappeared at once, so it was probably not real, but we still couldn't get out."

He glowers a little at the floor as they walk, remembering. He'd been so angry, when he realized. "Trapped for days, the entities were trying very hard to make us feed them. I felt it for the first time, with nothing else to think about, the difference between feeling strong and feeling weak. And why it changed."