2/8/2025, 4:04 AM
out on the ice, nearing storm’s reach.
She didn’t know what had possessed her. Only that she had been walking the shore one day, and able to see clear across the sea the next, it felt. Sure, time may have melted away from her, and she may not have known what to do with her wolfish shape. And maybe she had thrown up when she’d eaten a rabbit the first time because the fine hairs had an awful texture, but everything was fine. It had been going fine.
Her ribs may have stuck out more and more but she was. Completely. Fine.
Steren started out her journey over the ice in good spirits. Loping across the ice field, at that ground eating clip she’d seen other wolves do. It felt easy, natural, with the sun smiling on her cheeks and her eyes on that distant island. It had been taunting her with its distance, and she had always been ever so curious. Curiosity had killed the cat, and had killed her in a frankly funny turn of events. It occurred to her only briefly that it shouldn’t be funny she’d been burned for a crime known only as study, but she was too far into giggling about it to care much.
And then the storm came.
Snow crusted her eyes together, her eyelashes frozen. Her paws throbbed from the cold, and her ears were quickly falling number and number. Steren was no stranger to frostbite, but speeding up didn’t seem like an option. She couldn’t even maintain her stumbling walk, head down against the swirl of snow in her face. She couldn’t see more than two feet in front of her own face, but lying down was no option. Forging through the storm was all she had.
It left her as she neared the island. The snow still swirled, but she could actually see. Unfortunately, her vision was darkening at the edges, and her legs were wobbling, and every part of her felt frosty and chilled through. Steren forged ahead, until finally, one of her legs gave way, and she landed chin first on the ice with a yelp.
After that, well. She struggled to regain the strength to get back up, even as the ice seared through to her bones.
Tyr