“They are not gone. They are covered by snow,” I grunted.
Perri nestled in the crook of my arm, humming as she counted fallen pinecones.
“One … two … five … nine … Veskor, look! Abigcone!”
“I see it,” I muttered.
She grinned as if I’d praised the sun.
I didn’t know what to do with that. I should never have taken her, or caught her when she fell, or have breathed in her scent as her tiny hands dug into my hair and begged me not to drop her.
“No,” I growled to myself, trudging through the snow with her bundled against my chest. “It is no use. What is the point?”
Perri poked my chin. “Why are you talking to yourself? That’s silly.”
I stopped walking.
She blinked up at me with enormous eyes: amber, warm, bright like everything inside me was not.
“You should be afraid,” I said.
“Nope.”
“You should want your mother.”
“Do you?”
I froze.
She shrugged as if she hadn’t just sliced open a place in me I’d kept locked for decades. “Everybody wants their mom.”
I stared at her.
She smiled up at me, missing one of her tiny fangs. “But it’s OK if you don’t got one. I can share mine if you wanna.”
Gods.
Stars.
Ancient stone.
Anything.
What was I supposed to do with a creature who offered comfort like it cost nothing?
“I don’t have a mother,” I grunted.
She laughed. “Everyone has a mom.”
Stubborn anger welled in my veins. “I didn’t. Whoever gave birth to me, she either died or was ripped away.”
Her eyes went wide, and for a few minutes, there was nothing but blessed silence. She wiggled suddenly. “I’m hungry.”
Of course she was.
We had finished up the elk over two days. Perri was small, but ate like a fighter bigger than me. Did children always burn through food like wildfire? I needed to hunt again.
“Stay,” I said, setting her under a thick overhang of rock, where snow couldn’t reach. “You do not move.”
