DISCLAIMER: This website contains Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, we will receive a small commission.

Time of year and could count a good number of my ribs moving as nimbly and quietly as i could, between the trees, i pushed a hand against my hollow and aching stomach. I knew the expression that would be on my two elders, sister’s faces when i returned to our cottage empty-handed. Yet again, after a few minutes of careful searching, i crouched in a cluster of snow-heavy brambles through the thorns i had a half decent view of a clearing and a small brook flowing through it, a few holes in the ice suggested. It was still frequently used. Hopefully, something would come by.

Hopefully i sighed, through my nose digging the tip of my bow into the ground and leaned my forehead against the crude curve of wood. We wouldn’t last another week without food and too many families that already started begging for me to hope. For handouts from the wealthier townsfolk i’d witnessed firsthand exactly how far their charity went. I eased into a more comfortable position and calmed my breathing straining to listen to the forest over the wind. The snow fell and fell dancing and curling like sparkling spindrifts.

The white fresh and clean against the brown and grey of the world, and despite myself, despite my numb limbs, i quieted that restless vicious part of my mind to take in the snow veiled woods once it had been second nature to savor the contrast of new grass Against dark tilled soil or an amethyst brooch nestled in the folds of emerald silk, once i dreamed and breathed and thought in color and light and shape, sometimes i would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married, and it was only me and father With enough food to go around enough money to buy some paint and enough time to put those colors and shapes down on paper or canvas or the cottage walls not likely to happen anytime soon, perhaps ever so. I was left with moments like this admiring the glint of pale winter light on snow. I couldn’t remember the last time. I’D done, it bothered to notice anything, lovely or interesting, stolen hours in a decrepit barn with isaac, hale didn’t count. Those times were hungry and empty and sometimes cruel, but never lovely the howling wind calmed into a soft sighing.

The snow fell lazily now in big fat clumps that gathered along every nook and bump of the trees mesmerizing. The lethal gentle beauty of the snow i’d soon have to return to the muddy frozen roads of the village to the cramped heat of our cottage. Some small, fragmented part of me, recoiled at the thought. Bushes rustled, across the clearing drawing my bow, was a matter of instinct. I peered, through the thorns and my breath, caught less than 30 paces away, stood a small doe, not yet too scrawny from winter, but desperate enough to wrench bark from a tree in the clearing.

A deer like that could feed my family for a week or more. My mouth watered quiet as the wind hissing through dead leaves. I took aim. She continued tearing off strips of bark chewing slowly utterly unaware that her death waited yards away. I could dry half the meat and we could immediately eat the rest.

Stews pies, her skin could be sold or perhaps turned into clothing. For one of us, i needed new boots, but elaine needed a new cloak and nesta was prone to crave anything. Someone else possessed. My fingers trembled so much food such salvation. I took a steadying breath double checking my aim, but there was a pair of golden eyes shining from the brush adjacent to mine.

The forest went silent, the wind died even the snow paused. We mortals no longer time of year and could count a good number of my ribs

More From This Category