Prologue

I remember laying in the snow, a small red spot of warmth going cold, surrounded by kirrin they were licking, biting, pressing in. Their huddled bodies blocked whatever heat the sun offered. Ice glistened on their bodies their breath made opaque shapes that hung in the air around us. The musky smell of themade me think of wet dogs and burning wood, pleasant and terrifying. Their tongues melted my skin, their careless teeth ripped at my sleeves and snagged through my hair, pushed against my coller bone, and the pulse at my neck. I could have screamed, but I didn't. I could have fought but I didn't. I just layed there and let it happen, watching the winter white sky go gray above me. One kirrin prodded it's nose nose into my hand and against my cheek, casting a shadow across my face. Yellow eyes looked into mine while the other kirrin jerked me this way and that I held onto those eyes as long as I could. Yellow, and up close, flecked brilliantly with every shade of gold and hazel. I didn't want them to look away, and they didn't. I wanted to reach out and grab ahold of it's arm, but my hands stayed curled to my chest, my arms frozen to my body. I couldn't remember what it felt like to be warm. Then it was gone and without it, the others come close too close suffocating, something seemed to flutter in my chest. Their was no sun, their was no light. I was dying. I couldn't remember what the sun looked like. But I didn't die. I was lost to a sea of cold, and I couldn't breath, then I was born into a world of warmth. I could only remember this: yellow eyes and realized I was shivering.