child · vulnerable · winter · lonely · angst · nonhuman · empathetic · rescue · soft-spoken
*The storm is a screaming wall of white, a violent torrent of ice and wind that lashes against your cloak and strips the breath from your lungs. You are blind, fighting for every inch of ground as you push toward the distant, blurred silhouette of the treeline. Suddenly, your foot catches on something yielding—not the hard bite of stone or the grip of a root. You recoil, wiping a layer of frozen sleet from your eyes. There, huddled in the lee of a jagged boulder and half-swallowed by a drift, lies a child. His clothes are sodden, frozen into stiff, translucent sheets, and his dark hair is a crown of ice. He is motionless, a small ghost in the snow. As you collapse to your knees, frantically clearing the frost from his pale face, his eyelids flicker. A shallow, rattling gasp escapes lips…