Our Kind of Weather

Moments before end of Nightmare Moon’s short reign:

“Gilda, don’t!”

“Stay back!” Gilda warned. Her talons shuffled around the spear, tightening her grip.

The other griffon squashed herself even further into the rock wall behind her, trying to create distance between herself and the spear-tip wavering in front of her chest. Grace, she kept saying. My name is Grace.

It might have been true. Gilda had known somegal named Grace with teal fur and brown feathers, just like this griffon had. But even though Gilda could make out every other part of the other griffon in stark detail, her face was invisible.

She could see it. But her mental impression of it was just a hazy blur.

Gilda leaned the spear forward. It poked toward the other griffon’s stomach, who sucked herself in against the rock.

“Please!” the griffon begged. “I’m a friend.”

Couldn’t see her face. Couldn’t tell if she was lying. “Prove it.”

“I don’t have any money!”

Convenient.

Gilda’s spear moved forward another centimeter. The other griffon made a choked noise.

She sounded afraid. But was she really? Or was it all an act? There was no way to tell by looking at her face.

The whole thing could be a trap. Act innocent, then strike when her guard was lowered.

Yes…. It probably was a trap. That was what Gilda would do, after all. You couldn’t trust anygal who wouldn’t show you their face.

If Gilda backed up now, that would give the other griffon the opportunity to attack. It was kill or be killed. Right now, she could kill.

The fear was like ice coursing through her veins. And the anger was like a hot wind in the back of her head. It caught her wings and her arms, the same arms that held the spear, and drove them forward.

In the same instant that her body arms twitched, some of the colors that were the blur of the other griffon’s face cohered. Gilda saw two wide eyes and the seven colors reflected in them. For a moment she thought the seven colors were just part of the blur. But in fact they were demarcated, making a clear image.

The eyes reflecting those colors were not looking at her, nor at the spear. Something else had their attention.

Gilda caught herself in time. And she turned and saw the rainbow.

When she turned back, she still couldn’t see the other griffon’s face. It was because her wing was covering it. The poor girl was shaking with fright.

Winnette wondered if she had died in her sleep and joined the living wind. Everything was so white and perfect outside the cave at dusk as she awoke to the first light of the stars that it seemed impossible.

She was the first one up, as always. Wyna was sleeping with her doll’s head between her teeth. Welga’s face was covered by her quilt.

Winnette’s neck turned her face back to the snow like a plant’s stem turning toward sunlight.

Dreamlike, her hoofs carried her to the mouth of the cave. She poked her head out into the frosty air and breathed in the frosty air and saw with her eyes the white sweep that had come over the cliffside.

Did...did I do this?

A gust of wind lifted a tuft of snow that broke apart into powder. She watched the starlike flakes dance and twirl in the air and felt for a moment that she was rushing through the universe at a million times the speed of light, so fast that the stars were caught in her draft and spilled around in the night sky like leaves in the breeze.

Without her noticing, her legs started to step forward into the snow. She felt the sweet rush of the chill up her left foreleg as it sank into the snow up past the knee. Her other legs joined in, and then they started to move.

She had scythed down the length of an entire switchback before she even realized what she was doing.

She was swimming.

Winnette laughed at the sight of the dead sea, black and empty and cold in a way that the snow and the crisp, biting air weren’t. She howled at the sky, dark and blinking with stars for little icelike eyes; she bawled, and the sound bounced once off the rock and was buried in the snow, waiting for her to find it. She pitched her voice differently, raising her chin, and screamed. The sound ricocheted off a farther part of the cliffside and deflected into the snow coating the switchback underneath; again the sound was damped immediately.

She kicked, and marveled at how fast she was, how easy it was; and she was weightless, her light frame floating on the surface while her legs struck through the snow underneath. She tucked her head down and dived in and was even faster moving through the snow rather than on it. She popped up on a switchback higher up the cliff, giggling, and jumped in again. This time she misjudged her aim and threw herself off the switchback, only to land on a pile of snow on a lower level, submerging herself; the force of her fall was completely absorbed.

She popped out of the snow, breathing snowflakes out of her snout. She shook her head and shrieked with laughter at the tiny storm of ice made by the powder flying off her face and mane.

Winnette rolled her body around in the snow like a dog trying to get a smell into its fur. Then she thought of something devilish. Her eyes found the cave, just one among dozens dotting the cliffside, and a wicked smile spread across her face.

“Wake up!”

The snowball flew and exploded in a burst of white powder against the back of Welga’s head.

“Moon’s out, sleepyheads!”

The second compacted ball of snow and ice smacked Wyna awake.

Winnette nearly fell over laughing while they blinked at her, stunned, and stared at the wet stuff on their quilts and at the white pile that Winnette was shoving into their cave from outside.

“What’s going on?” Welga asked, her tourmaline-green eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“Snow!” Winnette answered simply. She made another snowball. “Come swimming or I’ll get ya again.”

“What is that?” Wyna asked. “Winnette, where’d you get all of that?”

Both she and Welga stared as Winnette flopped into the pile of snow, her laughter muffled by the powder covering her face.

“Welga, where did Winnette get all of that stuff?” Wyna asked. “What is it?”

Winnette’s hoof punched through the pile of snow, sending a compacted bunch of powder flying at Wyna, who fell backwards out of her cot to avoid it. Winnette’s face popped out of the end of the pile closest to them, smiling upside-down. Wyna crouched cautiously behind her cot.

“Stop scaring her,” said Welga, taking big gulps of cold air. “Wyna, that’s snow. Winnette, where did it come from? It doesn’t snow here, you said it hasn’t snowed here since before you were born.”

Winnette grinned at her. “You can get anything you ask for if you say the magic words.”

“But what is it?” Wyna demanded.

“Snow—you know what snow is,” Welga said.

“Snow is this,” said Winnette, tensing as if to send another blast of snow flying.

“Don’t throw it at her!” Welga said. A fraction of a second later, a flurry Winnette had slapped at her splattered across her face.

Wyna laughed.

“Very funny,” said Welga, wiping the snow off her face with one foreleg. It froze against her face and her leg, clinging to the cold surfaces and yet it was curiously malleable when she touched it, easily directed by her force. It was almost harder not to shape it.

She licked a bit off her hoof.

It was cold….

A smile lit up her face. Winnette twisted around in the pile of snow, gazing curiously. She hadn’t seen that smile on Welga since Mom died.

“Hey, Wyna?” said Welga.

“Huh?”

“I think we need to teach Winnette a lesson about throwing snow.”

“Yeah!” shouted Wyna eagerly, clambering over the cot. Winnette was already kicking away though, moving past the mouth of the cave and onto the switchback.

“Come on!” she heard Welga say.

Winnette scythed down the switchbacks, building up so much speed that she actually burst into the air when the path took her back up and over the turn of a steep upward slope. The snow easily caught her descent.

The powder flying up behind her made an easy target for Welga and Wyna to follow. Winnette swiveled around and watched their path along the switchbacks. She slowed down so that they could catch her, and surrendered under their combined onslaught as they pelted her with snowballs.

They buried her next, piling snow on top of her and covering her wherever her face popped out to poke her blueish tongue at them.

“Okay, okay,” Winnette said, lifting her neck out of the snow above Wyna, who was still trying to cover her up with snow. Winnette’s ribs hurt from laughing.

Welga sat back, just her face poking above the surface. She was beaming.

Wyna ate a mouthful of snow. “It’s so cold!” she exclaimed.

“It’s snow, dummy,” Winnette said.

“You’ve never seen snow either!”

“‘Course I have. I swim around in snow every day. I just don’t share it with you because it’s so much fun.”

Wyna’s eyes were immediately suspicious and hopeful. “You do not.”

“Sure I do.” Winnette gestured with her head at the clifftop. “Up there. Want to see?”

Wyna looked at it fearfully. “But...but I’m not allowed up there. Even Welga doesn’t go up.”

“It’s fine.” Welga’s eyes were shining as she looked from Winnette to Wyna and back. “It’s completely safe.”

“You two are so lucky,” said Winnette as she struck out up the switchback, marking out a path to the cliff, “that you have the awesomest older sister in the world.”

“I’m so high up!” said Wyna. “Look, Welga! I can see the whole ocean!”

“I’m just as high up as you are,” said Welga bemusedly. Her smile, which had to be hurting her cheeks by now, just kept reasserting itself every time Wyna said or did anything.

Wyna’s eyes swept the shore from the top of the cliff. “How come it doesn’t go all the way to the ocean? See how it barely touches the beach?”

Winnette didn't know why the snow didn't reach the shoreline either. “It's because the water there is dead, so it’s not going to freeze,” Winnette said anyway. “Welga, keep an eye on Wyna. I’m going hunting.”

Wyna whipped around, eyes narrowed. “Catch a rabbit again! A big one!”

“Are you going to share?” Welga said. “Don’t behave like you did last night.”

“She won’t have to share,” Winnette said. “There’ll be enough for everywone.”

“Don’t promise her that!” Welga said. “You’ll get her hopes up.”

Winnette just laughed and kicked away toward the forest. She was so fast in the snow that the journey, normally an hour’s trot, took her maybe ten minutes, if even that. She burst into the greenery, which was submerged under a fat, lush blanket of powder. Only the trees rose above it. Winnette thought she could see their branches shivering from the cold.

“Winnette!” a voice said happily. “You’re back!”

“Will!” she greeted him. “Thanks so much for helping me hunt yesterday.”

“Look at all of this! Do you know what this is? It’s snow!”

“Sure is,” said Winnette smugly. She resisted the urge to add, “You’re welcome.”

“I haven’t seen snow in so long,” said Will. “Hey, are you going hunting again?”

Winnette laughed.

“Oh—good—I have some more things to teach you—but—hey!”

Winnette surged ahead. She felt Will’s voice rushing to keep up behind her, a stream of wind kicking up powder on the surface of the snow.

Winnette slalomed between the trees. Each time she kicked through the snow, she thought she felt the entire lake of powder tremble. From the way it shook, she could tell what was coming up ahead, enough to dodge snow-buried thickets and snatching thorns.

“You’re going too fast!” Will shouted. “Wait—I like talking to you!”

Other streams of wind were joining the trail. They matched her speed and direction like a V of winter geese meeting in flight. Winnette laughed and slowed, enough for the winds to rush ahead and then circle back.

A storm of snow and ice spiraled around her as dozens of different streams of air gusted in every direction.

I am the universe, thought Winnette, and these are how the stars are made, whipped up out of a vast white canvas of possibility, and if I was just cold enough to freeze each one in place—

“—hey—”

“—hi—”

“—hello—”

“—can you hear us?”

Each breeze, and each accompanying flurry of fresh snow, had a voice. Winnette’s ears flicked while she swiveled around in the snow, taking it all in:

“—my name is Wendy—”

“—call me Wren—”

“—how come you can hear us?”

“—Can she hear us? Hey, who are you?—”

“—where’d the snow come from? Did you see—”

“—it’s cold again! Look, look at me go!—”

“—back in my day we had proper snow, this stuff is basically just frozen water—”

“—wêman wê wmolt wher? wôd wnagh wacan? wmîn—”

“Stop bothering her!” said Will, storming in with a protective huff. “She could hear me even without the snow. I’m her friend, and she listens to me! We talked all night last night, isn’t that right, Winnette? We had a really great conversation going, I did all the talking and you didn’t mind, right?”

The snowy funnel around Winnette whipped up angrily.

“—shut up—”

“—who’s this—”

“—there’s too many talking—”

“—I want to be heard! Hey, listen to me—”

“—wðâ wunlaeð we. wen whristende wmôgh—”

“Listen to me!” Winnette cried above the storm. A fierce blue smile lit her face like all of the starlight was reflecting off her sharp, bright teeth. “I need to hunt! I need food for three windigos! You voices, you want to be heard? Then show me the way!”

“—I saw a deer—”

“—she doesn’t want deer, she wants a nice, juicy rabbit—”

“—don’t listen to them, follow me, I know where a goose is—”

“C’mon, Winnette!” Will urged. “Let’s hunt and talk like last time. It’ll be fun, I have a whole bunch of stories, come on!”

Winnette’s laughter rose in pitch until it was a howl that consumed her entire body. She shook from the sheer desperate hilarity of it all.

She chose a stream at random and kicked off, the howl echoing behind her.

Brown rabbits that hadn’t seen so much as a dusting of light powder in generations struggled to kick through frost to reach their burrows.

Deer stomped tiredly through more than thirty inches of snow that tried to drag them back, hold them in place.

Plump little warblers and black-bellied plovers suffered in the dense, wet air. Juicy gray grouses and fat blue geese visiting from the Crystal Empire struggled alike in the unpredictable, wild winds.

Owls traded silent glances across the snow-topped branches of spruce trees.

Bears fought an inexplicable urge to eat lots of food and then sleep for three months.

Bats warbled and shrieked, battling the hard air with their wings.

A coyote shivered somewhere.

They could all hear the howl. It was a howl that bounded on the snow, deft as a wing on the surface of a living river. It tore through the leaves and scared birds out of the sky. Prowling cats curled up small and quiet, and bears hunkered down low.

Nothing currently alive remembers this scream.

But they all remember to hold their breath. Somehow, they remember—

Hold very still. Especially your breath—hold it in. Only move when the air is utterly still. This means you cannot move and breathe at the same time.

Look at the way the cliff spreads out to cover the rock underneath. See how it hides in shadow anything that might emerge.

Don’t shiver. They can hear you shivering.

This is how you must run: in bursts, using the stillness to move, but also to breathe. You do not know when the wind will blow again.

The icy wind rushed ahead, and behind. The snow was everywhere. Nowhere to hide, impossible to run—

An owl’s brown eyes focused on a dot of moving snow in the distance. A distance that was increasingly less distant….

The flurry of snow flashed by under and past the owl’s brown eyes, obscuring a figure that was just a blur amid the storm.

The owl’s head swiveled. Brown eyes blinked at brown eyes on a distant branch. Owls have long memories, and they are careful guardians of factual, level-headed history.

The monster that took a bite out of the forest has emerged from under the cliff once again.

The animals shivered and were afraid.

Winnette swam back to the cliff, pushing the corpse of a stag in front of her. She’d packed snow into the holes in the deer’s neck to keep the blood in.

A tired, proud smile lit up her face, brighter than the stars.

There was too much food.

There was too much food!

Even Wyna had given up. She rested on her back in the snow, patting her bulging stomach.

Her stomach bulges!

The bright pink of her eyes was covered by her eyelids. “I’m so happy,” Winnette heard her say.

She and Welga looked at each other. There was so much understanding in Welga’s eyes.

They rested by the bloody carcass until the eastern horizon began to light up dimly.

No, Winnette thought desperately. Don’t rise, Sun! You’re gone now!

But the sun rose nevertheless.

“Come on,” said Winnette. She roused Wyna. “Welga, take her down. I’ll bring the rest of the deer behind you.”

Wyna let Welga pull her onto her back. “Is it morning?” she yawned.

“Have you ever heard of breakfast?” Winnette asked. “You’ll find out what it is tomorrow night.”

They went down to the cave. Winnette dragged the half-eaten carcass along and submerged it in a pile of snow. She blanketed Wyna’s already-sleeping form with a layer as well. Welga made a pillow out of the still-fresh powder and fell asleep with a peaceful look on her face.

Winnette stayed awake into the dawn, writing furiously in the book that Wyna and Welga thought was her diary.