It kicks like a sleep twitch—

Snow breaks.

It falls apart into a myriad of flakes, their fragile bindings torn apart by the weight of a wolf-creature and his worried heart—they fall from far above, from no cloud, and some drift in against the jagged, solid walls of the crevasse. And some, they fall all the way to the undisturbed floor, settle along the sharp angles of an emaciated body, and upon the carelessly arranged locks of long, silken hair. It is almost like a perfect picture unveiled, of something bony and thin but so peaceful in its rest. No lines of tension are drawn about his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils.

He could simply be asleep.

But the undisturbed snow around him speaks of another story. No restless tail movements have swirled the flakes about in a long time, no shake of his head to clear some disturbing dream—nothing.

It's the scene of someone who has died without dying. It's—

(The warg's paws dig, dig, dig, and the snow keeps falling. Some are lone flakes, some are entire chunks of interlinked crystals, and with them comes the sunlight.)

Sunlight isn't what feeds his body, sunlight isn't the gentle magic floating through his aching veins—but sunlight is light, and, starved, his body fights to soak it up. To bask in it.

To feel it.

But his nerves are too tired. He cannot die, but this gift of starlight is not life, it is not energy, it is merely a bulwark against the finality of death.

Another white-smoke breath slips out of snow-covered nostrils, and the wolf stops blotting out the sun. In a puff of darkness it comes down the many yards, paws and fur disturbing the perfect disarray of snow; it looms above Mauja in the narrow crack, so far below those upon its rim. There's enough space for the two of them, but barely more than that—Mesec's large paws balance him in the space between Mauja's outstretched legs.

Something in the dead horse's soul sparks—maybe it's the sunlight just happening to fall along the barely-closed line between eye and lid, and the way it bites his retina, or maybe it's just the presence of warmth and love. Whatever it is, it does its best, but it's just not strong enough to amount to anything.

Another breath, dead giveaway that life lingers within.

And much too long until the next, seconds stretching and accumulating, before another white cloud forms, oh so faintly, around his dark nose. And so it goes, on and on, now and forever.

—you will choke, choke on the air you try to breathe.