The child is cold. And something else, too. Confused, though she doesn’t know the word for it yet. Through the darkness, she reaches out to touch her sister, rests her little mouth on the hill of her sister’s folded knee. She exhales a shaky, uncertain breath.
And their father watches as light gathers and puckers on the horizon, as dawn comes. He steadies himself and their mother, murmurs absent nothings to all three of them, his own mouth pressed into the sweat-slick heat of their mother’s shoulder. His worry still gnaws anxious at the edge of his psyche and each chamber of his bastard heart, but he lends no voice to it. He had heard the quiver in her voice, knows exactly how she struggled to stand, yokes himself with her weight to help keep her upright.
The voice shocks the child. But she recognizes it, too. It’s louder now, closer, and she is suddenly doused in heat. She shivers. She opens her own mouth but no sound comes out. Driven by instinct, she stretches her lanky limbs out in front of her. The body works on its own accord as she struggles to rise, shaky, and then collapses in a heap on the frozen ground again. It is only then that she cries out – in pain or frustration.
With Plumeria’s head pressed firm against his chest, he stretches over her to nudge the fillies’ rumps. He watches them sway and stagger and he smiles, a quiet thing. Karina, she says and he nods. “The winged one, she’ll be Karina,” he murmurs. The child looks in their direction, takes one staggering step toward her mother.
“And Kade,” he says, thinking briefly of his own father.
“They need to eat,” he whispers and he kisses her head, “and then you can rest and I will look after them.”
