Try not to mistake what you have with what you hate, it could leave, it could leave, come the morning.

Celebrate the night, it's the fall before the climb, shall we sing, shall we sing, 'til the morning?

The snow is strange to the girl of not-quite-sixteen. She is from the desert, and water in this powdery form seems like trickery to her. It shouldn't surprise her. She travels plenty. Too much, her brothers might say. Or her mother, or father, or grandmother.

Honestly she isn't certain. She hasn't seen them in almost a year, so any guesses she makes now might be a little off.

She pulls a face as her left foot sinks into a pile of snow and she pitches forward slightly, muttering a string of spicy curses at the deceit of the powder-water. Why anyone would decide to stay here, and not just proclaim it the devil's land and be done with it, is beyond her. Maybe the logical parts of their brains had suffered a slow and tragic death from hypothermia, and they decided to stay in the frost for its prettiness. Which it certainly was, if pale and boring-within-the-first-twenty-steps was your thing. It's not hers, anyway.

She's a little hard to please, when it comes to appearances, though she would be the first to admit that hers isn't all that great. She has an average height, a biggish nose and an inability to shut her mouth. That doesn't make her pretty. It is what, as her grandmother put it, makes her an arrogant loudmouth who never puts the family first.

Plodding forward, she snorts and tries to avoid face-planting in the snow. As if anyone in that family "put the family first". Please. The closest they'd ever gotten to selflessness was when Grandmother allowed her daughter to marry the desert farmer. The sheep boy. "Too much wolf in him, Hante," Auntie Lurit used to say when she thought the kids were playing with the sheep. "Too much wolf for him to be good to sheep. Sheep need a dog, not a wolf."

Auntie Lurit had sparkly dark eyes and a crocodile grin. She swam like a crocodile too, when they made it to the river in the hottest months, when the animals were thin and needed a couple of weeks of very steady grazing. And little movement.

Eventually, she spots the tower she'd been looking for. It's a mammoth of a building, stretching up until her neck hurts and her eyes lose focus. With the steady snowfall she hadn't noticed it was there until she was within half a kilometre from it. On a clear day, she was sure you would see it from the base of the mountain range she'd crossed a month ago. If this place had clear days.

But there it was. Some distance away from the settlement to the west, an isolated, crude stack of rock that her mother would shudder at and, lost for words, look away while tracing a rune over her belly, which her mother said was the centre of a woman's being. Men did it over the forehead, and children over the chest. Her mother used to explain that a woman is about her children, a man about his mind, and children about their heart, taking shape. Then once, she saw Auntie Lurit trace the shape. Over her mouth, and then her hand. When she asked for an explanation, her aunt said that she was about both her actions and her words, but her words even more, because they were what made her strong.

Taking another step, she exhales and mutters: "Well, finally."

A/N: It begins. I regret nothing but the shortness of this chapter!

EDIT: now slightly longer.

…R&R