first night

I am alive. Snow is not so bad. My first night, my first snow. Wolves in the wind, but nothing to truly disturb us. We camp in the high pass, on the snow itself. It is wetter than I thought, sticks to branches, falls with a heavy plop from the trees. The movement of the occasional bird sends it falling, like a rain of droppings, white and sticky. Snow is not so bad. It is like white mud, slips beneath your boots if you try to scramble a slope. He knew it before me, I am a new colt in the grass, waiting to see if I would fall as my boots slid away from me. His anticipation of me seems mere accident, but I know for that to be true he must watch me; to anticipate is to know a thing somewhat, and to know something takes attention. To another woman it might mean something; from another man. But I see him, touching bark and branch, the dullest leaf, a weed, a pebble, watching the arc of birds. He watches everything in the land, and me no more and no less. How else would it be? Now I am warmer and the fire is bright I watch in my turn, listen, look, write. Nothing moves in the depth of night except me. There is a quiet I have never known before. It settles in the snow, a night so still I can hear the twigs cracking as they freeze. I am grateful for the robe he gifted me with and for the crude skin... though I fancy that I look like a bear. Better though is the one beautiful fur I am now wrapped within, so thick my eyelashes almost brush it when I blink. One luxury, the second only I have found thus far in the north. I should offer to buy it from him.