A fire later in the evening, she thought, for after all it was still autumn, and the sun would fade, and it would grow cold again. It was growing colder by the second, as the sun retreated. Had the sun ever run away so fast? Her smile faded with it, a sense of alarm. The sun, scampering away, as if it were some frightened rabbit. Not setting in minutes, but in seconds, plunging her into cold and darkness. The butterflies ran away with it.
"Wait!" She called after them, but there was no sign of them coming back.
There was only the cold. And the snow. And then something growing in the darkness, low, menacing, and entirely invisible. Wolves? She shivered. She needed to get to her bow. It was just by her, never far out of reach. She just needed to move her arm, and stretch out her hand, and then it would be there, familiar and reliable. Even wolves would not be so scary with it in hand.
