Location:Wild Confederacy — Settlement Windbreak; the long house roof; the lanes; the pens on the old drying ground
Date/Time:TC1858.03.24
Steam over every lane at first light, the breath of three hundred beasts standing up into the cold, and not one of them lying down.
Mei saw it from the ridge of the long house roof. She'd come up through the smoke hole when the sleepers started stirring on the planks below, because there was nothing to do down there and she couldn't lie still any longer. From the ridge she could see most of Windbreak. The lanes ran away from her full of cattle and sheep and goats, packed in between the walls, all of them on their feet. Some of the cattle swayed. One cow two lanes over had her head down against a door and was pushing at it, slowly, as if the door would give her something if she pushed long enough.
