A Garm.
"Garm? This high on the mountain?"
He slides out. His dagger is no longer holstered. He scans and spots it on the snow far down the slope.
If he slides, he could reach the daggers and retreat back toward the cavern.
But then he would return without the girl. Elm would reject him again.
Sol, the Eclipse-born. One-Horned Sol. Sol the Half. Son of a Human.
This is his only chance to be accepted.
He slides down, uses his less-injured arm to grab the dagger, and watches as the Garm tears into the Nhiven.
The Nhiven retreats. The Garm pursues with sharp, swift movements. The Nhiven feints a gore. The Garm slips back and rakes a hind leg.
The Nhiven is losing. It knows it cannot win. Elk do not beat wolves.
It bounds higher up the hill. The Garm glances at Sol, then closes with its prey.
For a heartbeat, the two great shapes stand on the ridge, facing each other. The full moon shines brightly after a thin veil of cloud passes.
It looks like a painting.
Sol cannot help thinking how beautiful it is, no matter how close to death he is.
The elk bellows.
The wolf howls.
Silence.
Then a deep growl from within the mountain, and then a vibration.
A vibration so deep it shakes Sol to his core.
The snow begins to move.
An avalanche.
Sol looks up in awe as both predators leap away to safety, leaving him alone beneath the rolling white and the full moon.
---
He breathes in.
He does not know how long he was unconscious.
Cold and warmth at once, from outside and inside his body. He is buried under an unholy weight of snow. He claws toward the surface. It is harder than he thought.
He is deeper than he realized. Fractured arms and ribs do not help. The punctures from the Nhiven make everything worse.
He claws free of the drift.
Broken. Bleeding.
He exhales everything.
He lies on the snow for what feels like hours, though it cannot be that long.
The sky's color has changed. A line of orange shows on the eastern horizon.
He was out for that long, it seems.
He looks around. No sign of the girl.
"Heeey!"
No answer.
"Heeeeeey!"
Only silence.
"She was here. She turned. I saw her eyes."
He crawls and spots a piece of fabric caught on a branch above the buried forest. His eyes widen.
He runs to it and starts to dig.
He digs. He digs more. He keeps going.
His hands are bloodied and raw. Fingernails snap.
He moves rocks and tears at branches like they have insulted him.
His breath comes ragged. His chest rattles. Each wheeze stabs his ribs.
Minutes pass. He finds nothing.
His voice breaks. "Please… come on… please just be real."
He sobs into the snow. Quietly. Ugly. Like a boy again.
He has tried to be strong for so long.
Desperate, he mutters, "I don't care what she is. I don't care if she's cursed. I'll drag her to Elm myself. Tie her down if I have to. Say I killed her. Say—"
He chokes on his own lie.
He doesn't have what it takes to be a Geherrim. He doesn't have what it takes to be a demon.
To live is to consume. To win is to trample upon others.
To stand at the top of the Geherrim food chain, is to be unjustifiably cruel.
He lacks all of it, the hunger, the cruelty, the sheer cold pragmatism of the other Geherrim in his village.
That's why he's just… well, him.
That's why the village acted like he did not exist. Like he is nothing, from the moment of his cursed birth up to now, when the village elder suddenly allowed him to join Rahzar's hunting party.
They wanted him out.
Rage boils in his chest. The pain stings worse than the punctures from the Nhiven's horns.
But more painful than the rage is something else.
Sadness. Grief.
He realizes he is so unwanted that the people in his village cast him away without blinking.
The knowledge that someone can be so undesired that they are surrendered to the frozen wilds, to die at the maws of bears, wolves, or Nhivens.
He punches the ground. Once. Twice. The snow stains red. His wounds reopen, and blood begins to drip.
He presses his forehead to the drift.
A scent reaches him. Sweet. Green.
Tiny flowers bloom on the snow. Still warm.
He blinks and touches one. It does not melt.
Footsteps whisper over the crust. He turns his eyes toward the sun.
"Are you lost?"
He opens his eyes slowly. The light obscures her face, but he knows it is her.
He stares at her silhouette.
The girl walks on the snow, weightless, and crouches before his half-buried body.
"Me too."
Around them, snow-flowers bloom, impossibly. The air is still and sacred.
Sol stares at her. He knows what she is not.
She is not Geherrim. She is not human. She is something else entirely.
She tilts her head.
Sol tilts his the same way.
She smiles, bright as the sunlight behind her.
She leans forward, as if inviting him to share a secret.
"Do you want to be lost together?"