I gaze through the frozen aquamarine wall that has been my constant companion for so many centuries. It reflects my dishevelled form, but I can also see through it to the tree-covered mountains beyond. Not for the first time, I wonder how it is that no one knows the ice, and myself, are here.
Travellers and merchants regularly drive past in their wagons, but they never even spare it a glance. Of course, any horses and livestock they have with them all give the ice as wide a berth as their masters will allow, but the humans pay them no heed.
Sometimes I think I understand, for though my original and current form is human, I have lived the lives of many species in between. It was only as my first human life closed to an end and my form quite unexpectedly changed into a beast—an arctic fox,
