The deep winter came to Frostfall with its usual commitment and Lyra, fully awake and fully herself, loved every moment of it.
Elowen had not expected this. She had grown up in this climate and had always managed the winter rather than embraced it, the cold something to be mitigated with proper clothing and heated rooms and the careful maintenance of the citadel's warmth systems. Lyra had no such ambivalence. The wolf found winter clarifying. The cold made the world more present, the scents sharper, the sounds traveling differently through the frozen air in ways that the wolf found deeply, unreservedly satisfying.
They walked the silverwood forest trail in the mornings together in the full sense of the word.
Elowen had been doing this for months, the early morning walks that had begun a
