Nate was awake in the early hours before dawn, when the moon still had its grip on the sky and the horzion faded only to deep blue. Dewy grass shuffed beneath his paws on their lonesome trek until even his thick wolven fur gave up the ghost and the chill of early spring seeped into his toes.

It was the coldest it had been since spring’s return — not enough to haunt the breath, but the hills, for their part, cloaked themselves in fog that gleamed under the face of Svnoyi Ehi Nvdo (the moon).

Nate stepped through it with only a vague kind of will steering him down deertrails. Ko-Ga followed.

Did you like her? Nate asked, after a while. …Eleanore. Her name like a phantom itself, the way it made him cold to utter.