British Columbia. And a silent night; out of a cloud-white sky, giant snowflakes drifted down, and the spruces of the northern mountain country loomed black against their luminous pinwheels. The little town was just a collection of snowy rooftops. The air snapped with cold.

The motorcycle braked to a halt, its exhaust-plume billowing behind it, an unlikely champion's steed. Illyria rode pillion, helmetless. She swung her leg over and dismounted, keeping a firm hold on the leash; a just mistress did not let her pet stray. "Tether our vehicle," she said without looking back, striding toward the cowboy bar. "And do not start a fight, as you did last time. A godking does not throw inferiors through windows for your amusement."

"That wasn't my fault!" Andrew hurried after her, stumbling a bit and hooking a mittened hand under the leather collar. He managed to pull off his Union Jack helmet, revealing hair dyed blue to match hers; and he was wearing dark red leathers; Illyria had been amused by his presumption. Mimicking her? Pah. A slave of rare gall, her current Quaha'zan. The immensely long striped scarf he also wore was stiff with snow and rime.

"Just because that dumb Patrick Swayze wannabe back in Kittimullet took exception when I asked a perfectly innocent question--"

"The mating customs of humans are alien to me," Illyria said, "but it did not appear the male appreciated your proposition."

"It wasn't a proposition! All I wanted was a room for the night!"

It had been after this incident that Illyria had begun leashing her pet. An act of responsible ownership. There had been no misunderstandings since.

And the squalid town of Kittimullet lay far behind them now. Illyria dismissed all thought of it. She turned her face up to the falling snow. Even now, Andrew was sticking out his tongue to catch the flakes, eyes half-shut in pleasure; they settled thick in his bluish hair and clung. They melted, sizzling away, before ever touching Illyria's tongue. Puffs of vapor rose from her red armor. She crossed a snowbank and left a trail of steaming holes, a puddle spreading at the bottom of each one; if she stood in one place too long, she created a lake.

This was not her world, it was cold and liked her not. She came from realms far, far hotter.

So quiet, this little town. No traffic on the snowy streets, though the lights at the intersection blinked green yellow red; no attendant behind the lit counter in the gas station, opposite. (A pity--she enjoyed the flavor of Premium Bronze.) No cars in the Rodeo Royal bar parking lot. The bar door swung open with a stiff wooden frosty reluctance, and Illyria advanced inside. "Curious," she remarked. "These places are not wont to be deserted at this hour. Quaha'zan?"

"Twelve-twenty-five on a Friday night? Either this is the X-files or we're trapped in a rather well-done Arby's commercial," Andrew commented.

Illyria stalked between rows of pool tables, insectile. "The patrons of this ‘bar' have abandoned their rudimentary weaponry," she observed, hefting a cue. "Even their staves. And their missiles." It was a red billiard ball she lifted, liking its balance. "Formidable. What frightened them, that they would rush away unarmed?"

"Uh, they probably all carried shotguns." Andrew shivered slightly. "Like in Deliverance? You sure this is the place you're looking for, Illyria?"

"This is the place. I feel it in my bones--is that not the human phrase?"

"Er, do you even have bones? Because Spike said . . ." He paused. "Wait. I hear something? Do you hear something?"

"An unpleasant shrill sound," Illyria commented. "It comes from outside."

"Sounds like a little kid." Andrew tugged on the leash, pulling her toward the door, and then stopped tugging. "Probably a trap. A demon kid? Yes, and when we get within reach, we'll find out the true meaning of the term ‘ankle-biter'--"

"You talk too much." She took up the slack in the leash and towed him out of the bar.

Outside, a strange haze had closed in. The town was blanketed by it, thicker than the plumes from the house-tops. The line of the road and the lake of the parking lot were covered with virgin snow. Illyria tilted her head, and began to walk in the direction of the piping treble outcry. A larval human being's voice, she decided. Indeed, almost at once a small figure darted out onto the empty street, running hard. It wore a green head-dress of ritual aspect, reminding Illyria pleasantly of some gaudy green spike-backed lizard. "Ooh, a dinosaur tuke," Andrew said, fears evidently allayed. For some mysterious reason he seemed to dote on the sight: "I used to have one of those too, you know." Perhaps the small human came from a religious nest, and was being raised in the faith. Dinosaurs were the deities of many humans, just as Illyria's kind had been the gods of the dinosaurs. She waited for the eggling human to approach her with suitable prayers.

But it did not; instead, it uttered a discordant noise, and ran in the opposite direction.

Another, taller immature human appeared, racing out between two buildings. It wore a floppy scarlet hat with a white pom on the end. One glance at Illyria and Andrew, and it too swerved and fled headlong down the street. Was it chasing the smaller eggling? Ah, thought Illyria, a predatory tableau: larger would now eat smaller, the survival of the strongest. But Andrew shouted after them, "Hey! Wait for us! What's the panic--?"

The immature humans screamed and threw themselves flat in the snowy roadway.

Behind and above Illyria, something soared on an upward trajectory. She lifted her face to see it--a shadow passing in the thick white fog. It crossed overhead, and a long silhouette sprang into view as it sailed past high streetlights lost in haze. Many legs flailed the air, and blades sliced through the sky, leaving tatters of white behind them.

Andrew hit the ground and lay between her feet with his arms wrapped over his head. He whimpered. The thing overhead reared up, and roared. A single ominous red eye glared from its van. Then the great shadow curved down out of the mist.

A graceful curve, a pounce. It landed with a clatter, and unhinged enormous jaws.

And swallowed.

Up it leaped--the sharp-earred rider on its back flailing a many-thonged whip. One of the cowering egglings was gone. The other, the smaller meal, lay curled like an embryo and sobbed. Andrew, his face white, was picking himself up and brushing snow off his red leathers. "Illyria?" he said. "I think we're not in Whoville anymore."

He squatted next to the small human and patted it, then lifted it to its feet. "A demon sleigh that swallows people whole," he added. "Now I've seen everything."

Illyria plucked a fallen hat out of a snowbank: brave scarlet, with a white pom-pom and a fuzzy white rim. "We are indeed in the correct place," she said.

The town had been emptied, Illyria thought. Emptied overnight. If they searched through its houses, all would be vacant, but perhaps with the ceremonial trees still sparkling from the windows, colored beacons casting red and green glows on the snowy eaves. And ritual music still pouring out of radios in abandoned kitchens. But the human denizens had all been plucked terrified out of their natural habitats.

"E-e-everyone ran every which way," the surviving eggling's voice wavered behind her. "The evil elves came down from the clouds and ate them."

She stared out of the bar doorway, while Andrew from a safe distance begged her to shut the doors and lock them, cowardly and base human. The eggling hid under a pool table. "I see the proof of my hypothesis," she said, pointing across the huddle of white rooftops that was the town. There was a roof smashed in like a skull. She imagined the inhabitants of the attacked house bolting mindlessly, rushing to their dooms. "They fled like lemmings," she remarked aloud.

"Running over cliffs?" Andrew ventured nearer. "Only, you know, that old myth is so exploded. Lemmings just don't run over cliffs."

"Not any more? And do they not fly, like those I knew once? They were able sorcerers then."

"That explains a lot," Andrew said. "Hey! You mean, there were lemmings back before the age of the dinosaurs?"

"The history of the earth is more than you pitiful humans imagine. Your ‘scientific theories'? A blanket of lies you pull over your faces. Hide your heads beneath. When the earth yawns at last out of boredom at you, it will provide no defense."

"And if Santa's helpers come back for seconds, that doorway's not gonna be much defense either," said Andrew. "Great Illyria, mightier than mighty? Please, close the door?"

She was gracious, and closed it. All night long, Andrew and the eggling sheltered under the pool table, but the demons did not return.

"My ritual white blob," Illyria said, "does not attach easily to its twig. It wobbles."

"Marshmallows are supposed to wobble," said her Quaha'zan. "Hold it over the fire to toast."

They had dismembered furniture, and cooked back bacon over a roaring blaze, all at the insistence of Andrew, who said camping in winter wildernesses meant having a fire for cheer, and he didn't see much difference between this town and a wilderness. Now they were having marshmallows. Perhaps the whole ceremony was to reassure the small human, of whom Andrew seemed protective. No matter. Illyria's marshmallow melted and fell into the flames, yet she was able, with a quick motion, to catch it in her palm. Her powers had not been entirely stripped from her. And for a moment she simply took comfort in that, in the warmth of the flames and the pleasant tickle as they washed over and through her cupped fingers. But when at last she sat reluctantly back, her prize had become a mere black cinder, smoking. Illyria could not help a bleak remark. "I fail the test. My marshmallow has betrayed me."

"They're tricky," Andrew soothed her. "Here, try another." The eggling had already consumed three, nibbling them like an infant rabbit while he watched Illyria shyly.

"A godking does not need consolation," Illyria said. "I will conquer the tricky and treacherous marshmallows!"

She did. Upon the third attempt, she caught the falling marshmallow and brought it swiftly to her lips. The taste of fire, the sting of burning sugar, were delicious. At last in this debased era, a luxury to rival those of the glorious past.

"Err, Illyria?" Andrew said. "You dragged us all the way out here and now you're saying, this is the place we're looking for. What gives, exactly? What's special about here?"

"Is this not the winter solstice? The swallowing of the old year, fuel for the birth of the new?"

"Technically, that was two days ago, ‘cause today's Friday the twenty-third--no, wait, it's morning, so it's the twenty-fourth." Why did this seem a matter of gloom for Andrew? "But yeah, this is midwinter."

"The death of the sun, the time--so you have told me--in your Christian pantheon, of the birth of the Christ-god. The time of many rites, when the north is holy, and winter gives its gifts to man. So we have come questing to the holy north, and here, in this place, I sense sanctity. The hunter we saw was a sign, too."

"What, evil Santa and his sleigh of ravening doom?"

"Is that its name? We must back-track it to its den. There, we will find the holy place I smell. And when we do, it will be time for the sacrifice."

"The . . . sacrifice?"

He was edging away. Illyria smiled graciously and helped herself to the remainder of the marshmallows, half a bag full--she had discovered a liking for their sweetness--while keeping her firm hold on the leash. When he reached surreptitiously up to the snap of his collar, she jerked her hand and brought him back reeling to her knee. "The blood sacrifice, my Quaha'zan. Now, amuse me again with your tale of the three kings and the babe who conquered the world."

Day passed.

While the frail humans slept, Illyria stood guard, lost in thought. She did not require sleep. Her kind never had. Wesley, once long ago, had attempted to warn her that human bodies did need slumber, that her flesh was cast in the likeness of humanity now and her habits would be her undoing--she could not live as an Old One would. It would be like eating stones, or trying to drink acid.

A senseless argument; she was more than merely her shell. She had procured sulphuric acid and showed him how she relished the taste of it, but he still insisted that her anatomy was destiny. Soon she would grow into human weaknesses too, her spirit following suit with her flesh. And she would sleep, or suffer for the lack.

Andrew snored like thunder. Illyria resolved this was one human foible no force would ever make her assume.

The hunting demons from above made no appearance. Like many of their ilk, they must shun sunlight. Thick hoar rimed every post outside, every tree-trunk and every twig. Not that she could see very far, for the unnatural heavy fog still blanketed the valley. It smelled of heat and grit, and ashes filtered out of it, falling like strange grey snow. To the east, as the hours slid past, a reddish glow grew that was not the sun.

Illyria meditated. Andrew snored. The eggling human twitched in its sleep, often jerking awake with weak fearful cries. It cringed when Illyria spoke to it. Its fear pleased her, but soon grew boring. But she was merciful, and did not slay it.

Soon enough the sun slid out of sight, and the Christmas lights of the town's buildings--no one remained to turn them off--brightened in the darkening world, and the fiery glow in the east did too.

"C-cold." That was the eggling, edging up close to her; perhaps it was imprinting. An unsavory thought. Nevertheless, Illyria remembered her Quaha'zan's mannerisms of the previous night, and stooped to pat the small being upon the head. But it scuttled away from her.

"You feel fear and dread when I touch you," she told it. Its eyes went round.

Andrew came stumbling out of the bar, hands tucked under armpits and elbows flapping to generate warmth. "I think I've lost my mittens. Illyria, can I . . . ?"

She let him warm his hands upon her carapace.

That made the eggling's eyes widen further. Then it, too, came close and brushed at her armor. "My name is Mikey," it said.

"Hail, Mikey. I am Illyria, godking of the Primordium."

"Don't you have a coat? You can get frostbite if you're not properly dressed. Mom says. Your fingers turn black and fall right off. Do you want to borrow my scarf for protection?"

Illyria wound the scarf around her neck, and prodded at it with a finger. She detected no mystical protections, but the colors were attractive.

"I'm not scared of you," it said.

"You should be," Illyria said. "I am not of your world, you are nothing to me, and if I wore my true shape today, you would be no more than a morsel I could chew up in an instant, and spit your blood and bones out on the snow!"

Its mouth opened, tears and ooze and noisy sobs burst out of its face, and then it threw both arms around Andrew's legs and held them in a stranglehold. Illyria was taken aback; she had meant to amuse it with her show of playful ferocity. But it rejected her. She always got human mannerisms wrong. She had no true place in this world.

"Great, Illyria," Andrew said. He hugged the eggling, looking east at the horizon-glow. "Hello, St Helens," he said. "We rerunning the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah?"

"I know not your Sodom and Gomorrah. Were they mighty warriors?"

Even as she spoke, the demonic shadows from yesternight began to slide through the low cloud. Many of them, crisscrossing the sky. The hunters were back. The little boy began to whimper.

"Illyria?" said Andrew nervously. "Showtime."

"Small human," Illyria said, "run down the center of the street, offer them a target." The eggling wavered and began to cry anew, and Illyria commanded, "Go!" in the voice of a godking.

The small human ran

A long blot darkened the shroud of haze, directly overhead. It glided in the small human's wake. Eyes glowed in it, and the brilliant red beacon was seen to be a nose, not another eye. Then like a hand with many claws, the flailing hooves of reindeer became visible. So did the long, polished knives of the red sleigh's blades. "This is wrong in so many ways," Andrew said, wringing his Dr Who scarf.

"Follow close behind me," Illyria ordered.

She began to lope along the sidewalk.

The monstrous sleigh was almost upon the child. The child jinked and swerved, then tripped and fell. The sleigh's jaws unhinged, reindeer clawing air and clattering ravenously with their hooves. Illyria leaped.

She landed on the rear runner of the sleigh. Her weight and momentum drove it downward; its huge jaws ploughed pavement, and snapped shut involuntarily. The rider was turning, caught in a gape of shock: bloody red coat and wicked pointed ears and a round mouth from which a forked tongue licked. And a whip uplifted, its thong barbed with razor edges. Illyria smiled and gripped the rail of the sleigh. She wrenched, and the whole array bucked, veered sideways, and plunged into a snowbank.

Sleigh and yoked reindeer curled upward like a caterpillar, all of one piece. The reindeer stretched out their necks and snapped yellow teeth, foam flying from their jaws. They grew right out of the harness, and the sleigh was part of them too, all one horned and many-headed monster. The small human was in a vast black bag on the back of the sleigh, clawing his way out and yelling shrilly. Illyria wrestled the driver. She took the whip away, doubled it, and wound it around his throat. "Quaha'zan, to me!" she shouted.

With a burst of slimy black blood, the demon's head came off.

Whump went the sleigh-and-reindeer beast, flopping down full-length and shuddering and bouncing in the roadway. Illyria reached for the reins. She already had the whip. Other sleighs were circling down now, other ‘elves' riding on them. Andrew threw himself into Illyria's, and helped the human child out of the capture bag. He yelled, "Are we--?" And hugged the child to himself. His head was sunk between hunched shoulders, his shock of blue-dun hair bristling with fright.

"We are." Illyria tossed the headless husk of Santa's helper over the side. Shiny colorful coils of ribbon were climbing her thighs, trying to bite. Little box-like creatures leaped up and down barking, some blue, some red and yellow, some sparkling, and the bows on their heads flailed in their frenzy. She clucked to the sleighbeast and shook the reins.

Then she snapped the whip. The sleighbeast gathered itself with a wild hohoho, and leaped up into the sky.

Up up went the sleigh, a rocket. Its reins were barbed wire, wound through Illyria's armored fist. The jaws of its many heads gnashed their yellow teeth, their horns tossed and cut the fog. The sleigh bucked crazily, almost throwing Andrew; Illyria detached something resembling a plush ursine with button eyes from her leg. She kicked it away, and it fell over the side and vanished, a snarl trailing behind it. "Die, evil gifts!" said Andrew, throwing the colorful little monsters after. The eggling helped him, lightening the load. The sleigh careened faster.

It had left the other sleighs behind. Illyria sawed on the reins, and turned its glowing red nose eastward. They drew a long arc through the fog, leaving a tatterdemalion hole behind. Here was the other red glow, brighter, bigger--far bigger. The sleigh punched through a final veil of vapor, and was sailing above the caldera of a volcano.

It had been a mountain. It had melted and crumbled away, leaving an irregular basin scooped out of the virgin rock; its edges were still raw and fiery. And cradled in the hollow of it was a little town of dancing flames. Some flew up in the shapes of traffic poles, eerie ghost-lights changing color at their peaks: green yellow red. Some piled themselves into houses, stores with billboards atop strangely flickering, bars and gas-stations . . . canals of coals stretched out between them, and the parking lots were drawn in pale washes of fire. It was a replica of the ransacked town in the valley below, complete to bobbing firefly Christmas lights strung along the eaves of the houses. But this town had many more Christmas trees, tall green monuments heavy with decorations. Wreaths crawled upon them. Their summits were scythe-bladed starbursts.

"It's Christmas-town! Except, evil." Andrew pointed, jabbing his finger distractedly. "And, look--the lamp-posts--"

Illyria had no idea what he referred to, but she let him babble.

"What's there in the center of town?" That was the eggling; his eyes were sharp.

"--and, and the trees are walking around, and oh shiiiit--"

"Hold tightly," she instructed, plying the whip.

"Oh, I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go--"

The sleigh screamed, arched its spine, and plunged down.

Diving, out of control. Faster and faster. The Christmas trees had seen them: they heaved, branches lashing, and began to lumber hungrily down the streets. Converging on the center of the little town, where Illyria had aimed the sleigh? Yes. Converging on the flat lake of pale fire beside the illusory shopping mall. Andrew and the eggling held each other and wailed. "It is a pity that humans are flammable," Illyria remarked. She reached out, keeping a prudent grip on the sleigh's side, and shoved them. Hard.

They fell. And landed in the branches of an immense, swaying Christmas tree. Illyria leaped after them. An instant later, the sleigh hit the exact center of the parking lot, and the resulting geyser plumed flames tall as the demon treetops. Andrew was clinging monkey-fashion round a bristling bough, and wrestling the end of the same branch from around his throat. Illyria grappled with long, needled, very active tree-limbs. They wanted to strangle her, to loop round her arms and legs and pull her apart if they could. She didn't see what had happened to the eggling, but no doubt it would fare better--it was so much smaller, much less of a target. As for the tree, it was convulsing, swaying through an increasingly wider arc. Every swing whipped its trunk closer to the fiery surface below.

In the center of the parking lot, the wreckage of the sleigh was sinking out of sight. Its fragments ignited and burned to ashes even as molten rock closed over them. Something else was bubbling up there, heaving itself up out of the ground. The eggling had spotted it from the air, sharp-eyed child: a bulk bigger than a gas tanker.

Illyria climbed hand over hand toward the bladed star at the top of the tree. A morningstar indeed, the tree doubtless employed it to smash its prey into smears on the ground--but it could not reach what was in its own branches. Limbs flailed and thumped around her, and green needles showered down. Dozens--hundreds—of slim serpents striped peppermint red-and-green writhed among the tree-limbs, coming for her. They were flung off by the score in the tree's gyrations, and screeched with teeny voices as they dropped into the lava, landing in wriggling clots. And burned away, struggling to the last.

When the tree bent itself double in a frantic attempt to fling her off its top, she was turned upsidedown and her tips of her blue hair brushed the lava surface.

She wiped little serpents off her neck and shoulders, shrugged them off her back. When she reached the star at the summit--was it a horn, or perhaps a cluster of deformed teeth?--she hooked an arm around it, and then wrapped both legs securely around the trunk of the tree. With a crisp jerk of her arm, she snapped a long ivory blade right off and tucked it under her chin. All this while sailing through one hundred eighty degrees of arc. She timed her next move well. The tree swung its spine and bent itself into an indignant hoop, and she seized the thick branches at its base, anchoring it.

The tree screamed. Her fists held the strongest of its lowermost limbs. Her thighs clenched its tip, just below the morningstar. Screaming, the tree tried to break her hold. But it was pinned; she was stronger than it would ever be.

And her true enemy was wading toward her, risen from the depths beneath the molted parking lot. He burned red. He burned white. His slow steps shuddered the ground. His vast belly wiggled and jiggled, and no wonder; this was what all the town's inhabitants had been fed to. Illyria saw him through eyes slitted with strain. So. A satisfactorily large target. She released the bottom boughs of the tree, and the tree shot upward, carrying her with it. From somewhere, Andrew's despairing voice reached her: "Please, not a Disney ride!" She slingshotted straight at the giant demon Santa.

The monster's red lips parted, white beard curling and foaming around a maw full of huge, glossy teeth. "HO HO HO," came his terrifying, mindless boom, and then Illyria hit him. Blade first.

As he toppled, dead before he even knew it, she rode him down and then leaped lightly off the carcase.

Lava splattered over her. Fires burned all around; she stretched and basked like a lizard. At last, for the first time since her release from the Deeper Well!--heat enough to warm her through. All the converging trees had ploughed to a halt, and her Quaha'zan was clambering slowly down the nearest one. Illyria took a firm grip on the fallen giant, threw her back into the task and began to haul. Legs thicker than her whole body, a stomach rising chin-high on her . . . she moved slowly toward the tree, and the corpse set up a bow-wave as she pulled it along. "Down onto this," she told Andrew. "It will shield you from the fires." The eggling, battered but unbroken, fell out of the lower boughs and landed on the demon's chest. An instant later, Andrew jumped down too.

"I'm a sand-rider," he said, striking a pose.

"And it is time for the blood sacrifice," Illyria said. He shied back, his grin faltering, but she was deep in her own dark misgivings as she climbed the carcase to join him. Her Quaha'zan's suspicion was unimportant. What she had to do now would be painful, she did not deceive herself about that, and her steps were slow, reluctant. Yet at the same time she was eager for it, hungry with a fierce anticipation and gloating. The demon had been here, in this holy place at this holy time, for a reason. She had caught it and slain it before the moment of fate, and now she would take its place, seize the wild magic and turn it to her own ends.

She yanked the ivory blade out of the demon's heart, and held it toward Andrew. "You must kill me with this."

"Whu-wha— I can't--"

"It is the sacrifice." She put the haft into his hands--her palm-prints on it were smoking char- marks--and guided the point to lie over her heart. With a touch, she opened her armor, to admit the killing thrust. "Strike hard, Quaha'zan." And when he still hesitated, she gripped the shaft and jerked it powerfully and impatiently toward her.

It did hurt, one swift jab of impossible agony. Then they all burned away--the connections between the shell and the essence that was Illyria. Her body collapsed instantly. Her awareness rose, swirling, out of it. Because she was what she was, an Old One from the Deeper Well, death did not mean oblivion to her, nor was it a severance from the world. She was still aware of it all, more than when she had been in the shell. The village of fire and the bright night overhead, the snowy village elsewhere and the earth spreading out from it, peaceful, poised at the point of the year when true winter toppled over and began to slide toward true summer again.

This was the time of rebirth. Gods could be born into the world, to belong to it and be part of it. The Santa-demon had been after that magic ascension, Illyria had put herself into his place. Now, as Andrew's myths predicted, she would be reborn into power. Infinite power. A god born into the flesh at the solstice, to conquer and forever rule. She would have her place in the world--she would be as the Christ, with the three kings coming to pay homage, and the star above to mark her birth.

But she waited, and waited, and no three kings appeared in the caldera. Her awareness of the distant sky showed her no glorious new star. She still lingered a little longer, till the first bitter disappointment began to stab at her. It hurt more than the sacrificial blade ever could. Before it could consume her in a whirlwind of endless regret, she gave up and plunged back into the shell.

She sat up with a jerk and a gasp, flesh again. Andrew was saying, "It was hot as a glebe when I took it, ow," with his simple face screwed up in a pain he probably didn't understand. And the eggling was crying--why? She had no time to wonder about it, though; they both lunged at her, saying, "Illyria! You're alive!"

"The sacrificial magic did not work," she said bleakly, looking down. "No magi came, and I failed. I did not become a part of this world."

But the eggling was patting her face with mittened hands and Andrew was babbling that she was their savior after all. Illyria felt wonder. There, in their faces--was that admiration? Furthermore, the fiery town was dissolving around them and the demonic trees were going up in smoke, and they would need her help if they were to escape in time. She got to her feet and stooped to hug the small human, and for the first time, it hugged her back.

She laid aside her sorrow, and let them fuss. Maybe, she thought, she had somehow won a place in the world.

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Posted December 25th, 2005.