My home was always cold, my fingers always blue. The only times I could get a taste of something warm was when I ran into the Village general store on errands, and even then most of the time I had to wait outside or else my scrawny self and pathetic luck would bring the store crashing to its creaky knees. As if it’s sagging roof and even saggier shopkeeper Beetleleg didn’t guarantee that. I left the shifting gravel road of Gravel Road for a beaten dirt path. Literally. It’s one of my errands to hit this path with a mace four times a year when the third moon turns aquamarine. A few more strides and I’d at least be out of the cutting wind, safe in the house’s shadow. A bit more ice chipped off of my pants and trickled into my threadbare boot. The door is almost too much for me to push open on a good day with working fingers, and I didn’t know how I would open it with lumps of ice for hands and frozen jam for muscles. I splayed my fingers against the stone grain and pushed with all my might until my elbows collapsed. My shoulder slammed against the carving of a capricorn being torn apart by a Vicious Something With Too Many Teeth. I pushed and heaved, the door creaking, shifting maddeningly slowly open.

Suddenly I was on the floor inside.

I blinked the dark spots away and opened my eyes. Something huge blocked the weak light. It stepped inside and let my foe grind shut with an echoing boom.

I shivered.

In what filtered in from slats where the wood of the attic’s roof met dark bluish stone I could make out my father’s expression. It wasn’t disappointed. It wasn’t angry. Well, no more so than the general expression of anger every Villager has. He’d given up on investing any emotions towards me long ago. 

“F-father!” I scrambled to my feet, feeling cold, dumb, and dirty. He looked me down and a little more down. “Did ye do yer errands?” His voice rumbled out like huge, quiet waves moving quickly across a quiet sea to an unsuspecting village. Not exactly loud, but you feel it in your bones. “I-ah, I d-I uh, did, Father. I, ah, fixed the, um, capricorn hooks, uhm, mended the, um, mended the nets, and I, uh, a-and I got the brooch you wanted!” I fished it out from my crackling pockets and held out the river rock with carvings that matched our door. As my own personal touch I’d threaded a plain leather cord through its hole so it could be worn as an amulet. I’d had to haul wood and trim disturbingly disgusting Villager toenails for weeks to afford it.

It was worth it.

A few dark moons ago he’d noticed this in Bitestone’s collection and said it was interesting.

I started shivering again, in worried anticipation.

He stared me down and the something inside me that has been tentatively growing chilled and died.

“I don’ remember askin’ ye te get me an amulet.”

Nooo, I moaned without breath.

The air bit my lungs as I breathed in.

“Well -uh, no, F-father I d- I didn’t, well, ugm, you didn’t, a-ask for it but I remember you, uh, you, uh, looked at it and I, well I just thought-”

"QUIET!"

Dust fell from the ceiling.

“F-father?” I gulped. He sighed. He walked towards me and I had to force my numb feet out of the way to avoid being crushed. He stopped, straightened, and faced me. “ Ain’t yer father. Th’ Village Welp has no family, ain't got no home, only a place he be given ta’ sleep by th’ folks unfortune nut ta’ birth ‘im.”

He threw the door open and walked out into the growing blizzard.

For some reason, this was the time those words hurt the most.

I looked at the gift, the hunk of rock I’d worked so hard to get and clenched my fists as hard as I could, trying to crush it.

Not so much as a creak.

With a sigh I gave up and headed up the stairs. It hurt to give up. It shouldn't, what with the amount of practice I have every day, but every time I give it feels like a little bit more of me crumbles to dust and is blown away by everyone’s wind.

In case it wasn’t clear enough, that was a flart joke.

Har har.

Our proud house has three floors. Dark and dank basement, cold central floor, and breezy, bitter attic. It's more of a loft, really. It spans about half the house and is where we store most of our things to be kept cold or out of the way. Things like meats, ice, old blankets, and me.

I've found that snow, when used properly, can actually conserve your body heat and keep you warm. I'd found out this fact the first night I'd been told to sleep here, when I was six. It was the night of a bitter snowstorm and I’d told my father that I was cold, even sleeping by the hearth’s fire. Unfortunately, Chief Skullgut had been visiting that night.

When he heard me he’d declared me the Village Whelp on the spot. He’d said 'd already had suspicions I would be the Whelp, but my weakness to cold was confirmation. I remember looking to my father for help, and seeing him turn away, pointing towards the attic, with it's howling winds. I’d taken my only blanket with me. When I finally fell asleep I was so numb I couldn't shiver, and woke blanketed in snow.

It was still unbelievably cold but the snow had trapped what little body heat I had and saved me.

Yet despite this revelation I had been too miserable to put it into much practice until a week later when I fell asleep in the cold only to wake in front of the hearth. I remember my father sitting on a log and staring into the flames. He'd looked brittle, fragile. It had shocked me to my very core to see him look so weak. When he’d turned towards at me and saw me watching him he’d tossed the stick to the fire, stood, and gone out into the frozen dawn.

I hadn’t thought of how my father had taken to my new status.

He was heartbroken.

Before, he had doted on me, ignoring the fact that I was smaller than the other boys. He’d called me brave, worthy, a true Villager. I was fearless, I was smart.

But I couldn't win in the children’s rock smashing competitions, or treepunching challenges, or the swimming races.

I was weak, had let him down and now he was trying not to love me anymore.

In the Village, everything tries to kill you. The weather is always stealing your life away, the landscape either trying to swallow you up or work with the wind to push you off something. In order to survive you had to be able to scream your defiance, claw your way out of the soil, and stand head to head with The Beasts. When you are weak, you die, and no one wants to get attached to something that would die soon.

I reached the top of the stairs and looked into my dismal bedroom.