I remember lying in the snow, a red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves. They were me, biting me pressing into the ground as if I was apart of the Earth. Their bodies blocked what little heat the sun offered. Ice glistened on their ruffs and their breath made shapes that hung in the air around us. The musky smell of their coats made me think of wet dog and the burning wood, pleasant and terrifying. Their tongues melted my skin; their careless teeth ripped at my sleeves, up against my collarbone, the pulse at my neck.

I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go colourless above me.

One wolf prodded his nose into my hand and against my cheek. His maroon eyes that looked into mine while the other wolves jerked me this way and that.

I held on to those eyes for as long as I could. Chestnut.  And, up close, shine ever so brilliantly when the sun hit them. I didn’t want him to look away, and he didn’t. I wanted to reach out and grab a hold of his ruff, but my hands stayed curled on my chest, my arms frozen to my body.

Then he was gone, and without him, the other wolves closed in, too close, suffocating.

Something seemed to flutter in my chest.

There was no sun; there was no light. I was dying. I couldn’t remember what the sky looked like.

But I didn’t die. I was lost in the vastness of the cold and then I was reborn into a world of warmth.

I remember this: his maroon eyes.

I thought I’d never see them again.