In the predawn glow of silverlight, she shot through the snow, skyclad and feeling no cold. Her skin blended with the landscape except for a flowing trace of lavendar vine painting it, entwining her slender frame, a hint of spring that connected her to its existence in the past and future that for her were not. Her white hair, too, held a sprig of green promise with a splash of yellow, a reminder of her next incarnation within this incarnation. Around her waist was a braided belt of white fibers made from strips of bark and through a knot in this hung a slender blade, a gift from the Beloved as Mother.

This was now, this was all, slipping down the white slopes toward the icy blue expanse that beckoned to her.

Time for breakfast. The Mother told her empty belly and her empty belly told her.

This is Life.

She came to the frozen water’s edge and crouched, blending into the white sky and shore, and waited with the patience of eternity, calling… calling… A silvery fish shimmered close, offering itself, ready to be transformed. She struck.

Break fast! The creature in her hands wiggled wildly in a last ecstatic dance of Life, gleaming rainbows in the first touch of the new day’s sun as she gazed at it in awe. “Hail, Beloved of the water, quick silver sweet!” she sang, tongue dancing with tones of the Universe, laughing.

She kissed it in giggling gratitude and glee and wondered at its perfection. It was the most beautiful fish! Forgetting forever, it was the only fish she had ever seen, would ever see.

“Thank you, Beloved, for the precious gift of your flesh,” she whispered in the tongue of the wind and the stars and reflections in water. As quick as a blink, she whipped her blade from her knotted belt and sliced, releasing its spirit in a shimmer unseen to earthly eyes, back to formlessness to be again form. What next, Beloved? In what guise of delicious beauty will you surprise me?

Break fast! Joy!

After she had enjoyed the cold sweet flesh, stripping off and cherishing each bite, she returned the bones to the water. The winter wind whirled snowflakes around her as she knelt at the edge of the ice, plunging her hands into the shining water and letting it carry away the last trace of the precious fish.