The coldest night of the coldest month of the year.

Already she’s been alone a hundred and twenty-eight days. And until then, Jian would be the first to insist she was perfectly fine on her own. Well-supplied with water and food, she obligingly passed the long days in meditation, one peaceful hour flowing seamlessly into the next. Not a soul, Human nor animal, would dare approach this place. Even with the village a full two hours away on foot, Jian had always felt perfectly safe under Maere's protection.

Perhaps Maere is testing her, gauging her journey down the many future Paths available. Limitless possibilities, Mother would say. As winter has trudged on, though, conviction ebbs. If the Creator has a plan for her that requires patience, She would have done better to choose some other girl. Jian has never in her life been patient, nor meditative; being alone in a cave for a hundred and twenty-eight days, waiting, has brought her to frustrated tears on many occasions.

And yet, she waits, and hopes. In this uncharacteristically brutal winter, there's been nothing else to do.

She knows Maere's influence usually appears in visions, like dreams with uncanny clarity, as one sleeps. But for so many months to pass without any sign, but then slip and tumble headlong into the river on this night, of all nights, she's positive these events must have been manipulated by the Goddess Maere herself. After all, nothing around Jian has changed; not the temperature nor the flow of the river. She's crossed the same ice bridge every day to reach the flatlands, and it has always held firm, until it doesn’t. And as Jian tumbles into the frigid channel, it feels as if her veins themselves fill with river ice.

Then he arrives.

She doesn't know this man—this boy, who reaches into the maelstrom and draws her out as easily as if he handles frozen rivers for breakfast. Jian, paralyzed with shock, can’t even speak to tell him her name. She waves toward the cave, her camp, with a quaking hand.

As he moves with purposeful strides to bear her there, his small, wiry body carrying her with ease despite being three-quarters her size, Jian lets her eyes fall closed and the breath she’s been holding leave her in a silvery puff. The Creator has finally spoken to her. Everything is going to be fine.

Except, that's the last she recalls of the Maere's messenger. Now all of it is gone, and soon, so is he.