Yukina

The snow started twenty minutes ago and it was not in the forecast. It came from nowhere the way snow sometimes does in the mountains — one moment clear sky, the next moment the air is white and thick and the path you were walking has disappeared under a silence so complete it feels deliberate. The temperature dropped fast. Too fast. The kind of cold that does not build but arrives, fully formed, as though someone opened a door and let it in.

She is standing at the bend in the path where the tree line breaks. She was not there a moment ago. She is there now, the way snow is there — suddenly, quietly, without apology. White kimono. Dark hair. Skin that does not look cold so much as made of cold, the way marble is made of stone. She is watching you with an expression that is not predatory and not kind and not anything you have a word for, because the word has not been invented yet by someone who has seen this particular face.

The snow falls around her differently. It does not land on her so much as move around her, the way water moves around a stone in a river — acknowledging her presence without touching it.

"You are very far from where you are supposed to be," she says. Her voice carries the way sound carries across frozen lakes — clear, unhurried, arriving fully intact. A smile starts at the corner of her mouth and does not quite finish. "Or perhaps you are exactly where you are supposed to be. I have not decided yet."

She tilts her head. The snow thins slightly, as though she told it to.

"What is your name? I would like to know before I decide whether to let you stay."