Dusk

The first snow of the season started early this morning in a torrent, slowly petering out to the big fluffy soft flakes seen in the movies. Unreal and beautiful, floating and swirling. The world outside these cabin walls shrouded in the quiet of winter’s first breath.

Her hands are so small in mine, cold even though Mia has been sleeping by the fire all day with the drapes closed. Her angelic face, still full of youth looking up to me but her eyes betray the innocence, blue and as icy as the night outside. Greymane, the great wolf, vibrates with tension standing beside us, waiting. Can I do this, can I push my sister out into the night, into the cold with no one and nothing around but trees and moonlight? Do I have a choice? I know, I know, I should have done it long ago when I realized she had changed, had become something else, something deadly, something I would have to kill for to keep alive. Greymane can’t keep guard forever. He is growing anxious day by day and I can sense that he wants to run to the safety of his pack in the woods. He can’t keep protecting me from Mia, my dearest big sister. 

Greymane’s amber eyes are on me with the sternness of his predator’s stare willing me, commanding me not to falter. I know the sadness and struggle written on my face overshadow the fear I feel in Mia’s presence and lend to the trepidation of acting against her. An icy chill starts to radiate from her hands as we sit unspeaking, her grip starts to tighten, moving towards pain. I know she wants to be defiant and fight her exile, to scream ‘Harlan, don’t do this, I will make you regret it’, not because she is scared because this is her home too and it’s not fair. I have a moment not of hesitation but real fear that Mia will fight me and Greymane to remain here. And she will quickly end the wolf when he goes for her throat. Me though…..I don’t think I have the fight in me. 

The fine bones of my hands are getting uncomfortably squeezed, that cold intensifying as Mia’s face starts to shift. The sweet calmness is being overcome by a snarl to match the one spreading across Greymane’s face. My dear Mia, what will you do…

© 2026, Denise Pasutti