The winter in the city of Rivermout was a brutal thing. Few of its inhabitants willfully braved the city's streets in those dark months. The merchants had long since migrated south before the eve of the winter solstice in long caravans, carrying off the last whiffs of spice and perfumes for the season. The free men who couldn’t make their home within the many series of Rivermout’s stone walls hibernated; many were content to sit by well-fed hearths and ration out their winter stockpiles they had built throughout the more fair months.

  And of those who had no hearth nor found a place amongst the merchant’s escape? Their fate was a cruel thing. Many would find themselves broken down under the relentless pick of winter’s hand; fissures of purple, frostbitten flesh would crystallize on those without the fortune to be fully clothed. However, the same marks would find even the well-prepared in the height of the cold mistress’s reign. One would be considered fortunate if they survived the season, blessed if they kept all their digits.

  This winter was no different. The first body had already gone cold by the season’s virgin snowfall, the mother of a small, white-haired child. She had fought hard. Even in her last, frosty breath, she had hoped her corpse’s warmth would protect her small child in her stead—if only to keep him warm until the storm broke. They had been forced to brave the winter as the foreman of her workplace had suspected the white hair of her child was a sign of a terrible omen. When given the choice between giving her child to Winter’s embrace or joining him. She had walked out with her head held high, babe held to her chest.

  Her babe, Rook, named after his first word, had only seen five springs, and this was the first winter he would experience without the shelter. It would not have been strange for this to be his last. It wouldn’t have been strange if he spent his last moments clinging to his mother’s icy corpse. It wouldn’t have been strange for his face to be scarred with frozen tears.

  It was strange that he had thrown himself away from his mother’s quickly cooling embrace. It was strange that he had turned to brave the growing storm. It was incredibly strange how hot curses spilled from his lips as he dragged himself through the empty streets of old stone and bolted doors.

  “Damn them… Damn that foreman, damn the technocrats…! And damn those scientists! Three times I’ve lived, and three times I’ll die! I could not live as a nobody nor as a marvel, and of course I couldn’t live as an orphan in a world too stupid to invent a heater!” The “child” growled.

  In truth, “Rook” was not his first name, and this was not his first life. He was previously “Macky” and, originally, “Akira." Each of them was short-lived and tragic. For even in this iteration, “Rook” had a gift, to him a curse, of being an esper. Telepathy, psychokinesis, remote viewing…all abilities that might have been a blessing in any of his lives had made him a test subject twice before. His consciousness, being able to maintain itself outside the body, had been flung upon his death to a new world after each of his undignified deaths.

  Now, he was an orphan slowly losing feeling in his short legs. With his strength thoroughly sapped. His powers were all but beyond him. All that was left to him was his telepathy, with which his feral and dying brain was audience to the warm and joyful thoughts of those with a hearth to warm them. He had no hope, only the desire to go cold in an abandoned corner of the apathetic Rivermout where the thoughts of the more fortunate would not spite him in his dying breath.

  He didn’t make it. His short legs collapsed in a small alley at the mouth of one of the city’s streets as a maw of snow quickly grasped his form. His body seemed to yearn to follow its mother. It was under that cruel blanket that his curses died. And he wept. Wept for life, wept for warmth, and the embrace of anyone alive. Although he had lived multiple lives, he had never been older than fourteen; he had died in the throes of puberty before he could ever be considered a man. He had no hope his next life would be any different. So, he wept as his consciousness bitterly faded…

  ‘Could it be? Now?’ A hushed voice broke against the boy’s mind before a door to his right swept open. He raised his head to find a silhouette of a tall man perched on the threshold of a home tinted orange by hearthlight. In the man’s hands were a fearsome great bow and a titanic arrow more reminiscent of a short javelin than an arrow. Strung on a tight, thick string, the arrow pointed at the boy quickly swung around the alleyway as the man seemed to fervently search for a more fitting mark. Finding none, the arrow shaft fell parallel to the step of the door.

  ‘Jumping at every chill…Damn that witch.’ The man’s thoughts hissed. The man turned his eye back to the boy, taking a careful inventory of every speck of snow in the alleyway, as if the snow would leap to strike him. ‘Best not to leave him to freeze…’

  The boy was stunned; although the citizens of Rivermout feared the winter, none sought to kill it. He tried to come to his feet but found his legs heavy with chill. The man effortlessly shifted the weight of his weapon in one hand to raise a free hand towards the boy. “Ursa,” the man called. His palm glowed, and for a moment the boy thought he could hear the growl of a bear. A torrent of heat followed.

  The boy squeezed his eyes closed, expecting to be vaporized alongside the snow. The supernatural heat came upon him-- and cradled his form. The boy opened his eyes to find the man stepping down into the alley without a speck of snow in insight. The man scooped him up within a blink and had him back over the threshold before a fresh barrage of snowflakes could strike the ground. The boy was unconscious before the door closed behind him. His malnourished form, now assured of its survival, devoted no more energy to maintaining wakefulness.

  …………………

  The first sensation to welcome the boy was the thick and hearty scent of crackling sweet wood and melted fat, his stomach rumbling in need. The boy, still half-asleep, fell upon his usual instincts in this life and rolled over, ignoring his hunger. What roused him was that instead of the thin rag he had been accustomed to, a thick pelt had halted him. His eyes snapped open, his thin, short fingers grasping the soft red fur of the skin. He sat up, his eyes falling onto the healthy hearth he had laid by. No—he had been placed by, he realized. He spun around, finding himself in a cozy main room, its wood furnishings and walls soft shades of caramel with a wide range of pelts across its walls and thrown over its furniture. His eyes scan the room, turning to the source of the scent that made his stomach roar.

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  To the right of the living room lay a small kitchen divided from the rest of the room by a half wall with a wooden support pillar serving as a corner. Over the half wall, the man could be seen leisurely stirring a thick, black pot. As soon as Rook’s eyes fell upon the man, the man’s inner voice found him. ‘He wakes,’ he internally hummed before he turned to Rook with an easy smile. “Good to see Winter was denied her mark…” he chuckled. Rook slowly came to his feet and traced his way over polished dark wood to a pillar at the corner of the kitchen, using it as cover as he peered at the man.

  It was a modest kitchen with the bulk of the space held by an engraved dark wood table lined with cushioned seats. On top of the table lay two thick loaves of dark bread. Although Rook couldn’t see it directly, there was a strange pedestal on the other overside of the room, its shape akin to an iron birdbath on top of which simmered the stew, heated without any apparent source of flame. The man beckoned him forward.

  Rook was at a loss. He hadn’t imagined he would survive, nor that he would find himself out of the frigid air. He was thankful for that. However, Rook had met a lot of seemingly kind people. The bastards who had killed him in his previous life wore smiles the first time they met. So, Rook stayed where he was. ‘Do I have something on my face?’ pondered the man as he met Rook’s scrutiny. The man rubbed his chin with a subtle vigor before he spoke, “Come over here; fire is nice, but you need some meat on your bones if you want to stay warm.” He hummed as he pulled the pot and ladle off the iron pedestal and set it in the center of the table between the two loaves. The man took a seat in front of the pot and ushered Rook to the one opposite him.

  Rook eyed the man and his cauldron warily. In fact, he just might have refused the offer if not for how gracefully the steam danced in the soft orange lighting and the way the unctuous smell of rendered fat seemed to roll over his nose and entice his stomach. So, Rook cursed the weakness of his flesh and shuffled over to the chair across from the man and pulled himself onto the tall seat. From his perspective, Rook couldn’t see over the pot; in fact, the hearty loaf in front of him seemed like a hill before the youth. The man, given his tall stature, was still in clear view. Rook was met with a smile from the man before it turned ruefully.

  ‘Oh, right.’ The man internally grimaced. ‘I hope I still have a bowl lying about. Help me out, Horn.’ The man rolled his hand out towards his cabinet, which shook gently before a glazed bowl freed itself from its depth, floating over to deposit itself in the man’s hand. If Rook had not been privy to the man’s inner thoughts, he would have been horrified at the possibility that the man was like him—that it was possible that the man knew what he was. However, the man made no sign that he was wise to anything but the youth’s small stature as he scooped a hearty portion of the stew into the bowl, leaning forward to place the bowl in front of Rook.

  The man sat back, seemingly satisfied with his recovery, before he took up and ripped a chunk from his loaf. The warm bread dove into the pot and returned with a large piece of tender beef atop its soaked form. The man wasted no time to bring the broth-soaked bread to his lips. The sight of the soft bread drunk on fatty broth almost made the boy drool. His short hand reaching out to his loaf to follow suit.

  Despite his weak grip, the crust of the loaf crackled gleefully under his press, and a small wisp of steam played in the air as he tore the surprisingly soft loaf open, the chocolate brown crumb delightfully warm to the touch. Without a spoon, Rook found no reason not to follow suit, soaking the piece into the glistening broth of his bowl. He paused for a moment, watching how the warm bread soaked up the stew like a sponge. He lifted the bread, its crumb sound but delectably heavy.

  Rook wasn’t aware of it, but he leaned forward as he took his first bite, not for the sake of the dinner table; no, the scent of aromatic and perfectly cooked beef rendered any thoughts of civility and airs mute; he simply couldn’t bear the thought of losing a single drop of this dark ambrosia.

  The first bite made his heart pause; the heavy yet vigorous taste of fatty beef, which broke down seamlessly, coating his tongue with its fat, satisfied an itch he had long suppressed. He savored each bite with as much pause as his hunger would allow; even then, he ate with gusto. He had wondered when the last time he had a full meal was, the last time he had even eaten beef stew. In his second life there was only synthetic beef, which never lost its spongy texture from when it was a bundle of stem cells. It must have been in his first life, when his mom would have placed a hot plate of stew and rice in front of him after football practice, before he was abducted into a black site and sustained only by IV.

  In that moment, when his beard held onto each drop, he was home. Far from the scalpels of researchers and the eyes of proctors like a specimen beneath a telescope. He was simply him. Not ‘Mackey,’ not ‘Rook,’ not even ‘Akira.’ He simply was. It was only then, as he grasped the last fistful of dark rye, that he realized what the man had known. As he saw the bread soak up salty brine, which fell from above.

  The tears fell into the bowl; soft plinks like the gentle strum of a harp filled the soft air between the two.

  He didn’t want to die again. More than he wanted to curse each bastard that had wronged and betrayed him, he wanted to live. He didn’t want to ball up on some abandoned street corner and freeze all alone. He didn’t want to die like some lab rat. He wasn’t a rat, he wasn’t! He wanted to live peacefully, not in a mire of endless tests and cold scalpels. He wanted to have a fifteenth birthday and blow out candles!

  And so he wept. He lost himself in the grief of what he yearned for and how he had never had it. He didn’t even notice as the man came around the table. He only noticed as his large hand came to rest on his shoulder. The boy bit back a sob and looked up at the man who held his eyes tenderly. He felt himself be pulled into a tight embrace, warm and alive. The man’s lips did not move, but his heart spoke to the boy.

  ‘It’ll be okay, I’m here.’

  And so the boy wept.

  …………………..

  Somewhere in his cries, the boy had fallen asleep. The cathartic release of tears had led him to a soft sleep, which he only awakened from a while later. When he awoke, fright took him for a moment before his eyes caught the warm light of the hearth and soft feeling of pelt wrapped around him. He calmed and shifted, finding his head atop a small pillow pointed towards the healthy fire in front of him. He stared at the flames for a long moment, his mind drawn back to Rook’s…no, his mother frozen on the street of Rivermout , never to wake.

  He wondered what would happen to him now. With his mother gone, he had nothing in this world. No family to his knowledge, and his mother had no friends since she walked out on the foreman. As the boy wandered in melancholy, he noticed a sound that had accompanied his thoughts: the scratch of metal against wood. He sat up to find that he had been laid by the side of the man as he fletched arrow shafts the size of most men’s forearms with a thick knife. A dusty pile of sawdust piled between him and the fire.

  The man paused his work and turned his eyes to the boy and offered a soft smile. “Go back to sleep; morning is still a ways off…” he hummed softly. The boy nodded but simply watched the fire dance. The man chuckled to himself, “What’s your name?”

  The boy considered the question. Before today, he would have internally considered himself “Akira” with snide confidence—but he couldn’t seem to place it anymore. He considered calling himself that. The man wouldn’t have known either way, but as he opened his mouth, he remembered how tightly she had held him in hopes of keeping him warm, even in the face of her own death.

  “...Rook,” he said finally with a somber nod.

  “A good name,” nodded the man. “Anatolius”

  The boy turned his eye from the flame to Anatolius, a pensive look in his gaze but too tired to question him.

  “Hmm…? Would you prefer I call you ‘boy’ for the rest of my life? That might become rather confusing…” Anatolius laughed.

  Rook’s eyes widened at the implication. “Then…?” he trailed, dreading the thought that he was mistaken. Anatolius nodded with a soft smile, placing a hand atop Rook’s white locks.

  “Unless you have another place to go.” Anatolius began with gravity, “My hearth is your hearth, and my clan is your clan.” He offered, his eyes serious but open. Rook turned his eyes to the hearth, his fervent, silent nodding splashing newfound tears on the red pelt in his lap.