Icy Paws

Light of Life

Waking up in a cold blanket of white, the first thing I ever saw was my mother's shiny, sparkling, almost translucent, blue eyes staring down at me. Looking around I saw five other small puffs of white, eyes still closed. I could not walk, I could not move, but I was cold. My mother noted this and leaned down to cover my siblings and I. Her fur was thinner than I would've expected, but her heartbeat reminded me that I was alive- no matter how cold it was.

You would've thought there was a crowd around us with all the commotion, but everyone was hiding in the den. It made me wonder why my mother wasn't allowed inside. I would hear laughter and curses, mocking tones laced with poison, my mother's name spit from their mouths like venom. What was the matter with them? Why would they ridicule my mother? My ears had barely adjusted to the whistling winds of what I would soon learn was winter, yet I could only hear the laughter and mockery from the den. I took my first few steps just to nuzzle up to my mother, and with all the harsh words and laughter and hate, my mother still looked at me, then my siblings, and smiled brightly.

As the even colder night fell, so did the snow. Some of my siblings had yet to move, while others just made hushed whimpering noises in the piles of snow we slept in. My mother tried everything in her power to keep us warm, but it was evident she was struggling. She fell asleep with tears trickling down her beautiful black-and-white marked face, as her blue eyes fell dull against the bitter night sky. Her cries filled my ears, and my siblings unmoving bodies filled me with dread. I fell asleep that night, resting on my mother's paw... trying to comfort her as the cold froze my own. The light of life was now dark and dim, as I was given the name "Icy Paws" by a far-off voice, an echoing voice... my mother's hushed speech through shaky, sleepy, starved breaths. To the sound of the cold, unforgiving winter- I fell asleep in the fresh, freezing snow.