Snow Mountain

- Prologue -

Above the mountains the clouds hang low and heavy, ready to drop snow.

Beneath them a single figure walks, picking her way up the rocky mountain road. She wears no shoes, making her going slow. In fact she wears nothing at all, save a slash of red on her forehead, and swirls of blue across her skin.

The woman reaches a smoother section of road and quickens her steps. Before night she must find shelter, both from the coming snow and from the men who hunt her. Like a bird from a cage, she does not look back.

But a bird could fly, and the woman cannot. And soon she cannot walk. Her shaky legs give out and she falls to the cold ground once, twice, both times forcing herself back to her feet. Finally she falls a third time and her left wrist twists to the side as she tries to catch herself. She cries out and falls to the ground, and does not rise again.

Using her uninjured arm the woman drags herself from the road into the rough scrub grass. Snow is falling now, sticking to grass and rock alike. Her skin chills with each tiny, pristine flake that lands on it. Each flake melts slower than the last.

She knows that stopping is death. In the elements, unclothed as she is, she will not survive. But she does not care any longer.

She pulls the grass around herself, shielding her bare legs, with their blue swirls, and her arms, and her head, with its knotted, stinking mass of once brilliant waves. She hides herself not from the snow or the cold, for she knows there is no escaping them, but from the men who pursue her.

As night deepens and the snow falls harder, she prays that she dies before they catch her. She prays to die free.