Wintry winds ripped the remaining leaves from the trees and blew through the village. All the gardens died and with them all the flowers. The grass turned grey but the forest floor was blanketed by browns and reds and yellows from the fallen leaves.

  It was cold that year. Maybe the coldest I would know while living with the clan. It’s nothing compared to winters even just as far north as Lapsa or Yuli, but it was bitterly cold to us. I came to see real winters much later. When I first saw snow. But back then, I thought there’d never be a colder time in my short babylife. We were weighed down by all the furs we wore. Even playing became confined by how overburdened we were just trying to stay warm outside.

  But the clan is a quiet place in winter. The nights become long and the days were so cold. Life became still. We huddled together in our home. Mother and LoPa told us stories to pass the time. Stories of my grandmother. Stories of heroes from faraway places. Heroes of our own clan.

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  We liked stories of battle most, which delighted my mother but bothered my fathers. They were gentle people, more inclined to tell stories of the many great teachers and poets who once lived beneath MotherTree’s boughs.

  My mother still ventured out to exercise and practice Mirtis Kardas and we watched her, my brothers and I. My brothers continued to imitate her movements but I only watched. Soaking in her beautiful movements. The violence she held like I held ladybugs or butterflies. Every breath she took was visible and made her look more like a god of war. She slashed and twisted her body over a blanket of leaves, stirring them back into the air with the wind. They rattled and cracked together and my mother’s blade sliced through the air and her breathing smoke beneath an always grey sky—it’s an image burned into me.

  But that was winter. Sleep and stories and brief adventures in the outside. I’ll tell you about three moments that stuck out to me.