My trouble with sleep persisted through winter. Despite the coldness, I still ventured out into the night. When the sky was grey, I remained within sight of my home. It was grey often.

  But on the first night the sky was open and full of stars and moons, I wandered off to the forest to play amongst the trees I wanted to know. With the moons glowing and the stars twinkling, it was easy to make my way to the forest. Every stone, ever stick was visible in the night. I hummed a tuneless melody. It made me feel full. Big. Like I could occupy more space than my body. I hummed hoping to draw out the murmured song of the land, of the forest.

  “Who’s there?” A man’s voice, harsh and whispered. I stopped, rooted to where I stood, my heart racing. Then the man was walking towards me. “Who is that?” His voice sounded strained, as if someone gripped his neck.

  Then I saw his bright white eyes and the skeletal face formed round it. Lapas.

  He saw me too. “Wolfgirl.” His voice wasn’t unkind. It was surprised, mostly. And the words seemed to slip from his lips. “What are you doing out here?”

  The trees loomed behind him. I wanted to run to them, to lose him in the forest. But I couldn’t. My knees were locked tight and I shivered, making it harder to breathe.

  He nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, “I couldn’t sleep either. Come, sit with me.” He turned slightly away from me, angling his body towards the forest. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My head buzzed and no thoughts flowed. I was simply there, in the dark, with Lapas.

  He sighed, “Fine then.” Sitting down, he stared at me. “I remember being your age. I would’ve never gone into the night alone. All I wanted was to lie with my fathers. You must be brave, like your mother.” He pulled his furs tighter round him and I saw him shivering. “Maybe we should start a fire?”

  “I saw you crying.” The words burst from me. I shouted them, then clapped my hands over my mouth.

  His mouth opened, then closed, and he nodded. “I get lonely sometimes.”

  We stayed there like that for I don’t know how long. Him sitting, head bowed onto his chest, staring at the ground or maybe his eyes were closed and he just listened. Trying to hear the song of the forest. Trying to hear anything that wasn’t his own lonely breathing.

  It hurt to watch him but it was a long time till I could move. Finally, I did. I turned round and walked home. It was warm inside. When I lay down, my body was stiff and my cheeks were so cold. So very cold.

  As winter continued, I thought about Lapas out there alone. I thought about what could make a person so sad.

  It became harder to sleep at night. I imagined Lapas out there waiting for me, alone. Crying. I ventured out every clear night that winter. Sometimes there were many nights that went by where I stayed home, curled up with my mother and fathers. But on clear nights, I walked to the forest, and if Lapas wasn’t there, I walked to his home. If he wasn’t there, I sat on Upe’s home and watched his door or pressed my face against the hill that was his home, trying to hear him inside. Hear him crying.

  The next time I saw him he had made a small fire. It made him visible from far away. I crept up close, watching him. He stared into the flames and wiped tears from his cheeks. He sniffled but not from the cold.

  I sat down across the fire from him. Warm against the wintry blackness. He didn’t look at me when I sat down, so I stared into the flames. Trying to see what he saw.

  It crackled, the fire. It burst and snapped. The flames danced chaotically but then fell into a rhythm. A rhythm I knew LoPa could play a tune to. It was mesmerizing. The flames sucked me in and I became lost to myself. I existed within the flames as a thing of fire and movement.

  Then he coughed, and I fell back into myself. I blinked to focus my eyes on him but he was still staring into the fire. I watched the stars open into the ocean of endless sky and stars.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  I don’t know how long it took, but the fire eventually burnt very low and Lapas coughed again. He was crying, silently, and his voice was strained with the tears, “I remember your mother. We were kids together. A long time ago. So long ago. She was beautiful. She still is. She,” he raised his eyes and met mine, “she terrifies me.”

  My nose was numb from cold but I sniffed anyway. The lines of his face became severe in the firelight. Somehow even more skeletal. This man. This tiny lonely man was afraid of my mother, and why shouldn’t he be? My mother was a great warrior and a woman, which gave her status over him, even out here at the forest’s edge.

  He shivered, and I wondered who made his furs. Living alone out here at the edge of the clan, was he responsible for everything like we were? Did he farm, hunt, throw his own pottery, and make his own clothes? Was he forced to be HoPa, LoPa, and mother for himself?

  “Your mother shunned us and now they shun her. It’s funny, in a way.” He didn’t laugh.

  “Why do you cry?” My voice surprised me. It came like a whispered bark.

  His white eyes didn’t blink. His face lit from below by the last flickering flames of the fire. His skin stretched tight over his skull. Behind him the darkness seemed heavy. Like the skin of some great beast. It fell onto his shoulders and then tumbled over them like fingers, except where the firelight created a barrier. His knobby shoulders shaking back and forth. “You’re only a child.”

  He stood and limped away stiffly, as if his legs had fallen asleep.

  The next time I saw Lapas was near the end of winter. It was a clear night, but the wind ripped past me, sucking away my thoughts, blurring my sight. He was standing naked at the barrier of the forest and the village, wailing. From far away, it was a silent cry. The wind stealing his screams. I watched him for a long time and he did nothing else. Standing at the edge of the village, the skeletal trees right in front of him. Arms back, leaning forward, face raised slightly, his eyes were closed and his mouth open wide enough to swallow an apple. Tears streamed down his face, whether from sorrow or the wind, I couldn’t know. He only stopped screaming to breathe heavily, his chest expanding and contracting rapidly.

  I could count every bone of his ribs. His elbows, knees, and shoulders were like knots of skin and bone, ghastly in the halflight of three moons.

  I don’t know how long it took, but he finally collapsed backwards, twisting away from the forest. On his hands and knees, forehead on the ground, he was beating it with his right hand balled into a fist.

  I came to him then. I put a hand on his heaving shoulder and he recoiled. I didn’t move away, though. Leaning in, I put weight on his ribs and whispered, “It’s all right. I’m here.”

  I don’t know if he heard me. I could barely hear me. But he stopped beating the ground.

  I crouched beside him and lifted his face to mine. His skin was so cold and clammy, but he didn’t shiver. He was burning from the inside. I could tell. His eyes were red and snot ran down his nose into his mouth. Lips so chapped they were cracking. His eyes bored into me, searching for something neither of us could’ve named. It wasn’t fear or anger in him though. I don’t even know if it was sorrow.

  I scooted closer and put my forehead to his, closing my eyes. I breathed slow. Long inhales and long exhales. In and out. In and out. His breath began to follow mine. He breathed with me.

  Then his arms were round me, pulling me into him. Tears ran down his cheeks still, but he no longer sobbed. He breathed in time with me and I held onto him. Fiercely. To keep him from falling apart. To keep him whole.

  His voice was a shattered whisper brushing against my neck, “Thank you.”

  I squeezed him in return, tears falling from my own eyes.

  He let go of me but I clung to him. Then his bony fingers were on my shoulders and he pushed me back so we could look at one another.

  I’ve never seen such sad eyes. Before or since. They haunt me sometimes, even still. He said it again, “Thank you.”

  Then he ran back towards the village. Back home, I thought.

  I can’t explain what happened between us that winter. It was obvious to me, young as I was, that he was heartbroken. He was the saddest man in the world and he didn’t know how to handle life. Life as he was forced to live it. The years of isolation, of repressed love. Of all the love we refused to share with him. All the love he was never allowed to experience.

  It crippled him. Then it broke him.

  I thought he was going home that night. I thought I helped him. And maybe I did. Maybe I gave him the strength he needed. Maybe I gave him the love he had always needed, always wanted, but never found.

  He wanted to leave the clan. I firmly believe that. But he was too afraid to push past the trees that had framed his world. That had become his prison, holding him in with all these people who shunned him. Afraid to leave all he knew behind, even though all he knew was pain and sorrow and loneliness.

  I showed him that love could be found here. That he could be loved. That he deserved love.

  I don’t know.

  I think it’s what he needed most in life.

  And it gave him the strength to die.

  He was found in the morning at the base of MotherTree.