All around Mikael the snow stretched out, rolling on what seemed like for ever until it reached a cluster of trees, black against the stark whiteness. He was a little cold, but not as cold as he should have been, covered in a thick warm winter fur. The elements were a distant concern of his, as much a part of him as the air in his lungs or the blood in his veins. He was the master of this icy world and he felt the certainty thrum up through his enormous paws. Divine blood ran in his veins, the son of a god and destined to be there at the very end of things. When he looked up at the moon overhead, full and bright, he knew if he wished he could swallow it whole.

Instead he turned, moving in the direction of the forest, sleek muscles moving under the rich fur. He panted and his breath rose in smoky clouds in the crisp air, every footfall spread across splayed paws like snowshoes. He didn’t sink so he didn’t struggle, moving across the glittering stilled landscape like a ghost.

The scent of life reached him through it all, standing out against the sharp chill of the land like a heartbeat in the dark. Life smelled hot, like burying your nose in the warmth of another. It was a heat in the cold land that could be seized in your fangs but soon dripped out, fading away like the breath from his jaws. But always he was compelled to pursue it, the desire to hunt strumming its fingertips across the very threads of his being.

He did not have a pack, though something in his very being said that he should have one, left always with a vast pack-shaped longing, the desire to have others alongside him, their breath rising in the air and their smiling maws turned to them as their leader. It was something that would never be, there was no one like him and this was the way it would always be.

He was close now, close to the beating heart and flesh and he could tell now that it smelled different from the hare or from the antlered beasts. It was strangely shaped, on two legs with a flattened face and long slender paws without claws. Close enough to see it, he was fascinated, it had strange blonde fur on its head and eyes like the colour of the daytime skies. It moved through the forest nimbly, but its strange clad feet sunk in the snow.

It saw him and paused, turning to face him, and he stopped, knowing that what he was looking at was no more a part of the living creatures of this world than he was, and there was something in the look of the creature, something familiar in spite of the difference in shape.

When it spoke, he understood the meaning though the language was one he himself could not produce with a long muzzle and sharp fangs.

It said “Good evening my son.” And the words, though crooned like a friendly whine, rang like a snarl of warning in Mikael’s head and in a bolt of realisation he knew who he was speaking to and was filled with hate. “Don’t you recognise me?” And those strange muzzle-less lips quirked up. “Perhaps I should take a better shape.” And as if a shadow had passed across the moon, the world turned dark for just a second. When it passed, a far worse creature stood before him. Where he was sleek and whole and furred, this rasping beast was misshapen and strange. Its ears were docked and clipped, with a skull shaped all wrong, staring eyes like those set in a rotten skull looking back at him, as cold and blue as they had been in the flattened face. It bled onto the snow, but nothing lingered, riddled with gruesome holes and gouges as though it had been felled too many times. It was like him in the way a malformed and discarded fawn was like its dam. For everything whole, healthy, youthful and vital about him, it was equal parts emaciated, rotten, ancient and twisted.

“You stare.” It rasped with a rattle of unnatural chains. “You stare and yet you are made of me.” And still he stared because the creature was not natural and should not have been alive. Everything in him wanted to tear it down, a brutal and primal desire. In the way he would not have hesitated to pull down a three legged buck, he wanted to tear down this creature to strengthen the world by its removal.

“I am not made of you.” He said, and the creature laughed in a bark.

“You have slipped every shackle.” It went on, ignoring his protests, looking him over. “You have slipped every shackle and there remains one more. This one is easy, this challenge is nothing and when you conquer it, all the world will be yours for ever.”

“I don’t trust you.” He said, and it was the kind of instinctual mistrust that did not require logic or thought.

The smile he received was a threatening gesture to their kind, all pulled back lips and exposed teeth. It pulled in two directions in its meaning. “I will place a paw in your jaws. If you feel I have tricked you, you can bite and I will free you.”

And to Mikael, this was enough. Boldly he extended his paw and the creature wavered between shapes, reaching out to fasten a single ribbon around a paw, fastening the other end to a heavy stone, and true to its word it extended a long paw which he held in his jaws. It tasted strange but familiar and he did not want to eat it.

“Now break it.” It whispered. “Break it and you will be free of me.”

He pulled. He pulled as hard as he could, and where the other shackles had shattered under his strength, all steel and craftsmanship, the ribbon held. He thrashed and he struggled, he howled and twisted and it held. He knew then that he was trapped.

The beast laughed.

And though he bit down, crunching the bone and sinew of the contorted left paw in his jaws, tearing the twisted limb free from its connected wrist it continued to laugh.

It laughed and laughed and laughed until, drenched in sweat and disoriented he woke up.