So the girl is after the wolves in one of the blue winters… why? There has to be something pretty severe driving her. Hmmm… probably wants something from them, but not something she could just wait until the magic has reversed to take. So there has to be a push to get it now rather than later. So what’s she after? Might as well be a person, but why would a wolf want a person?

Ahh, there we go. It’s not that the wolf took the person it’s that the other humans gave them the person. Which means either a fair maiden or a kid, since we seem to be in the sacrifice vein here. But it’s not a gift to appease the wolves, because, hullo, what on earth would they want with a scrawny human? Plenty of better things to be eating since it’s a warm winter.

So there must be a reason the other humans don’t want the ‘donation’ to live with them. Superstition would play in pretty heavily since there’s no obvious reason for why the sun makes the wolves more powerful. So let’s go with the idea that kids born in a blue winter are cursed, or some such. Or at least ‘unlucky’. So they get tossed out into the woods to die and the wolves pick them up.

But what would the wolves want with the kids? They aren’t magical companion wolves, or talking wolves, or anysuch critter as would be interested in holding a conversation with human folks. So suppose they could just feel sorry for the kids, and work out the reasons later. Which does mean that there are communities of humans living with the wolves (since they can’t go home again) or that the kids all die before they get very old.

Assuming the less depressing thought of dead kids, lets go with ‘most of them die, some of them hang around the wolves for protection’. But the wolves could care less that they are there, so it’s sort of like scavengers following predators around mooching off their kills. Hmm, well actually it’s exactly like that. Figures. 😛

So she’s gone to get a kid back, but why? I mean, the kid’s cursed (in theory) so why would she want it back? And she can’t bring it home again or it’s just ‘rinse and repeat’ and she’ll be back out in the woods. So it’s not her kid, otherwise she really wouldn’t be in much shape to go chasing after it. Which means it has to be a kid that’s really important to her…. hmm.

Ah, okay, it’s her sister’s kid and her sister died in childbirth, thus making this kid an uber-special snowflake in need of rescuing.

Only she can’t rescue him, exactly, because she has no place to take him to. And I’d sort of think that she might have realized that before setting out, so what was her plan? To go live on her own? Or to sneak into another hunting community with the kid and pretend he’d been born during the day? Or maybe she’s just in a bit of a panic and really didn’t think everything through. Which would be quite understandable in the situation.

So she’s off to rescue the kid and ends up stumbling into the wolves by accident. They basically ignore her, as she is neither threat nor food, and she tracks the kid down to the nomad band that is following the wolves. There is some argument over who has claim to the kid, since blue children are traditionally adopted into the band by default.

In they end they agree she can keep the kid, but they point out she really has no place to go. So she should stay with them. … and here I’m sort of stuck because that probably is the best solution, and the story is more or less dead at that point.

And the wolves are window dressing of a sort, so need to rework that a little too. Hmmm… *pokes with stick*

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy