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Take Aster in the stall catty-corner. Her master's stricken lame and will never ride her again. She's told me how she longs to see the world."
Saure hugged the old gray horse again with tears welling in her eyes. "You're family. You're the last family I have left."
"All families part. I'll see thee one day in the clearing at the end of the forest path, I'll warrant. And I'll greet thee with thy parents then."
Saure kissed Nag's nose, stroked her mane one last time and bid farewell. She harnessed Aster and a downtrodden Juniper to her well-packed cart, and headed out toward the mountains of the north. This had not been an easy decision to make, as she stood at the crossroads where she had watched the fireweavers perform what seemed like a century ago. She smoothed a hand down the sleeve of her own fireweaver's jerkin and faced the four directions, chanting a spell of decisiveness. West, the way she had come, from the great rolling plains and piny forests. South, to the great dark and mysterious sea. East to the impenetrable forests. North...

"I must be mad." she thought aloud. North was the direction which seemed to call to her. "Through the mountain range? In the dead of winter? Madness."
"The spell doesn't lie." Fred said softly, pressing his great head under her hand. "Perhaps there are answers there to questions you ask yourself late at night. Perhaps there is a destiny you have yet to understand. Any road, you are a fireblood by birth... and snow should prove no enemy."
"Flames can be stifled and snuffed out, Fred..."
"Not yours, Sweetling." he kissed her hand tenderly and wished it were her lips.
Saure shook her head to herself, sighing. She threw her hands up and made a silly, wavering, high sound in her throat.
"We're mad! Let it be so, off to the north in the corpse of winter!"

And North they went.

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Chapter XVI

Aster was a tawny yellow-colored horse with a white mane and a braided tail; a pretty match to Juniper's mahogany coat and shiny black tail and mane. The horses were both thankfully of cold-blood stock. This is horseman speak for large, shaggy horses like the Clydesdales of this world. They fared very well in the bitter cold and over frozen ground. They were both freshly shorn and chomping at their bits, not much for talk in the driving wind.
Saure had just about every inch of her body covered in -at the very least- six layers of clothes, save a small hole for her eyes and nose. She shivered and scooted closer to Fred, who was perched beside her on the wide bench.
Daylight was only barely breaking over the trees to their left, and the sun was an inconstant blur in an angry overcast sky. There was graciously no snow as of yet, but the wind had claws that pried at hinges and the space between threads in Saure's clothes. It whipped the canvas on the back of her brush wagon and whined through the boards and crazy-combed the horses' manes.
She could barely smell smoke on the unquiet wind and felt a dampness in it she didn't like. She wished for a moment she could be by the fire till the weather died down, and almost lost her nerve. Then she looked to Fred, and found her courage in his beauteous feline eyes.

"You're looking for something, too, aren't you?"
His eyes wavered for a moment, as if with tears, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
"I hope I can help you find it."
Fred looked away as the tears spilled forth, darkening his golden cheeks. Saure had not seen this, for she had looked back to the road.
This was the defining moment for Fred, the moment the last stone dropped on the scale of his heart, and it tipped. The moment he knew in his heart he could die happily for her.

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High up in those inhospitable northern mountains, there was a deep, deep cave. This cave had for many years been the habitat of a strange and bitter creature that may have once