The snow had done a good job of hiding the damage. Not even black, burnt-out structures remained, made heavy with ice and peeled away by the elements. You couldn’t see the bloodstains or the bones, or smell the smoke and the excrement. It looked like nothing had been there, ever, at all.

You’d never guess this blank, muddy field was, at once, a paradise; a home. A city, of sorts, messy in its settled state, where the lines of things blurred and melded, borders fuzzed by close habitation. A building listed to the side; a clothesline crossed a fence; chickens clucked and wandered between yards. Everyone bonded, knowledgeable in the ways of each other, knowing where this individual would be in the morning, where that one would be at night.

Now it was a well-hidden grave. The snow, once belly-deep, was just enough to cling to your hocks in a wet, luke-warm state, somewhere between fresh and melted. Beneath it, the earth was churned to mud. The wilderness wove itself back into place, early spring daffodils, crocuses, and hardy grasses already staking their claim. There was no one to tamp down the paths. No one to cultivate, grow, or harvest.

In a corner, the ground sloped up, gently, then swept down, a minor hill not tall enough to cast a shadow. White limbs, once able to blend with the snow-covered landscape, now caked in mud and stained brown, purple hooves coated in a fine film of muck, microorganisms in suspension, the kiss of spring. Valley dirt clung to the cloven shapes, hearts torn in half, squishing up between his two toes.

“I don’t see anything,” he said, voice heavy in the cold, dense air.

“Keep looking,” came the gruff order.

Vitrum turned his head to look; Indran stood stark against the mottled brown-and-white backdrop, a golden ray of pale sun, beautiful and warm.

Indran left him to give orders to the rest of the group. Months ago, after Farlin’s traitorous disappearance, the rest of them had begun dropping like flies: some went running. The rest died. The band had been Indran’s family; he held it close to his heart, like a babe. Losing one was a devastation, and after, he’d stopped trusting the others.

But not Vitrum. Never Vitrum. Loyal, pure, loving Vitrum, who descended the slope, hooves sucking in the muck, looking for stones, or abandoned treasures, or the bones of what had come before. He heard Indran shouting in the distance, loud enough to scare screaming blackbirds from the encroaching trees, bouncing the branches and dusting the ground in pollen.

Vitrum picked across the soft ground, peering for remnants in the wreckage, actively fighting against the urge to run to the sound of the shouts. He loved Indran, and he longed to forever be at his side; he felt blessed to simply look upon him. Even this small slope of rotting mud and melting snow was as a sharp, impenetrable barrier, even though all he had to do was trot to the other side.

Loving Indran was like playing a dangerous instrument; one had to know when to follow him, or follow his orders, which were, rarely, one and the same. Vitrum liked the unpredictability, even though, sometimes, his old scars twinged when Indran raised his voice, his horn, or his hooves.

Never mind that. He touched something hard. A bone? A stick. He snorted his displeasure, flicked it away.

He was in his second pass when Indran called off the search; there was nothing left to be found. The skulls of their victims impertinently swallowed by the earth, the pervasive powers of nature and her ability to work in the finest of ways.

Vitrum broke into a trot to rejoin the band, regretting the pace as something cracked beneath his feet, and he slid in the muck, catching himself before he went chest-first to the ground. His strained, splayed position brought him almost eye-level to the rubble: a jawbone, cracked in half, splintered and crushed from the pressure of his step.

“Vitrum!” Indran yelled, from the top of a rise. “Get a move on, idiot.”

“Coming!” He reset his stance, ignoring the tweaking of his shoulder; he made sure to kick extra mud over the broken bone in his departure.