Crying did nothing but fog her face and waste heat, so Sam clamped down on it. The sound dried up to a hiccup and then to breath—short, white puffs that drifted above the rim of the little impact bowl she'd made in the drift. Sky and crater. That was her whole world.
She tilted her head as far as baby muscles allowed. Snow-curled walls. A lip of wind-chiseled crust. Beyond that: the pale blue slab of January and the stiff tops of pine and spruce. No path. No footprints. No people.
Okay. Think.
She knew where she was, more or less. On the way down—on the way back—she'd seen the patchwork: low hills, frozen bog, the zigzag of old bike trails. As a kid she'd run this forest in summer when the world had noise: dog leashes clicking, berry buckets knocking knees, the soft-whirr of studded tires on pine needles. Some days the army boys from Upinniemi ghosted through in green lines, all boots and breathing. Winter wasn't that. Winter sealed the jar. Out here, especially here, nobody had a reason to come. A road lay a kilometer off with real traffic, but a kilometer for a newborn might as well be the moon.
"I am so—" The thought arrived crisp and adult and then slid out of her mouth as a wet vowel. "Guh."
So she was stuck. But stuck wasn't surrender. Quitting wasn't in her, even when life had sworn at her and shoved her off the board. She flexed what she had: arms like soft sticks in a pink rabbit suit, legs that kicked but didn't aim. She wriggled, not so much rolling as polishing the hole she'd made. Baby snow angels, she thought, and would've laughed if laughing didn't steal breath.
Under her back the snow had melted to a damp, mossy cushion. Beneath that: the shallow ribs of the hill—cold stone with a gritty bite, and a root like a knot pressing into one shoulder blade. Nothing she could use. No branch within reach, no bag, no phone, no way to climb.
"Damn there's nothing," she told herself in her head, because in the outside world she spoke fish. "Guh—ebuh—hh."
Her second heartbeat—white and quiet—throbbed in her chest like a small engine at idle. It was calm, almost bored, as if to say: Breathe first. Decide second. She did, letting the breaths settle into a pattern that didn't hurt.
A dry scrape sounded at the crater rim.
Something black and clever hopped into view. Then another. A pair of crows, glossy as wet ink, cocked their heads and peered down at her like two old ladies at a shop window. The larger one—broad shoulders, a nick in its beak—let out a soft question, a curious "rak?" The other answered with a click-and-chatter, as if narrating: What's that. Who is she. Why is she in a hole.
Sam lifted her mitten-paws and tried to sign the impossible: Help. Road. People. Bring. She pushed a hopeful noise through tiny lungs. "Hee—puh—"
The crows edged closer to the lip, trilling to each other. The nick-beak cocked sideways, eyeing her like a puzzle piece with a missing box. Then, very deliberately, it began to shovel snow at her with its beak. Small flicks, neat as a gardener. A tuft landed on her cheek. Another kissed her nose.
"Stop—!" she meant to say, but the word fell apart, and a clump slid into her open mouth. Cold spiked the back of her throat. She coughed and swallowed, and the ice turned instantly to water. It wasn't food, not even close, but it was something. Her new stomach, a hollow drum, noticed. The emptiness felt too clean, like a phone with the memory wiped: no milk-reserves, no sleepy fullness. Factory settings. She angled her mouth and let another tiny pinch drop in, letting it melt. It helped. A little.
"Okay," she told the birds as if they spoke contracts. "Hydration. Good. Now maybe fetch a rescuer?"
The smaller crow stopped flinging snow and stared at her, silent. The bigger one paused too, head tilted, as if they'd both discovered a new kind of animal.
Sam tried again: "Go. People. Bring." She waggled an arm. It came off as a floppy wave.
They muttered between themselves, a duet of burrs and clicks. The bigger crow ruffled, shook out its feathers against the wind, and gave her one more ceremonial face-flick of snow for luck. Then it stood tall and watched.
The smaller one—bold, shiny-eyed—made a decision.
It hopped down into the crater.
Sam froze. She hadn't truly understood how big they were up close. From above, crows were punctuation; here they were the size of problems. The newcomer landed beside her hip, light and springy, claws pricking through the suit's fleece but not cruel. It craned to peer at her face, so near she could see the gray braid of skin at the corner of its eye and her own tiny reflection in the black bead of it.
"Hi," she whispered, which turned into a half-bubble of spit.
The crow regarded her, then glanced up to its partner. The partner went still.
Carefully, the bold one stepped across the little pool of melted snow to the far side of Sam's belly. It paused, scanned the lip of the crater, and hopped to the edge nearest a pebble the size of—she almost laughed—a baby fist. It pinched the stone in its beak, hauled it up with a grunt of effort, and returned in two wing-assisted bounds.
It looked at her one more time. Then, with the same solemnity as a child placing a leaf on a stream, the crow set the stone on Sam's tummy.
Sam blinked. "Uh… thanks?" she meant to say; what came out was a bubble and a squeak. In her head, though: Thank you, mister or miss crow. For the… rock.
She lifted one mitten-paw and gave the bird a gentle tap between the eyes. The crow only blinked, unbothered, as if gifts and pats from snow-hole babies were a Tuesday.
Something about them felt off in the best way—no skittish wing-snap, no mean jab. Just… help. The pair watched her like smart neighbors.
She curled her hands around the pebble. It wasn't much, but it was the first thing that felt like hers in this life. First tool. First gift. That landed with a weird, bright weight.
Wow, she thought—and then a pulse answered her. Not the red thud of meat-heart, but the soft white one nested behind it. The second heartbeat stirred, and warmth climbed up her ribs like a lamp turning up.
Okay, breathe. Listen.
She closed her eyes and let the hush in. The white core in her chest lit, and with each beat she felt it sketching itself: a small sun with threads running everywhere. Not veins for blood—veins for light. Hundreds, feather-fine and warm, fanning through her lungs, her belly, her arms. With every pulse they carried a little flood, like tide up a beach.
The stone's cool weight cupped in her mittens tugged at that tide.
It wants to connect, she realized—no words for how she knew, only the certainty of a hand finding a glove.
She didn't have incantations or a manual. She had intent. She thought yes.
Light spilled from the small sun, slid along the bright veins, pooled in her forearms, and gathered in her hands until her palms hummed. She pictured the stone: not as a lump on fleece but as a gray moon hovering in black. The white rose to meet it.
Beneath her closed lids she saw it: a slow coat of brilliance wrapping the pebble, circling, circling—blanket, cocoon, breath. In the real world the change bled through. Her rabbit mittens glowed faintly, like snow with a lantern behind it. The crows went very still, necks stretching, eyes like polished seeds.
The pebble began to alter. Gray turned milk-pale, then clearer, as if the light were dissolving the rock from the inside out and leaving the shape of itself behind. Edges softened into tiny planes. At the center, something bright condensed—a pinprick sun that pulsed in time with… her? She couldn't tell, only that the little ember flashed and waited, flashed and waited.
"Holy—" she started, and the white engine faltered.
Weakness rolled through her in a wave, draining her arms first, then everything else. The glow guttered. The pebble—no, the not-pebble—slipped from her soft grip, bumped her belly, and settled in the fold of the suit. Her hands went dark. Her second heartbeat dimmed to a low, tired thrum.
But the stone didn't go out.
It lay there changed: a white, crystal-like thing with a tiny pulsing core, the way summer looks at noon if you could hold it. Heat came off it—gentle, steady. Twenty-two degrees, her brain supplied absurdly. A room you can live in.
Steam laced up from the surrounding snow in the slightest threads. The nearest frost retreated. The crows leaned nearer, feathers loosened by the warmth.
Sam clutched the glowing stone with both mittens and pressed it against her chest. The heat seeped through fleece and bone—not burning, just being—and something inside her finally unwound with a rush of shock and relief.
She had no idea what she'd just done, why the crows were standing there like official witnesses, or what exactly that baby angel had wired into her—but this was… well, this was freaking awesome. She was a literal glowing magic baby, apparently capable of making radiant stones that doubled as pocket-sized heaters. Maybe she could tuck them under her clothes to stay warm through the winter—or even sell them someday. Not bad for someone who technically shouldn't exist.
Whatever the angel had done, it was definitely better than staying dead.
But now the bigger question loomed: how was she supposed to survive? She had one warm, glowing rock—great—but what next? What was she supposed to do with it? And if just making one of these drained her so badly, that meant she'd burned through some kind of internal energy—mana, basically, like in a game. Which also meant she'd need time to recharge before she could try it again.
Sam held the stone close, breathing slowly, trying to catch her strength again. Her eyelids fluttered as she sighed. "Come on, Sam. Think. What next? There's gotta be something I can do. Even as a newborn… what, ten minutes old? Come on, think."
She was mid-thought when something moved beside her. A flash of black feathers—then snatch! The crow grabbed the glowing stone straight from her mittened hand.
"Hey—what are you doing?!" she tried to shout, but it came out as an angry baby squeal.
The thief hopped once, then took off, wings slicing through the cold air. The second crow let out what sounded suspiciously like laughter and followed. Within seconds, both vanished beyond the rim of her snow crater.
Sam stared after them. "Damn it. Should've known. Stupid crows—always stealing shiny stuff." She clenched her tiny fists and shook one in mock fury. "Yeah, you better run!"
But pouting accomplished nothing. She let out another sigh and closed her eyes, trying not to think about her lost heater. And then—she felt it.
Something faint. A silken thread, thinner than a hair, tugging at her from inside her chest—no, from the light at her core—and stretching outward into the distance. It shimmered faintly in her mind's eye like a spiderweb of light.
Her eyes flew open. "Wait… am I connected to it?"
She focused again, closing her eyes, and suddenly she could see it—not with her normal sight, but through something else. In this inner view, the world turned soft and pale, the snow a hazy gray-white mist. Inside her, she could see the glowing core beating gently, light flowing through the web of veins in her tiny body. And beyond that—far away—one luminous thread leading off into the trees.
Following it, she could sense the stone, high up somewhere in the distance. A faint pulse, a soft warmth. The crows must've taken it to a nest… maybe on top of a tree.
"Well," she thought, "at least I know where it is."
She wasn't cold anymore, but the exhaustion was settling in deep. Hunger gnawed at her. Lying there helplessly as an infant felt strange, frustrating. She sighed again. "What now…"
Then, the sound of wings.
The crows were back.
Both of them landed beside her crater, hopping closer. This time, each had something clutched in its beak—plain, round stones. They dropped them on her belly like tributes.
Sam blinked at them. "What… why? You want me to make more? You just want shiny things, huh? That's it, right? You little thieves."
The birds tilted their heads, looking genuinely offended. One croaked sharply; the other added a soft rattle, almost like protest.
"Don't give me that innocent act," she grumbled.
They stayed where they were, feathers fluffed against the cold, waiting. Patient. Hopeful.
She groaned. "Fine. If it'll make you happy, I'll do it. Besides, good practice, right? It's not like I have anything better to do."
She grabbed one of the stones, focused on her inner light again, and began channeling it outward. The glow built slowly, spreading through her hands until the pebble shone. After a moment it brightened into white crystal, pulsing faintly—another light stone.
Sam slumped back, panting softly. "Ugh… that's exhausting." A little bead of sweat ran down her temple.
Without hesitation, one of the crows swooped down, snatched the new light stone, and flapped away.
"Seriously, guys?!" she called after it. "So what do I get for that?"
The only answer was a pair of amused caws fading into the forest. Still, through the faint silver thread, she could feel where they went—back to the same place, the same nest.
"Whatever," she muttered. "It's fine."
But somewhere deep inside, a small feeling of hope flickered. Maybe—just maybe—they were helping. Maybe shining stones meant something to them, or maybe they'd bring someone. Either way, it was better than doing nothing.
Before long, the pair returned again. No stones this time. Just expectant stares.
Sam rolled her eyes. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me. Fine, fine. One more."
She repeated the process, pushing more of her dwindling light into the next stone until it, too, glowed. Then, as before, the crows seized it and flew off.
She slumped again, drained. "You guys owe me big time."
Minutes passed. The wind hummed softly over the snow. She was about to drift off when the sound of wings returned one more time.
This time, only one crow came. It landed beside her, something small and brown in its beak—a tree cap, an acorn cap, like a little wooden cup. It placed it gently on her tummy beside her mitten.
Sam blinked. "Oh… well. Thanks, guys. So generous."
The crow cawed once, loud and sharp, then joined its partner and disappeared into the pale sky.
Sam smiled faintly, eyelids heavy. The glow of the remaining stone bathed her face. Her body ached, her energy nearly gone.
"Maybe I'll just… close my eyes for a bit," she whispered.
The world dimmed, the warmth lingered, and the newborn with a light-filled heart drifted into her first sleep.