It was gauze that was keeping her to the tree. Her feet were bound up neatly in gauze that was then wrapped just as neatly around the branch. And there she hung, upside down, fast asleep. It had just stopped snowing and it was quite frigid out. The pale birch she was lashed to was flanked with tidy heaps of flakes. Her skin was smooth, and it glowed with the same soft light as the snow around her.

She was completely stripped, and yet there wasn’t a trace of a goose bump anywhere on her. She was fast asleep. I was not baffled so much as I was oddly soothed by watching her slumber. Her face reminded me of my daughter’s. Her lips pursed slightly the same way in sleep. Her hair was pale yellow and draped over her antlers like an elk. Large and elegant, like hardened autumn branches poised to collect nothing in particular. Every time she moved, even slightly, they raked the snow. There were messy indents, and clusters of flakes around the tips.

Every part of her looked soft and pretty. I could have looked at her body forever. It wasn’t erotic, though. It was soothing in the way that watching tanks full of fish is soothing. Her belly had a slight curve up from between her legs, and there was a soft indent just above her navel. Her arms were folded over her breasts loosely, in a way I couldn’t understand; although she was upside down, she was completely relaxed.

I heard foot steps far away, behind the dangling girl. I circled her to search in the direction of the sounds and noticed a scab shaped like a hand print in the middle of her back. Parts of it were picked away, and it was dry and painful looking. It was the only part of her body that appeared to be affected by the cold. The foot steps drew closer. Still she slept.

I crept toward the sound in measured steps. I still couldn’t see anyone. The field of birches stretched out far beyond what I could see. The snow was about a foot and a half deep. The steps sounded like they were almost next to me, but I couldn’t see footprints anywhere. Once the sound of steps had passed, I turned to find the dangling girl gone.

There was no trace of her. Not even the indents in the snow from her softly moving antlers.

Now, I was completely alone among all of these trees.

I searched all over. I ran to find civilization. Nothing. Just trees for miles and miles and miles. Pale birches hardly distinguishable from the snow. I began to panic a bit, and I fell back into the snow to catch my breath and search the flickering stars above. I knew nothing about stars. I didn’t know what to look for, what would take me home. I have no idea why I had even tried.

I sunk into the snow and felt the dirt under my back. I looked up at the sky and the tops of trees through a frame of raised snow and watched my breath dissipate. In an effort to calm down, I closed my eyes. The cold was seeping into my shoes, numbing my toes slowly and sharply.

After a few moments, I smelled something. Something like chocolate and soap. It was weird. It was comforting in some way. Like the smells of a house full of people, each carrying out different tasks. I was so homesick.

Opening my eyes, I saw feathers falling from the sky. Big tawny feathers speckled with shades of grey and brown. They reeked of chocolate and soap. The smell was everywhere, so much stronger now. It was cloying, almost sickening. I got up to try to find a place that was free of feathers, and there she was.

There was the dangling girl. She sat nestled in the snow, just as bare as before. She rested against a tree, sobbing quietly into her folded arms. I crawled over to her and asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t respond. She carried on, hugging her knees and whimpering.

I touched her hair. Her head shot up immediately. Her face was flushed with pink splotches spoiling her soft pale skin. The tears running cleanly down her cheeks were like milk. She loosened a bit and stretched her legs and looked me straight in the eyes. I noticed that she had another handprint, cleanly etched and caked in blood between her breasts. One of her antlers was broken. There was caked blood in her pale hair. Blood and milk ran down her chest and her belly. She was so beautiful. I couldn’t bear it. It felt like I was going to overflow, like I would die if I didn’t look at her. It hurt. It hurt so much to see blood on her body.

She tried to speak. Cracked, unarticulated sounds fell from between her lips. She couldn’t say a word. She broke down into tears again. I brushed her hair aside, and noticed more blood on my hand. Her ear was sliced from the inner cartilage all the way down to the lobe. It looked like it had happened hours ago, although it was only moments ago that she hung from the tree, perfectly unharmed in slumber. The blood was caked and dry, cracking and smeared where I had grazed her ear. She winced a bit, but she didn’t pull away.

I took her hand, and she immediately stopped crying. Shyly, she took her other hand and began to draw shapes on the back of my hand. The tip of her finger felt so soft, like a bundle of feathers tied together. I wiped the milk off of her face, and my hands smelled like chocolate and soap. The milk mixed with the blood on my hands, and I tried to clean them off in the snow. She pulled them out of the snow and held them in front of me.

I looked straight into her eyes. They were bright yellow with flecks of brown. She stared right back at me; she searched my face for a good long time.

And then she kissed me.

I woke up feeling just the prettiest things inside of me.