I was cold and wet and all alone, without even the shelter of a tree to protect me from the pouring rain. Perhaps I could have found shelter in the deeper forest, but I lacked the will. I had been abandoned, nearly drowned by those who had decided they didn’t want me anymore. I had made it out of the sack, but where could I go from there?

And then she came, one of the greater ones. I knew of her kind, and what her kind did with my kind. And she offered me chances to leave, but I did not take them. I no longer had the will to move—and so I let her put me into her sack, a warm and dry one this time instead of the damp and flooding one.

I left the darkness of the sack for a different darkness—a warm, wet, raspy darkness. A hint of light seen between jagged teeth, and then a shove downward, and then warmth all around me.

I stopped shivering. Finally, warm at last.