It snowed here on the twentieth of July.
Freya went quiet that evening, the way queens do when they know long before you do, and by the time the house went still there were six of them. Six girls. Not a single boy among them. Six pale, impossible little things laid out against her like drifts.
We knew what the pairing could give us. Mink to mink can only ever make snow, and that much was decided the day we chose Avalanche for her. But six for six on girls is not something anyone plans. That one arrived as a gift.
Snow kittens are born almost white, which is the loveliest trick this breed plays on a breeder. Everything they will become is already written into them, sepia or mink or lynx point, held just beneath the surface and waiting on its own slow schedule. For now they are six unmarked pages, and we get to spend the coming weeks watching the ink rise.
Freya has hardly left them. All the fire she carries between litters, the swagger that runs straight back through Nova to the very beginning of this program, has folded itself down into something quieter and far more formidable. She is a magnificent mother. She keeps that box like it holds the whole world, and at the moment we would not argue with her.
Their eyes have only just begun to open. Names will come around weeks three and four, once there is something to name. Until then we have six warm girls, a summer that suddenly feels cooler, and the very best kind of waiting.
