Snowkiller: Science Fiction

The cry in the night, the sad sound that makes you think a woman or a child is weeping in the snow--that might be your fortune or it might be your death. There's a reason they say that the people who bond with a snowkiller are crazy, and that's it, right there. Sure, you bond with one, your future's assured. But you can only bond with one that's looking for a bond, or maybe--possibly--a young cub that has lost its parents. I don't advise that you try hunting a snowkiller parent in hopes of bonding with its cub. We make sure the stories of what happen to those people when they succeed are spread around the port and anywhere else that dumbass tourists with dreams of the bond go. We want to protect our snowkillers, after all. They are invaluable to us. And it's not like they kill anybody who knows better. Thing is, there may be some difference in the sound between their lure-prey and their lure-bond call, but we can't hear it. Me, I'm not convinced there is. I think sometimes they just like the taste of their prey enough to bond instead of eat. Or maybe it's how their prey responds to them and the nearness of death. That's another good explanation of why they're all crazy. And they tend to choose the fittest physically and mentally (that certain specific craziness aside). Darwin would have loved them. Biologists do call them evolution's claws. So when I heard the snowkiller cry outside in the middle of the blizzard, I stayed snug inside the ranger cabin, even if it did sound like a little girl screaming. There were no groups out, no missing travelers, no missing kids. Maybe you have to be a bit crazy to be a ranger, too, because if there had been, I would have gone out in that snowstorm even knowing that it was likely a snowkiller. But there weren't, and I didn't. You could have knocked me over with a 2-by-4 when the door to the ranger cabin swung open and I saw a little bit of a girl standing there, with the snow swirling around her. "Honey," I said, jumping to my feet and sweeping the blanket off the couch, "come in here!" Then the huge shadow moved behind her.


Inspiration: The baby fussing a bit in his crib.
Story Potential: High, because the story appeared to want to write itself.
Notes: This doesn't have any standout unique bits, but it evidently has enough pull to keep me writing significantly past my usual 2-minute cutoff.