Fresh Is Best  

The forest was still.

Snow clung to the limbs of the pine trees, heavy and silent, and the sky above had shifted into a deep, steel-gray, as twilight folded over the world like a wool blanket.

Seraphina stood slowly, her bare fingers twitching once before she wiped the blood on her leggings. The bear lay dead at her feet, steam rising faintly from its open mouth, even as the body was already cooling fast in the cold.

She tilted her head.

Then, without ceremony, she crouched again, gripped it by the foreleg and haunch, and heaved the carcass up over her shoulder. Her spine didn't strain. Her knees didn't buckle. The thing inside her purred with satisfaction, pleased to be carrying proof of its dominance home.

By the time she stepped out of the woods, her breath had slowed and her skin had gone cool again. No flush. No tremble. Just the soft thud of the bear's limbs with each step she took.