“Butterflies—so many butterflies!”

Delighted, shrieking laughter pealed from Kirastasia’s open mouth as she sprinted at breakneck speed through the gods only knew where. The fishnet punkette had been UTTERLY unaware of her surroundings for a little over a week now, but that’s what happens when one experiments with substances best left growing on a log. She knew the dangers of poisonous plants, she knew better, she really did, but things had’t been going well for sweet little Kirastasia lately and she thought to herself: what could it hurt? What possibly could be any worse than wandering hopelessly, terrifyingly lost through the endless woods, abandoned completely and without a friend? How would swallowing a silly mushroom bring her any more misery than that which she felt upon waking up alone? Surely a reason existed for why Kira had dashed off by herself in the first place . . . perhaps she’d been searching for Kahlan, or one of her firebirds, or her father . . . but then at some point life had grown into a massive hideous monster which the damsel possessed no tools to handle. So she’d eaten those mushrooms, and maybe a few more—and some other random pharmacological flora that had no business melting in her digestive track—and now she soared higher than a bird.

“You better fly away, butterflies,” the ivory princess growled brightly, her jaws snapping at thin air, “or you’ll be DEAD.” Dizziness wormed into her vision and still Kirastasia spun, twirled, twisted. Snow exploded around in glittering fountains, kicked up from her wild paws. There were no butterflies this time of year—much less fairies or four-winged birds or the other pretty hallucinations she’d experienced—yet the brindled brutale acted as though what she saw was real. Tangible. A small corner of her fractured mind reasoned that of course everything she’d been experiencing was but a mere illusion . . . ha! That didn’t make chasing the fake butterflies any less fun. “One wing, two wing, red wing, blue . . . flutter those wings or I’ll EAT you!”

It could have easily been an hour, but honestly it was probably more like fifteen minutes into her gamboling that Kirastasia crossed paths with another wolf. She pivoted in place, dancing like an acrobat—when all of a sudden she all but tripped over a petite form tucked into the snow. Laughing, screaming, the arctic queen fell head over heels onto her rump, facing the one she’d collided with. At first, it took her luminous amber portals to distinguish the pallid form just inches from where she sat. The other lass was painted the purest of whites, splashed with ebony. “Oh, but aren’t YOU a gorgeous sight?” Kira swooned, falling onto her side, a lovestruck expression warming her stunning visage.