Book One – Chapter 18

The borman shifted where he stood, weight rolling uneasily from one broad foot to the other. His thick fingers curled and uncurled, claws rasping faintly. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. It was lower now, each word pressed out slowly, as though he was forcing calm into the cracks of rising tension. “I take off jacket?”

Bubs did not look up. “No.” His tone stayed flat, edged with that same brisk authority he threw at everyone else. “Upper body’s stable. Coat’s dry. Don’t force a change of temperature after exposure. We have the adjustment room for a reason, but a few minutes don’t undo weeks of hypothermia. Weeks of cold.” His thin hands never stopped working as he spoke. “The shock kills faster than the frost. What you did with the towels was good. Now she warms in her own shell, slow and layered. Let the body remember warmth before you strip it.”

Yu’s feathers prickled. He saw the logic in that. Harrow had warned him about the same thing when they had first arrived, cautioning him not to tear off his cloak and coverings too quickly after coming in from the blizzard. Though it was different for Yu, with his feathers. On the mountain, they offered a barrier against wind and rain, as well as extra insulation. In the settlement deserts, they stored moisture and gave protection against sunburn and dust.

The tairan, however, had nothing. Just like humans, they walked around in bare skin, naked except for whatever layers they stitched around themselves. Some grew faint traces of hair as they aged, but to call that fur would be absurd, nothing short of ridiculous, really. You would think that the skin, then, should be really tough, to make up for all these shortcomings, but no. If anything, it was rather thin and soft. They utterly relied on clothing, for everything.