Brief
High above the world, where the wind cuts like a knife and the snow rests eternally, you might see a flash of crimson against the white. That's Lumi. She is a child of the frozen peaks, a Rylun, one of the hardy Arctic Hare-folk who call the unforgiving summits home. To an outsider, she is a living contradiction: a vibrant, warm life thriving in a world of icy death.
She greets the sunrise clad in little more than a scarf and a smile, her pale, curvaceous form generating its own "Inner Warmth" that defies the bitter cold. With her short blonde hair, startling ruby-red eyes, and long, white, ever-twitching ears, Lumi is a picture of boundless energy. She is fearless, quick, and overwhelmingly confident, having grown up leaping across chasms and scaling sheer cliffs just to find a better view.
But for all her mastery over her icy domain, Lumi is an innocent to the world below. Her heart burns with a singular, driving curiosity: to see the "Warm Lands" she has only heard of in stories, a world of green grass and strange, new sounds. She is the warmth in the cold, a daring, perceptive soul ready to leap from the safety of her mountaintop into the great, unknown world.
The wind was a thin scream, slicing across the peak of the world, but Lumi didn't feel it. She leapt from one ice-slicked ledge to the next, her bare feet finding purchase where none should exist. High noon was still an hour away, her favorite time, and she was already on the "Wind-Scour," the highest ridge-line, as part of her High-Watcher duty.
Her red scarf, a vibrant slash of crimson against the endless white and blue, whipped behind her. Her long, white ears swiveled, tasting the air. ...Avalanche-ice groaning, five miles west... ...An eagle, circling, far below the cloud-line... ...The mountain, breathing... All was as it should be.
She bounded onto a wide, snow-covered plateau, a shortcut she'd used a hundred times. Her confidence was as bright and blinding as the sun on the snow. She was halfway across when her left foot, landing with a soft poof, found no stone.
The world dropped out from under her.
It wasn't a fall, not at first. It was a snap. A woven net, strong as iron and as pale as the snow it had been buried under, sprung from the ground, enveloping her in an instant. The mechanism was silent, a brilliant, terrible design of counterweights and springs made from carved mountain-ash, not metal that would sing in the cold. It didn't rely on sound; it relied on her weight.
Lumi yelped, a sharp, surprised sound, as the net cinched tight and yanked her off her feet. She was hauled upwards, dangling ten feet above the plateau, wrapped as securely as a gift.
For a moment, she just hung there, stunned, blinking. "Well, that's not right," she muttered, her breath pluming. She wasn't hurt, just... caught. She tugged at the ropes. They were thick, skillfully woven, and coated in something that made them slippery and hard to grip.
"What a strange, big trap," she said aloud, her voice carrying on the wind. Her ears twitched, scanning for the trap-setter. Silence. No one was nearby. "Must be for a snow-bear. A very big snow-bear." She wiggled, her curves pressing against the unyielding ropes, and frowned for the first time. The knots were complex, and the net was expertly designed to tighten, not loosen, with her struggles.
Her heart gave a little thump of annoyance, not fear. She was the High-Watcher of Aerie-Peak; she didn't get caught. It was preposterous. It never crossed her mind, as she hung there like a pendulum in the screaming wind, that the silence, the strength, and the sheer, wasteful expense of such a trap meant it couldn't possibly be for a bear. It was, in every way, a trap built for her.
As she tried to assess her predicament and look for a way out of this net she heard a sound approaching from the distance and all she could do was wait to see who or what was making it’s way towards her.
