Chapter 39: Taken

Winter dragged his chains of hoarfrost across the ground, and December came roaring into the world. 

Morozko was in Father Frost's kingdom of eternal snow, in the northern-most corner of Buyan, where the spirit of winter reigned supreme.  Kind but capricious, Ded Moroz – or Father Frost in Anya’s lilting English – was known for granting maiden's wishes and freezing the less fortunate.  Morozko, thankfully, carried a furnace inside him from his wayward father’s side, so he was impervious to the cold.  He was temping as a bartender for the time being, working under his love-fickle mother Snegurochka: Ded Moroz's granddaughter and present-deliverer to a myriad excited Russian children. 

Morozko had wandered far and wide over the past month, rushing as a cloud of steam across the harsh Russian winter-scape.  He had settled himself in the darkest corner of Buyan, closest to the deathless lands, where the northern lights