At first he thought all the winged things in the world were shedding their white feathers.

Then he felt the fine, soft touch of it under his feet, and the chill.

It sent the blood rushing like a new kind of fire through his body; a wild and thrilling joy--the exultation that leaps through the veins of the wolf when the winter comes.
With Neewa its effect was different--so different that even Miki felt the oppression of it, and waited vaguely and anxiously for what was to come.

And then, on this day of the first snow, he saw his comrade do a strange and unaccountable thing.

He began to eat things that he had never touched as food before.