I can see her there on the edge of the forest. The sun is just setting, the breeze is just stirring. It’s there on the wind, chill crackling energy. Sometimes I think she can taste it. She tilts her head just so. What can she be thinking now, my Lady of the Red Hunt? Is her heart racing, blood rushing under her skin? Some years she’s a wild animal. Others a fallen Goddess. Perhaps she is both. Feral, ethereal. I was a child when I first saw her, woken by the shushing wind in the eves of our small cabin. It was dawn then and cold, the first hint of frost in the air. I left my warm furs and went to the window and saw her there so peaceful in the faint red light. Fall was over I could tell - there was that dryness in the back of my throat. With that I knew who I saw and also that our winter would be mild. Who can say where legends come from? The next two years I barely caught a glimpse of her in the sunsets still as a watchful deer. We suffered long snows. People claimed they saw her now and then on the cusp of winter, swore they heard the baying of the Red Hunt. For myself I never spoke a word of what I caught – it didn’t matter how tired or where I was I always found myself at the window on some dying Autumn day. I never try to go out to her even though there are sorrows in her eyes. It doesn’t do to interfere with the Red Hunt. Winter always finds it’s prey. But I never fail to listen. It’s the least I can do. I hope it will be quick for her, the quarry of the Red Hunt.