goodwill.

Glad to at least have the invitation, Star sat down and began to tell of the day's ventures. “Well, right after you left this morning, Mom took me out to find some friends. She promised we could go look 'cause you're always playing with yours. We must have looked all over town, but finally we met this one puppy named Eska. And when I met him...” Star thumped a paw on the floor in the same manner as a human might snap her fingers. “Boom. We were friends just like that. We spent the whole day playing. First we played Tag. I must have caught him a dozen times. Then we played hide-and-sniff, and Mom even took us to the old lot and let me play caves with him! It was so much fun!”

Angel rolled her eyes so hard they hurt. “Yeah, if you like pups' stuff.”

Star tilted her head, puzzled. “But we are pups.”

“Maybe some of us,” Angel all but sniped. “My friends and I never bother with that kind of junk.”

Star's eyes grew wide with curiosity. “So what do you do?”

Angel's ears dropped, and her expression fell. “Do?” she echoed dumbly, as if she had never heard the word before.

“Yeah, what kind of stuff do you do with your friends?” asked Star.

Angel forced an indifferent shrug. “We just sort of hang out,” she replied.

Star paid her no heed. “We're best friends, just like Mommy and Daddy were,” she went on, not having heard. “And someday we'll be more than friends. We'll go out like Mommy and Daddy did, and then...”

“Oh, brother,” snapped Angel.

This surprised Star. “I'm not your brother,” she pointed out. “I'm your sister.”

“Not what I meant.” Angel said angrily. “You always have to do everything like Mommy.” She emphasized the last word with distaste as if it were a curse. “Think outside the box already. You're not Mom. For one thing, you're too stinkin' ugly.”

This struck Star at her weakest point, and the reaction was immediate. “I am not!” she shot back.

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“Ugly, ugly, ugly,” Angel sang, as if pounding in a nail. “Mom's pretty, and I'm pretty, but you're just an ugly mutt.”

“I am not!” Star cried, and as usual, she ran out of the room to Luna. “Angel called me an ugly mutt!” she bawled.

Luna was immediately on her feet and headed for the room where the troublemaker sat. Or rather, where she had been sitting. Angel was long gone.

Even after Luna went and found Toby, it took the two of them an hour to find Angel. When they came back, they told everyone to stay downstairs except in an emergency, and gave Arrow instruction to ensure that no one went outside unless the house caught fire. Then they took Angel, hanging from Toby's jaws like a dripping wet sock hung to dry over a fire, into some room or other upstairs. Star tried not to heed the arguing that followed, but even though she could only hear snatches of it carrying through the house, she moped. So much for that idea, she thought regretfully. She had tried to get her parents at ease about Angel, and instead they were more focused on her than ever. I'll never be like Mom, she thought. Nothing I try ever works.

Later that night, as she lay in the living room bereft of Luna's warmth, with nothing to do except listen to the wind outside and the quiet breathing of her brothers, she suddenly heard a sound at the door. Was that a voice out there? Yes, there it came again. Someone was outside, calling. And the closer she listened, the more familiar it sounded. Like someone was calling her name. And the someone...

“Eska?” asked Star. “What are you doing here?”

“I need you to come outside for a minute,” replied his voice.

She scrunched her face and reclined her ears. “Now?” she asked, glancing at the window. “It's freezing outside. Don't you want to come in?”

“No, I can't. You come out here.”

Star was about to concede, but then she remembered. “Mommy and Daddy said to stay inside unless the house was on fire.”

“They don't need to know, and we've gotta talk.”

Star frowned. Something didn't sound right about all this. But it was Eska asking. “Okay,” she said, “But just for a minute, promise?”

“I promise,” came the reply.

She scampered to the pet flap and stuck her nose out. Youch! The minute she cracked it open, the biting wind hit her nose like the tip of an icicle. She jerked back, rubbing her snout. “Can't this wait until morning?” she asked.

“No, it's gotta be now. Come outside, or I won't be your friend anymore.”

Well, she couldn't say no to that. “Okay,” she agreed. And with gritted teeth, she slipped out the pet flap.

The snow was so deep even on the porch that she immediately sank up to her chin in the icy powder. The wind blew in her eyes, forcing them shut. “Eska!” she shouted. “Where are you?!”

“Not here,” came a much different voice. And before she could turn and see who it was – if seeing were even possible in the squall – she felt herself being snatched up like a mouse in the clutches of an owl. She could do nothing but scream as her faceless captor took off, carrying her away into the night. So she screamed, long and loud.

Which, as it turned out, was exactly what the enemy wanted.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Star.

“Eh, not far,” the dog replied. “Just far enough to keep you outta the way for awhile.”

“Why are you doing this?” she all but cried. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Nothing,” he replied in a “so-what” tone of voice as if her innocence were a pointless triviality. “But I got some stuff I need to do, and you'd just get in the way. Now hush up already.”

“I wanna go home,” she sobbed. “I'm cold, and you're scaring me.”

“Too bad,” he replied. He stopped and looked around, causing Star to swing to and fro like a wrecking ball. “This oughta do,” he murmured. And so saying, he ran to a garbage can, raised himself on his hind legs, and tipped the lid off with his nose, banging Star against the cold metal in the process.

“Ow!” she cried. “Let me go, I wanna...”

“You got it,” he replied cheerfully as he flipped her up and dropped her into the can.

Star landed on a pile of frozen trash. At once she jumped up and braced her paws against the sides, barking frantically to be let out, but the lid closed overhead mercilessly. “Keep talking, sister,” taunted the dog outside. “Might as well use the hot air while you've got it.”

Star kept barking, desperately hoping someone might hear her. “Mommy! Daddy! Eska! Somebody, help me!” She carried on barking for who-knows-how-long, until finally despair began to take hold and her spirits started to crumble. Why isn't anyone coming? she wondered as she let out a final few plaintive yips. Great-Grandpa Balto came running when Mommy was in a garbage can. So did Daddy. She curled up in a ball, shivering against the cold and fighting back tears. But nobody's going to come for me. Nobody cares about me because I am a nobody. The tears won out, and the metal sides of the can reverberated with the sound of her muffled sobbing. But even that quieted eventually, as she lost even the strength to mourn and the cold began to seep its way into her limbs. First a painful biting sensation, then a sense of numbness. Her left paws, the ones exposed (for she had curled her tail around her right side) didn't even seem to be there anymore. She knew what this was, and if she'd had the strength she would have trembled at the thought of it. She was dying. Alone, unloved, and doomed.

She was pulled out of her sorrow by a grating sound from overhead and a rush of cold air. Numbly, she pulled her head from the protection of her tail in time to see...

“Star!”

“Da... Daddy?” she asked sluggishly. Even the words felt frozen.

“Oh, thank God you're alive!” he cried, scooping her up in his mouth.

“Nnn...” she groaned.

“Come on, honey, stay with me. I'm going to get you home,” he urged her as he ran faster than he had ever run before.

That was the last thing Star remembered.

It was touch-and-go for almost twenty-four hours as Star drifted in and out of consciousness. During her brief lucid moments, she was aware of much smothering from her mother, and of Toby saying to just hang on, everything would be okay. Angel was there too, but she seemed upset by something and always started speaking just as Star was again drifting into her stupor.

During this time, Luna scarcely left her daughter's side, and Toby all but moved back into Luna's house again, only going home to eat and occasionally to sleep. Angel was inconsolable over what she had done, even though both her parents kept telling her everything would be fine. She wanted so desperately to tell her sister that she was sorry, that she was the cause of the whole mess, but she never managed to get the words out until Star faded again, and each time she worried that her sister had died.

At last, on the third or fourth time Star woke up, when she had managed to drink some water, eat a bite or two of food, and tell her story,