Author's Comments
This story, as some of my other stories have, started as an assignment from my writers’ group. Take a color and a holiday and make a story out of it. As it was February, I chose Valentine’s Day—but red would have been too obvious.
We lived in Chicago (a good long time ago now), and it remains one of my favorite big cities. It, like my hometown, has a colorful past and terrific people. Anyone who has been in Chicago in February, however, knows about those gray days, when everything is wet and cold and nasty, when it feels like it has been cold forever and spring will never come. Like those winter days, our heroine, Elyna, has been feeling cold and gray for a very long time.
The events in this story take place before Moon Called.
