A Winter That Never Ends

Deep in the woods of Russia, a mother and daughter try to make it through the winter. The winter is an unrelenting world of grey, the only color in the world the few red leaves trying to hang onto the trees. 

Otherwise, color exists only in Tatiana's dreams, which (via colorist Lorenzo Palombo) are tinged pink like bloodstained snow. Her husband was drafted for the Soviet invasion of Finland, and his unknown fate hovers over everything. Her daughter, Yari, asks for stories or fables, but they always come back around to when her father will return. If the Gnome King, can find anyone, could he find her father for her? There's a fable repeated within the story, about a father who goes to hunt a great monster, and warns his family they must stake him through the heart with a birch limb if he returns more than 10 days later. Yari insists that if it's not real, it can't be scary, but if it was real, Father would protect them. If he was there.

Food is scarce, news scarcer still. The only neighbor Rosi introduces in the story (making mother and daughter feel truly isolated) claims something attacked and massacred his goats. Yari found wolves torn apart in the woods. Yari thinks she saw something outside the window at night. All of this takes a toll on Tatiana, trying to reassure her daughter and hold herself together alone. She grows more short-tempered and prone to alcohol-fueled rage as the isolation drags on. This culminates in a scene where Yari has gone far afield exploring and doesn't make it home after dark. Tatiana sits at the table, muttering over her powerlessness and dwindling supply of vodka. She cries over what she assumes will be Yari's fate, until the girl returns.

It's never said, but I assume the mark over Yari's eye was from some prior outburst, either after the husband left, or one he simply wasn't able to prevent. In any scenes in the past where we see Yari and her father together, Ivan Fiorelli always draws Yari's back to us. We also never see all three of them together, which seems to imply neither Tatiana's happiest memories with her husband, or Yari with her father, involve the other person.

Rosi cuts away to check in on the husband's situation periodically. The details are as one would suspect. Insufficient supplies, insufficient leadership, insufficient forces. Point is, it's bad. You can tell where the story's going from a long way off, if the fable Yari wants to hear isn't enough of a tipoff. (Notably, the husband makes reference to promises he made his daughter, but never mentions his wife.)