Before the storm comes, Tara takes her sewing and her lawn chair to the roof of the building, up over her apartment, which is the one place in this world she is sure to be alone away from her husband who is too drunk to want to walk all the way up here. She can watch the storm blow in across the Appalachia mountains and sew and think.

From here, she can watch her daughter walk home from high school with her friends. From here, she can watch the city crews preparing for the storm, men salting the streets. From here, she can watch the winter animals, birds down from the arctic, readying themselves for winds and the snow.

Tara, who is from California, thinks of herself as a summer animal. Her daughter Joyce, who was born here, is a winter animal. She watches Joyce coming down the street, talking to her friends. Tara thinks whatever the two of them are, they are also animals, just two animals, mother and daughter and a storm in coming, and she is here sewing a quilt like an owl building a nest or bear making a den.

Tara closes her eyes and tries to remember her own childhood, what it was like to be like Joyce but nothing comes. Today, she is like what she imagines a beast is like, alive in the ever present now, caring only for now, for making sure that with the storm coming she and her family are safe.

When she saw him last, her husband was sipping Jim Beam and talking about the storm coming. Joyce comes into the apartment and Tara loses sight of her, and the animal inside her drives her downstairs.

She thinks about this quilt she is almost finished with. Perhaps it will be done tonight. Perhaps she will wrap her daughter in it. Perhaps she will be able to remember what it is to be anything but this creature she is right now in this moment. Perhaps, the greatest truth about being a person is that she is an animal.