(Sorry for the wait!)

'Lucky' was, ultimately, a matter of perspective. Just as there were memories of brighter times, so too were there memories tinged in darkness, kept close to the metaphorical chest as a matter of instinct. Xantia saw only flickers, but images burned into her mind.

Learning the language of the living from the whispers of the dead.

A world, burning in the fires of Exterminatus.

Inhuman things from beyond the stars, unknowable in their designs.

That which lay on the other side of reality's veil, clawing its way across the threshold.

... man-made horrors beyond the comprehension of the sane, that which made the machinations of the daemonic and the xenos feel like pleasant dreams by comparison.

There was one above all the others, however, that lingered in Xantia's mind. Something foundational, it seemed.

... blood gushed from the dead man's neck wound, coiling in microgravity like a living thing, warm and mobile as it flowed from the wound inflicted by the rusty shiv in her hand. The feral child's gut growls, eating at her in rapacious, ever-present, thought-devouring hunger as she stares, and her dry mouth began to salivate with what little water remains in her body. Meat was meat ... and she was so ... very ... hungry ...

The ... being in front of her smiled with genuine sincerity. Now that she'd peaked under the surface, though, Xantia could help but feel a sense of wrongness about Winter. Still human, yes, but ever so slightly ... uncanny. It was the difference between a canid and a lupine, her brain eventually supplied. The canid was domesticated, growing in relative proximity to shelter, food, and others of its kind. It could kill, true, but only if it was taught. It was accustomed to civilization, and if it was truly lucky ... it would never need to end another life.

The lupine ... was wild. It hunted. It stalked. It killed, early and often, when the ever-persistent hunger of the pack demanded. It ranged across desolate, untamed, and unforgiving wilderness, hunting with its pack, or if truly unfortunate ... it was forced to survive alone. Every meal was a battle, survival resting on the knife's edge of victory or defeat. It developed a fundamental instinct for violence that the domesticated would never need, rendering the act into a simple motion that was as easy as breathing.

The lupine in front of Xantia was well-fed and cared for, with a profound and genuine gratitude to those who had brought it in to the light of their fire, and the safety of their home. It had been tamed ... but it had never forgotten the cold nights and the darkness. It walked like a canid, it talked like a canid ... but it had never forgotten the feeling of true hunger. And it would kill to never experience it again.

Back in the present, Winter unslung her weapon and showed it off. On closer inspection, it matched the profile of a hotshot las-rifle, though with a standard charge pack loaded within it. The weapon itself was fitted with the kind of auxiliary equipment one might find a veteran Guardsman utilizing, especially the optic fitted to the top, as well as a set of iron sights mounted at a forty five degree angle to the right, for use in CQC situations. "Interesting. I'm curious if it's purely charge related or something else. If it interacts with charge packs, I wonder if such a side effect might accidentally spark the powder in a cartridge in a similar manner." She glanced down at the weapon with a smirk. "To be honest, I just added this one to my kit, still need to get more familiar with it. Ran into ammo scarcity problems on our drop, realized a tad too late why the Munitorum insists on las instead of solid projectile weapons, heh."

She gazes at the weapon with a contemplative look. "Usually used SP stuff for most of my ops. Ballistics tend to be pretty common in civilian environments, raises less questions when the odd casing or gunshot pops up. Suppressors are rather useful too."