***This is Skye, one of Copper's Insiders. I know the rules and intend to do my best to follow them, Having said that, I am NOT a happy camper right now. This post is rant. Deal with it.***

Okay. I can handle the cold just fine. My nature is very much one of Fire; cold does not bother me that much.

Copper is a different song.

These past weeks (months?) we have been living essentially without a heater, she has plugged along without complaint. A couple times she spoke to one of our Housing people, but mostly she made the best of a bad situation.

Because Copper hates the cold. It makes her fingers hurt and her nose run and it saps her energy like a faulty electric outlet. Other Insiders can tell tales of being locked outside in the cold or being otherwise denied warmth. Copper does not have those memories. What she does have is a very poor emotional tolerance for cold.

She handles it well. She doesn't often complain and when she does it is fair and reasonable. She lays out facts and expresses her opinion without running roughshod over anyone. That ability to be fair in even totally unfair situations is one of the reasons she is our leader.

It is one of the reasons I respect her so much.

I would have lost my temper ages ago. I would have marched into Landlady's office and gave her eight shades of hell. Would I have been polite about it? Mostly. But I would have made the kind of a stink that not even a skunk can come close to.

I'm about to do just that now. Only the fact that there are currently two furnace repair trucks in our driveway is stilling my hand. So why am I about to lose it now, when relief is clearly close at hand?

Because Copper is crying. Curled up in a ball, trying to be quiet about it 'cause she knows they're trying to fix it, sobbing.

When I shifted her aside so I could type this blog, she clung to me, begging me to make it warm.

Copper does not beg.

The cold has broken her.

I hope that getting the fucking furnace fixed will bring her back to herself. I know as well as anyone that sometimes random environmental factors can be that last, shattering straw. I once flew into a nearly psychotic rage over coffee stains on a new white t-shirt. I get how something really small can get a hugely out of proportion reaction.

She's been so quietly brave this whole time...I am seriously impressed. When my temper has flared about the chill, she's even calmed me down! And now she's crying because she hasn't been properly warm at home in months.

I don't care how it happens, but this house had better be warm by bedtime. I'm not going to try to force her through the bedtime routine (which lately has been very triggering and I'm not sure why...). Not in this cold again.

And once we have heat, I am gonna ask some serious questions about why the bloody blue hell it took this long to get a real repairman out here.

One of my roles in this system is to protect, and my weapon of choice is words. Sparky is going to be spoken to. So, most likely, is Landlady.

Because by all I hold sacred and holy, this is not fucking acceptable!

And Copper is crying