Despite my best efforts, "Don't Fireball the Neighbors" wasn't edited by March. The reason was a late Oklahoma winter storm. I dealt with frozen pipes, a cracked drain, a broken heater, and multiple injured family members. I burned the candle at both ends.
My brain, however, doesn't come with an off-switch. The bitter cold jarred loose a thought.
Do centaurs wear mittens? This question became yet another exercise in overthinking.
You see, most fantasy worlds do not have functional climates. Take the centaur's origin tales, Greek and Roman myths. The typical weather is pastoral, perfect for partying in the vineyards with no shirt. Bad weather means some monster or deity is having a tantrum.
My world, working name Mundus, however, is a bit more complex. It has a cycle of seasons, and I actually have the landmasses mapped out by distance to the equator. Weather and climate are dynamic, global forces. (The infamous 'Always winter, never Christmas curse of the White Witch gets a lot scarier when you study environmental engineering. That lady packed some serious power.)
Mundus has weather. Mundus has centaurs. How do centaurs deal with the cold?
To make a sensible answer, I looked into what humans and horses need for winter weather.
Horses have a much easier time than humans. Hard protected hooves versus easily frost-nipped toes. A coat of winter hair. Most importantly, their highly adapted metabolism.
In Oklahoma, the wind chill is more dangerous than our dusting of snow; It steals your body heat. Horses have an advantage. They are walking furnaces. With enough food and a windbreak, horses can keep their body temperature in a safe range. No blankets, no fireplace.
On the flip side, humans don't deal with cold well. Fingers, toes, ears will quickly become numb as blood pulls away to protect the torso. What little body hair we have is for pulling sweat away from the body. Our metabolisms work well at helping us stalk animals until they collapse from exhaustion. Great at shedding heat, not so much at keeping it.
Humans need wind cover, more calories, insulation plus water-proofing, and an external heat source if we want to keep our thumbs. Frost-bite and following gangrene can happen in clear day conditions. We make clothes and build fires.
So what does this mean for a being that's half-horse half-human? It's all comes down to which metabolism they have. The more horse-like means hotter body temperature but higher caloric intake. More human-like means heavy layers, light a fire and stay indoors.
However, there's more to consider than just body temperature.
One of the lesser-known risks of an Oklahoma winter is 'windburn.' It's technically a form of sunburn. However, the cold air tricks you into missing the warning signs. This risk of this burn is greater around snow and ice because of the reflected sunlight.
Covering up in winter gives multiple types of protection. Walking around 'topless' isn't a smart move. Centaurs may not need a fleece parka and a horsy-coat, but a lovely poncho would keep the human-half snug.
There is also the problem of skin' sticking.' The expansion of "Never lick a lamppost in winter" is don't grab a pump handle if your hands are damp. Sweat or melted snow will let that metal sap the heat from your skin and tack it in place with ice crystals. You jerk back in pain and leave a layer of yourself behind.
Centaurs have fingers. Centaurs are tool users. They'll need working hands. That means mittens.
I shared this thought process with Kid Bro, and we wondered if in "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," there was a tent filling with mittens and hats as the Aslan's army stopped needing them. Then I turned my eye onto J.K. Rowling's centaurs.
Hogwarts is in Scotland. That place is cold and damp. The reader never 'sees' the centaurs for more than a few hundred words as they are highly isolationist and self-contained. Naturally, my next thought was.
"Harry Potter centaurs making mittens."
It took a bit of explaining. However, Kid Bro and I both had a good chuckle about the xeno-phobic soothsayers working with yarn. That led to another question, which I haven't yet answered,
Crochet, knitting, or nalbinding?
