Shelters of Stone

The stallion clopped softly into his grotto, shaking out his shaggy winter coat and flinging snow in every direction. He’d just finished a patrol of the herds, with Wangui and Isolde’s help. The lemur, shivering even under a thick pelt blanket, had busily scratched out numbers and descriptions of animals that looked like they wouldn’t survive the winter and might be weak prey, thus easier for the wolves to bring down.

It had snowed, and his shaggy back had been coated in the stuff, but he didn’t mind. His coat was thick enough to ward off the cold and wet. It helped that there was a bed of coals banked and waiting to be stoked to life here in his grotto. The primate companions, Wangui included, had made the gesture of carving holes and putting solid wooden hooks in the holes. From the thick sapling poles, meticulously dried and hardened, oiled against the weather, hung the bear pelts and that of the saber cat he’d brought down in the Gorge.

They were stretched to poles lining the ground and kept out the wind, rain, and snow. The warmth from the fire was trapped inside as he used his horn and hooves to maneuver a few chunks of wood into the coals and took a long stick in his mouth, nudging and poking until the flames took to the fuel and rose, crackling comfortably.

The stallion huffed out a breath and moved to the bed of straw and furs, settling into them as Wangui tucked against his warm hide, buried under the large pelt the horse dragged over the top of his rump and to his shoulders.

“Always good to come back to a warm fire, right?” The lemur grunted from somewhere under the pelt, and the stallion rumbled a faint chuckle.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think