and we all fall down

The journey wasn't a short one even for a healthy wolf, but Harmony knew her limits and had prepared for it. She'd taken the journey slow, allowing for plenty of rest for aching joints and an easily-exhausted stamina. It might not have been worth it for any other prey, but she could fish for a couple days and freeze enough to keep her in food and fish oil possibly for the rest of the winter. She would need to keep one eye on the weather and one eye out for frostbite, and another for other predators, and another for her to manage her own flagging endurance... she didn't have nearly enough eyes for that, she thought wryly to herself, but perhaps she could manage to split her attention enough to manage by herself.

She cautiously set paw on the river's ice, pleased to see that the thick layer of ice held her weight easily. The ice thinned slightly in the center of the river, but not enough to be worrying. She slipped out from under the deer hide she'd carried on her back, settling it on the ice to protect her from the chill that would be guaranteed to come from being motionless on ice for a long period of time. She also carried in her mouth a heavy, sharp ended stick - this she jabbed into the ice to work a hole in the surface, alternating between that and digging with her snowy paws until she had a decently sized hole through the ice to the sluggish dark water below her paws, then she set it next to her on the deer hide.

She proceeded to fish for hours, slowly accumulating a decent pile of dead and freezing fish beside her. It was arduous work, made more so by the creeping numbness of the cold. It slowed her body and fuzzed at her mind, and splitting her attention so much was beginning to wear on her.

That was when she made her mistake.

Paying attention to everything else more than she was her footing, Harmony leaned too far over the water to snatch at a fish swimming slowly beneath her... and her other paw slid right off the edge. The shock of icy water slapping her in the face and chest, engulfing her, froze her into thoughtlessness, and she could not shake herself out of it in time to attempt to drag herself back up, and she slipped beneath the ice.

Had the water moved any faster, Harmony might have been swept away beneath the ice, far far downriver of the one hole to life-saving air. But the current was just slow enough to allow her to strike out against it, driving and paddling furiously for that single hole of light that shone against the dark water. Her lungs burned; her heavy winter fur threatened to drag her down. Exhaustion blurred her eyes and panic clawed at her. She had to fight her own body to keep herself from just breathing in, in desperation for oxygen that she knew she could not get.

There!

Her slim muzzle finally broke the water's surface just as she lost the fight with her panic, and she gasped in a breath that was half water and half glorious, beautiful air. She gagged and choked on the water, but sought to heave herself out of the water. Dragged down by her fur and her muscles giving out on her she could only just managed to catch the edge of the ice beneath her front paws, and she clung grimly there, desperately, as she coughed out more water. "H-help me!" she cried out, to anyone... to no one. She did not have the strength to lift herself out, but already she could feel the bite of the wind and cold against her face, forming ice on the ends of the wet fur, and she shuddered painfully as involuntary shivers racked her form. "Help!" She raised her voice in a desperate howl, but it trailed off into a whine as she nearly slipped under again and dunked her head in the water before she could claw her way back up gasping.