All Hands On Deck

What day was it?

Rogdar crawled from the hole he had spent nearly a season buried in to find a crisp winter morning, snow and icicles dangling from every branch of the barren trees as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

The last thing he remembered was moving from his cozy lifeboat to the south, and being expected to make a home in the mud and cow-shit covered range. What had occurred between that event and now was distant and foggy. His eyes ached in the dazzling winter sunlight and the wind seemed to chill him right down to his bones. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the hole he had emerged from and stay there until spring, but a far more present thought in his mind told him that was too unhealthy even by his own standards.

He looked around abruptly suddenly remembering something important and found his companion still snoozing away at the bottom of his den, dead to the world. He picked the limp monkey up in his jaws and was surprised that neither the startling cold or the abrupt movement seemed to wake her. That worried him more than he cared to admit but he refused to let it show.

Even with his long legs the snow reached up nearly to his elbows and it took him several awkward tries to move forward correctly without toppling over into a snowdrift. “Ish shucks” He grumbled through the monkey in his mouth, his olive eyes glaring as he determinedly flopped into the snow and rested on his side.

talking   thinking