I found today!

After seeing his parents graves near the dead elk Kichi felt as if time had stopped.  Certainly light and dark each took their turn in the sky but it meant little to Kichi.  He had been stuck trying to figure out an answer to a question but hadn't figured out how even the question should be shaped.  The facts he knew were that mom and dad were gone and were never coming back and that his gut ached in a way that had nothing to do with hunger. So he had spent about four days being very un-puppy like with no interest in the things that use to be fascinating.  He would have ate but with little joy in the eating.  However, after the first day there had been no tears.  They had been frozen inside of him somewhere refusing to fall.  

Kichi woke up on the fifth day, watching as a beam of sunshine struggled to push its way through the tree's canopy and onto a trail of red and copper color leaves on the ground.  A bird was singing.  It sounded like the same bird he'd heard the day before, but yesterday he hadn't really listened to it.    A group of birds flew above, far above.  He didn't see them but heard the faint woosh of their passing through the canopy.  Outside of where they had denned was a limb from one of the smaller tree's, and it looked perfect for chewing on.  

Kichi got up, stretching expansively as he did so and eyeing his nemesis the tree branch.  Lowering his head and shoulders with butt sticking up he took aim, held his gaze for an inner count of three then charged the stick!  Kichi slammed his weight into the 3 pronged limb and both limb and puppy slid a few feet. He bit into the enemy, ripping off a piece of the stick along with a dead leaf.  It appeared the stick was going to lose this massive battle.

Bad things were locked up in his memory, but Kichi brushed those aside.  He wanted nothing to do with those memories and so for now what mattered was killing the limb before asking Lurid about breakfast.  He was hungry.  Had he ate yesterday? Kichi wasn't sure, days had blurred together.  It didn't matter! Kichi was hungry now and that was better than worrying about the past.