Did you order this dinner to go? Cuz there it goes!

The bitter cold that continued to linger through late spring was taking its toll on the creatures that depended on growing things to survive, and in turn on those that depended upon those creatures. Things were getting desperate and dangerous, but Aris, who had always been a pack wolf from birth, didn't quite feel the pinch of hunger and desperation of lone animals. After all, a wolf pack had the edge in survival, and they were kept well fed in the Armada. So the not-quite yearling was in a pleasant, playful mood as she romped and pounced through the hills far from where she was supposed to be safely tucked up in pack lands, with only Tansy for company. The cat, though just as young as she was, was one of the reasons that Ari had never really gone hungry - the black-footed cat was an insanely good hunter, evidenced by the feathers she was grooming from her whiskers even now. Even in this barren place she could find and kill something. Larger predators were not so lucky, and there was a hungry set of eyes fixed on the blithely unconcerned pup as she swished her tail and pounced on a frozen plant. "Tansy, there's nothing here," she complained. "Rocks. Rocks. More rocks. There's not even any trees. There's nothing I'm going to learn here."

"Oh yes?" the cat mewed sarcastically with quivering whiskers. "Is there terrain like this in the Armada now? Rocky hills that shift under your paws, earthquakes that dump you down hillsides before you can blink? You can learn something here if you'd take the fuzz out from between your ears and stuff a brain in there." She ignored the tongue Ari stuck out at her, and began to bound nimbly up the shifting slope. "Come on, you'll see soon enough."

Ari sighed with exaggerated grouchiness, but her face shifted into a sly grin and her tail waggled before she too started bouncing up the slope. "Beat you there!!" she crowed as she sprinted past the startled cat, spraying her with pebbles and dirt from under her flailing, catlike paws.

Another set of hungry eyes marked where they'd reach the top of the hill, and crept closer along the far side of the ridge, where the stalker would not show the distinctive silhouette of a hyena against the sky, leaving the first watcher to gather in a third and circle in on the other side.