For Bogart !
The snow had finally relented sometime in the small hours, leaving behind a brittle crust that cracked under paw like thin bone. Tugix still slept in the shallow scrape they had claimed as camp—a wind-carved hollow beneath an overhang of frosted rock, his breathing slow and even now, the worst of the fever broken. Sulukinak had lain beside him through the night, body curled against the cold that seeped from stone and fur alike, one ear always turned toward the darkness. She had not slept. Sleep was a luxury the hollow inside her rarely permitted.
The world beyond the overhang was vast and silent.
To the east the ridge climbed steeply into low cloud; to the north the land fell away toward what might have been another lake or a river still locked under ice. She scented the wind once—long, slow—then turned south. There was a faint promise in that direction: thinner snow, perhaps a frozen streambed where small prey might shelter, or at least a place where the ground was not so relentlessly empty.
She moved with the low, economical stride of one who had walked long distances alone. Paws broke crust in measured steps, tail low, ears forward. The scar along her belly tugged with each breath, a dull, familiar ache that no longer surprised her. She did not think of Tugix as she walked—only of the need to return with something, anything, to quiet the hollow in them both.