❄ Frostfall ❄Male Husky mix ∞ 25 moons ∞ SkyPack Warrior━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Frostfall looked at the two turkeys, then suppressed a sigh. He'd have to dig a hole the approximate size of a brown bear to bury them. Then again, he thought as he began digging furiously, it was better than some of the other tasks he occasionally performed. He recalled bitterly the numerous times he'd slipped or stumbled while climbing, and the instances he'd fallen from trees or slid off a boulder. If the Outpackers he grew up with had seen his early Pack days, they would have laughed their tails off. And probably made jokes about Frostfall being the clumsiest squirrel they'd ever laid eyes on. In fact, Frostfall sometimes
had felt like a squirrel, trying to get used to that aspect of Pack life.
As it was, the husky mix felt more like an Airedale as he tore through the earth. Or perhaps a badger, or a rabbit. He tried to think of other burrowing animals, mostly as a distraction from the monotonous task of digging. He'd rather be hunting or patrolling, and his paws itched to stalk and run. Gophers also lived underground, he thought, and so did moles. Moles had ridiculously large forepaws, with powerful digging claws. He envisioned himself with oversized mole paws, churning up huge clods of earth and creating a good-sized hole in almost no time. He doubted giant mole feet would be conducive to running fast, though.
Well, he thought, it should be large enough now. Frostfall, his normally white leg fur stained brown past his dewclaws, picked up the dead birds and dropped them into the hole. He nudged at them with his nose, trying to position them so they would fit better, then threw the soil over them again.
He studied Dappleheart for a moment, uncertain if she might be pushing herself too far. She seemed to have a stubborn streak about a mile wide, and he had a feeling that she would continue until she dropped dead if the mood struck her. Of course, if Frostfall made another comment along the lines of "Are you sure you're fine to continue" or "Let me know if you're getting tired", she would only more firmly insist that her injury wasn't bothering her.
"All right, let's go." Frostfall said. He imagined that if they felled a huge stag, Dappleheart would still say that they could continue hunting, that they ought to find more. Or perhaps one of the cattle that some humans kept. Cows were enormous creatures, enough to keep the pack fed more days. And standing beside the carcass would be a blue merle dog, dwarfed by the massive beast, telling Frostfall that they needed to find more food. She wasn't the sort of dog to do the bare minimum or slack off in any way, he thought with mingled amusement and respect. And considering their luck so far, it was possible they
would wind up dragging a young steer back to camp.
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