[Seasonal] After Fire Comes Ice

“The fire days ago was insane! So weird to see the place all snowy again,” Gwenn exclaimed with a disbelieving chuckle. The styracosaur was trudging ahead as usual, though this early winter, she was leaving prints on a thin layer of snow rather than pushing through a knee-deep wall of it. She glanced back over her shoulder at Raze. He didn’t reply. He had been following her step, and didn’t even ask where they were going, which admittedly wasn’t unusual. Of course, she had a plan for the day, but something bothered her.

She slowed her steps gradually until she stopped. “You got me really worried, you know?”

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just got a few new scrapes. No big deal,” Raze said with a nonchalant rhythm that was dangerously close to sarcasm. As long as nothing was broken and he stayed mobile, he didn't concern himself with comparably small injuries. He stepped from one leg to the other with a little shuffle in the snow, but, by the look on Gwenn’s face, it didn’t quite convince her that he was in pristine shape.

Each time he appeared again with new scars or slightly thinner than before, Gwenn just couldn’t help but worry more. He didn’t look terrible; at least his ribs weren’t showing through his hide, nor did he appear sick. Still, Raze looked worse off than last year, now that she was looking him over. Rubbing her beak tips together, even she knew some sweet sap and small trinkets would be nothing but a mere distraction.

She planned to visit the barn structures nearby and simply explore and hang out, but maybe she could do better than that. Her eyes wandered across the landscape while she tried to come up with something new, and left the both of them in awkward silence.

Raze simply watched her in return. He gave her a one over as well, just to gauge what got her so uncharacteristically pensive. He wasn’t boring her, was he? He couldn’t have her lose interest. In an attempt to get her attention back, he skipped in front of her. “Did you forget where to find the maple trees, or what’s the hold-up?”

It was just a breath before Gwenn’s eyes snapped to his, and she grinned. “Actually, I have a better idea! Are you hungry?”

Not waiting for an answer, she stepped right past him and trotted in the direction of the marshlands, rather than the farm arrays or flatlands they usually circled. Raze, mildly confused, had no other choice but to follow her. Whatever idea sprang up in her mind, he was long past questioning her.

The wetlands had become considerably less wet in the freezing climate. Pale, brittle stalks of dead reeds and the yellowed remains of long grasses poked between the thin layer of snow and frozen water. Rivers and streams still flowed, but stagnant waters like these had frozen solid overnight. The ground, more stiff than during summer heat, but not enough to be frozen solid, gave in as the two dinosaurs approached the net of intertwining waterways.

Weaving between the wet spots, she found a large and seemingly shallow pond the cold climate had cut off from the others. Gwenn attempted to peer through the ice between the snow and cracks from the edge. She was not that knowledgeable about how fish overwinter, but she was pretty sure she saw something move beneath. There were fish down below; there had to be.

“You do eat fish, right?” She asked, her eyes still on faint shadows in the deep.

“Uh, yeah. Sure, if I catch any,” Raze answered like it was mere banter, but it already dawned on him what she was about to do. ”Wait, what exactly are you doing?”

“Getting you some,” Gwenn replied in the same casual tune he liked to use. She scraped her horn at the edges of the frozen body of water, testing for a weak spot to lift. When she didn’t find a crack in the thick ice to break further, she gave Raze a quick glance before tentatively stepping onto the ice. One front leg first, then the other. Then the rest of her, as her back half followed abruptly, when her front feet slipped with forward momentum. Luckily, the ice held her weight. Or, unfortunately, rather, as she wanted the opposite of that.

After readjusting her stance, she stood confidently enough on the ice not to lose grip immediately. She gave Raze a half-embarrassed look before she reared up on her back legs and slammed her front feet down. The crack in the ice was heard, but not seen, beside the point where her feet met it. So she did it again with an equally unimpressive result.

“Are you sure about this?” Raze asked, and he tilted his head at her. The cryo stood a good few steps away from the edge, not to get involved in her endeavours.

“Hold on, this lake is being stubborn.” She started to hop on the spot, now taking her whole weight off-ground before landing. She nearly slipped on impact more than once, but she figured pretty fast to rebalance after each jump. The sheet of ice splintered with a web of cracks expanding from where Gwenn put the impact, but it held.

“Right, the lake’s stubborn. Gwenn, you really don’t-” His sentence was cut off as a shrill shriek startled him. The green styraco broke through the thick ice with a loud crash. It turned out the pond wasn’t as shallow as it first appeared, now that she stood neck-deep in the water.

"C-C-Cold!" She complained, followed by her laughing heartily through the shock.

“What exactly did you expect?” Raze wasn’t just startled, but utterly baffled at her.

“Hah- Come, jump in! I am pretty sure there’s, like… carp and catfish and stuff in here,” Gwenn encouraged him, even though the biting cold seeped into her bare skin. She fidgeted in the water enough to send small waves over the surface. Keeping herself busy and distracted, she started using her face to chip at the edges of still intact ice to make the hole larger.

“You’re crazy! I am not going to jump in. I’ll freeze my feathers off,” he objected immediately. Giving it some thought, though, he swung his head from side to side in indecision. He wouldn’t get an easier time getting food than this. He could never break ice reliably on his own, and the fish were sluggish and easy to find at the bottom. He just needed to take the plunge.

Gwenn, who was already braving the icy water anyway, didn’t even have to give him a look. Raze groaned. “Okay, fine.”

He glanced at the cold water's edge and then at Gwenn before stepping closer. Tentatively dipping one toe into the water already sent a shiver through his bones to his tail tip. Knowing this was a rather bad decision, he took a step back. Then he jumped into the pond. Landing beside his companion with an involuntary gasp, he suppressed the urge to yelp out and complain about the cold as well.

“Do you need more space? I can chip at the ice some more,” Gwenn asked. She watched the cryo try to catch his breath through the spiking cold and decided to chip at the remaining ice anyway.

“Let’s see. I don’t think you have to break all the ice. This should be more than enough,” Raze answered and peered down in hopes of noticing any movement below that wasn’t their feet. The faster he gets the fish that apparently rest at the bottom, the faster he can get out of here. 

“Oh, okay.” The green herbivore shuffled to the side to give him enough room to dive if he needed to. Something brushed against her feet when she stepped aside in the muddy pond bottom, but she couldn’t be sure if it was anything alive or just soggy detritus of dead plant matter.

Fish left in the pond had no other place to go. With the temperature at freezing point, the warmer water was down below, but even then, it left any aquatic creature lethargic. 

When Raze submerged his face into the water and bit at something dark he saw, it was nothing but a slimy piece of wood. He dove again before Gwenn could throw some sort of encouraging comment his way, and snapped at something that moved away at the last second in a quick burst. Fish may be slow and low-energy during this time, but they still were reactive. It would’ve been too easy otherwise.

Gwenn stood still the whole time Raze tried to fish for food. If he thought about it, he had no idea why she remained in the water with him even after breaking the ice for him. There was nothing for her, and she could’ve just left.

Almost absent-mindedly, as he fell into a rhythm of dipping below and taking a breath, he bit into something large, half-covered by the silt and mud on the bottom. Whatever it was, it broke him out of his thoughts and even startled Gwenn, as a catfish thrashed around in his jaws. It was incredibly strong; the cryo had a hard time holding onto its mucus-covered skin and lifting it high enough for him to take a breath of air. Eventually, the movements died down. The catfish fell limp, gasping for oxygen in the air, with its limited energy drained in the struggle.

“Woah, that thing’s huge!” Gwenn cheered when the surprise ebbed and gave way to joy.

Breathing heavy, holding his catch up with only a sliver of pride, he simply smiled at her. This was enough, and the cold was too aggressive for him to stay. With his mouth too full to banter, he simply stepped back to the pond’s edge and out of the water, where Gwenn followed suit. 

Moisture curled off them as thin veils of vapor the moment they stepped onto solid land again. Dropping his prize haphazardly onto the ground, Raze shook the liquid out of his feather coat, to Gwenn’s squeals as it rained on her. He only gave her a look before staring at the now motionless catfish.

When they stood like that for a few seconds, she realised she had never seen him eat before. Maybe he was nervous. “Do you, like, bring it home or eat it now or?”

“What, you want to watch me down a whole fish in one sitting right now?” He fired back with a counter question. “Don’t threaten me with a good time. I’ll do it. It won’t be pretty.”

He followed it up with a rare laugh when Gwenn gave him the most astonishingly dismayed look. She shook her head at the summoned imagery in her mind and joined in on the laughter when she successfully dispelled them out from her skull.

“I’ll probably just take it to a nice hole in the ground and cozy up there,” Raze gave her as an actual answer.

“A hole. Isn’t that nice?” She tried a pinch of sarcasm, but was then preoccupied stepping from one foot to another. Her toes felt like pins and needles in the snow. “You know, you can cozy up in the farm arrays instead. Everyone brings sticks, fur and all sorts of materials to the barns to cuddle into and stay warm.”

Raze paused and thought about it, but eventually shook his head. “Nah, that’s more your thing. Mingling in a herd and all that. I am fine with a small den just for me.”

“Oh, okay…” Gwenn looked a little downtrodden, but didn't press the matter. There were some friendly carnivores using the sheds as shelter, but she had to admit herbivores outnumbered them. Maybe it was safer for him not to go there.

“And, hey,” he snapped her out of her thoughts before she could start to worry. “Thank you.”

She blinked at him for a moment before giving him a wide smile.

“That’s what I am here for,” she chirped and adjusted her stance to stand tall and proud, her breath barely visible in the air. Bouncing on her heels and letting little motions deconstruct her heroic pose, she rambled on. “Dragging your lazy butt into cold water and showing you how to get treats. Next time I am going to… chase you up a mountain for something fancy, or maybe catch ghosts in those scary metal buildings, or-”

Raze’s lighthearted mood quickly evolved into a different kind of exhaustion, as Gwenn listed a wild assortment of adventures and shenanigans to get into.

(2109 words according to Google Docs)