No More Bodies

Bestiarius collapsed on the frigid ice of the frozen lake. Now soaked to the bone from his head to his feet, cold crept through every inch of his body and made him shudder. His thick fur felt heavy to him when he was dry; when he was wet, it was unbearably so. His blue eyes stared pointlessly into the sky as frustration overwhelmed him. Frustration, and another feeling he was all-too familiar with: hunger. Even if he had the drive to stand, he wasn’t certain he had the energy. He thought bleakly about how long it had been since he had eaten. Days? Weeks? He couldn’t remember. All he could remember clearly was that seal slipping under the ice inches away from his snapping jaws. As he stewed on his loss, the snow drifted lazily down around him as if it had no cares in the world.

He heard the soft clicking of nails on the hard ice slowly getting closer. Bestiarius cringed. He already knew he had failed - his stomach wouldn’t let him forget it as it twisted and churned and tried to eat itself up. The last thing he wanted to do right now was talk about how badly he messed things up. Bestiarius had a deathly fear of facing his own inadequacies. It wasn’t a particularly uncommon fear, but it was a fear that was fed for years as he worked for the Winterkill Legion. Every single mistake was an excuse for punishment. Every single mistake, for years and to this very day, set his heart racing and made him fear for his life. Acknowledging his failure meant that he had to be prepared to be beaten or killed.

That was simply something that Bestiarius couldn’t bring himself to do. His inability to handle his own shortcomings - and a mistake that brought the death of four other legionaries - forced him to flee into the wastes. He ran for days, unsure if the Legion had soldiers or Hellhounds at his back, but unwilling to stop even for a moment in case they did. Laying here in the snow, soaked through, starving, and helpless; it reminded him eerily of the day he stopped running. The difference was that he wasn’t about to get adopted, fed, and laid down next to a warm crackling fire. He was hunting for the pack that saved him - The Skullhounds - and he couldn’t even catch the food to repay them.

His self-loathing only grew as he stared blankly into the sky, still watching snowflakes gently light on and around him. It wasn’t until he heard a familiar voice that he realized the clicking stopped.

“Besti. Hey. Don’t worry about it, okay? It happens to the best of us.” Gennivere said, circling around him and laying down, blocking Bestiarius’ sopping wet body from the breeze. “We’ll find something to eat, for both of our families. Seal just isn’t on the menu today.”

Bestiarius considered just rolling away and turning his back to Genn. Receiving sympathy was a bizarre, uncomfortable feeling for him. After looking at Genn quietly for a few minutes, he inched closer and buried his own nose into Genn’s ribs.

“My nose is cold.” Bestiarius mumbled, shivering.

“I’ll bet your everything is cold.” Gennivere inched closer and pressed bit more of his body against Besti’s. His fur was much shorter, but he wasn’t soaking wet. Genn had collided with Bestiarius when Besti made a turn far too fast - which sent Besti into the water. The warmth of his body made Besti feel a little better. “I’m sorry. I tried to stop myself, but I just… couldn’t. You came out of nowhere! I had no idea you could run that fast.”

Bestiarius chuffed happily, ruffling Gennivere’s fur. Receiving praise was yet another bizarre feeling. He wasn’t sure how to respond at first. Besti tried to think of the last time he saw someone else receiving praise and how they responded to it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Gennivere laid his head down on the ice, the wind gently rustling his white mane. His body was covered sparsely in dark black spots, strikingly beautiful against his nearly pure-white fur. Despite his dramatically shorter fur, he was still somehow warm - something Bestiarius was intensely grateful for as they laid together in silence. Bestiarius was nowhere near dry, but he felt warmer - inside and out. His thoughts began to turn slowly from self-loathing ones to something more productive.

“What are we going to do, Genn? You know this land far more intimately than I do.” In spite of himself, the cold made his voice rattle. Gennivere’s blue eyes seemed almost magical to Bestiarius. While the blue made them look cold, Genn’s face and expressions made them look warm and kind. They had an inherently soothing quality to them.

“Hmm…” Genn kneaded the nails of his forepaws against the ice in thought, leaving thin scratches on the thick ice. “How much energy do you have? Do you have another hunt in you? The seal is long gone by now, but we may be able to find a lynx or maybe a coyote.”

“I feel empty, Genn.” Bestiarius tried to raise his massive head from the ice. Such a simple task even felt exhausting. He managed to lift it up a few feet, then flopped it on Gennivere, knocking the wind out of him. “Sorry.”

“I feel about the same.” He continued to knead the ice under his toes. They lay in silence for several minutes, before Gen leapt up with a start, knocking Bestiarius’ head onto the ice with a thud. His eyes were locked on the thin scrapes in the ice. “Look. Besti, look!”

“What, what is it?” Bestiarius swung his head around to look at his ice, but only saw the scrapes made by his claws. They actually had a fairly interesting pattern to look at. “You’re a regular Artemisia Gentileschi, Genn, but I don’t see how drawing in the snow is going to fill our bellies.”

Genn shot him an exasperated look. “No. Look, beneath the ice!”

Bestiarius narrowed his eyes at the ice, and at first he didn’t see anything of note. The water beneath was dark and nearly black. He could hear it gurgling from the hole the seal used as an escape route and made Besti use as a swimming pool. Just before he gave up and was about to give Genn the bad news about his apparent hallucinations, he saw it too. There were many shimmering, darting bodies just below the surface of the ice.

Fish. Food. Full bellies.

Bestiarius felt energy rush back into every fiber of his being. He leapt up much as Genn did, but with a bit less grace. He wobbled unsteadily on the ice for a moment before catching his balance. They were very difficult to see from here - the water so dark and the ice so light. He would have to get closer. The thought of soaking his fur again was distinctly unappealing, however.

As he was pondering the best way to grab hold of the fish, he heard more toes clicking on the ice. This time, significantly smaller toes. Chewtoy was running towards them from the shore - and apparently had been for some time - but continually fell every few steps on the slick ice. Her face was more than a little swollen from the ice, but it was a little difficult to tell precisely how swollen it was due to her purple skin. Bestiarius was never quite certain what sort of creature Chewtoy was. She was purple and orange, and very small - probably about half the height of himself. Her skin was soft and smooth, which he didn’t expect at first. She had a very large head and a short fat tail, both adorned with stubby orange spikes. Chewtoy always just called herself a pachy when others asked, but the words meant nothing to him. Ultimately, he decided it didn’t matter - she was a pachy and a pachy was she.

She came holding a bow - which had snapped badly into several pieces - and a heavy-looking bag that was at least two thirds the size that she was. Her face was twisted in an expression of severe worry and concern. Bestiarius was not fond of most tokotas, let alone handlers - but Chewtoy genuinely seemed to care for him and it was difficult to justify hostility towards her. She ran up and dropped the bag, flinging her arms around Besti’s giant head.

“Gosh, are you okay? You’re soaked! I have some towels in my bag that we can dry you off with! Let me get them out, and we can just go home, okay?” She pulled away from his face, her front now also dripping wet. “Ah, dang. It’s okay, no big deal. I can dry myself off, too. Let’s just go h-”

Bestiarius gently butted her with his head, knocking her over. She was short; she didn’t have far to fall. He couldn’t leave now, not without getting food for his pack and for his friends. Invigorated once more, he paws the ice urgently. Chewtoy shifted her gaze to the ice without missing a beat. Somehow, she was the only handler he could easily communicate with - that made this much easier. She looked at it uncertainly for a few seconds before turning back to him.

“I’m going to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to tell me, but I’ll just wait here while you do what you need to do, okay?” She reached up and patted Genn comfortingly on the leg. “Please make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy.”

Bestiarius looked at the ice again. The only way he could think of to get the fish was to go in the water. He had never fished before, but he was already wet. To him, it made the most sense for him to dive in - but Genn had other plans.

“I’m going in. Stay out here and warm up. You’re going to freeze to death if you get wet again.” He padded over to the hole in the ice, watching it as it gurgled and sloshed below. Bestiarius opened his mouth to object, but Gennivere cut him off. “I have much shorter fur than you, Bestiarius. I’m going to do this. Please have the small purple one dry you off.”

Bestiarius puffed up his chest indignantly. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m already wet - it makes more sense for me to get back in the water. There’s no need for both of us to be chilled and miserable. Just let me do it.”

Before he could even finish his speech, Genn had already crouched down in front of the hole. As the final word fell from Besti’s lips, the short-haired tokota’s muscles tense and he lept into the water. Anger flared up in Bestiarius again, but for a much different reason. Refusing to be kept on the sidelines, he ran towards the gap in the ice. As he crouched down, he once again lost his footing, and skid sideways into the water. He could hear Chewtoy shouting something above the ice.

The cold hit him as if someone slammed into his chest, but it came with a feeling of weightlessness as he bobbed in the water. His eyes burned as he tried to open them in the frigid lake. Blinking rapidly, it took several seconds before he could see anything in the darkness. The only thing he could make out was Genn’s white spotted pelt chasing after shimmering blobs. Bestiarius raised his head above the water and took a deep breath of air before diving down below.

He paddled with all four legs, surprising himself with his own speed. It was only a few seconds before one of those shimmering slivers nearly smacked into his face. He recognized it as an arctic char right before he swallowed it whole along with several mouthfuls of water. Bestiarius fully intended to save the fish for later, but his entirely empty stomach had other plans. Before this moment, Bestiarius had never been fond of swimming food - but right now, it tasted like it swam down from the heavens. He didn’t even mind that he swallowed far more water than he did fish.

After rising above to take another breath, he ducked below the ice again. He wasn’t sure what kind of fish he was grabbing, but he made sure to grab as many as he could. Constantly ducking below surface and bobbing back up with fish, he wondered if that’s what the seal’s life was like. He did not envy it. The chill alone made him feel sick all of the way through. The amount of cold water he spat up above the waves made it even worse. Still, he dove under again and again, not allowing his own body to limit him. There were a lot of hounds to feed back home, some of whom were a lot hungrier than himself. It had been a particularly hard winter. The cold season’s scarcity had already caused the death of several young pups and made many others too weak to stand. There had been enough heartbreak for twenty winters, enough bodies for forty.

On Bestiarius’ word, there would be no more.