Welcome to Gaia! ::

The swamp may have been cold -- at least for those kin who were used to living within it -- but for Speaks Once, it was nearly unbearably hot. It was warm and humid and the mud stuck to her hooves and her coat: not that anyone would ever hear her complain about it. The only complaint to pass from the totoma was the endless, irritable shaking of her feet, to try and get the squelching mud off. The snow tended to gather in low places and stay, but anywhere else it melted within hours, forming a thick and nearly impenetrable soup that stuck to everything. In days her coat had matted and stained a dull, uniform brown.

The only thing good about the swamp -- and its Ache that had settled deep into her bones, as steady a pain as frostbite -- was that Asks-Again had come with her. She had looked over her shoulder one evening to find the buck behind her, as full of words as she was not. Not a day had gone by without him speaking and her listening.

They come to the end of a copse of apple trees that evening, whose apples had all fallen off, leaving little pockmarked holes in the snow. It is simple enough work to root around in the snow and mud, pushing it aside with thick plating and horns, to find the half-buried apples and eat them. Speaks Once makes a little wordless hmp of contentment.

If the buck's diatribe hurts her ears, Speaks Once does not seem to show it: she merely stares at the buck until his words are spent, shrugs, and then jerks her mud-crusted head towards the swamp as whole. They are here now, hoof-sore and lean of flank. They have come all this way to fight the ache. Why go back now? What sense would that make?

Speaks Once is a doe of strong common sense. Perhaps if the swamp relinquishes its aching hold on their bones they will return to the peaks and crags they both love so much -- for Speaks Once, though she does not voice it, feels the same way. But now they're here. And the apples, at least, are still good.

She chews thoughtfully, swallows, and then raises her eyebrows. There is a thin line of mangroves to their south, and the snow not so dense there. It will be, if nothing else, an interesting place to explore.