Cold World
She pokes her big shaggy head out of the snowdrift and shakes. She snuffles and blinks in the bright morning air. The blast of frozen wind that pummels her, tosses fresh snow into the air from atop her gigantic head and forms a prism of brilliant color against the sea of white on white. Her enormous paws crest the top of the drift and lift her form out of the rank confines of the den below. Plaintive chuffing and mewing reaches her sensitive ears from below and she at last pulls herself free and topples down the steep embankment, stretching as she slides.
She toboggans down the rise stretching and scratching, gloriously free of the warm burrow, enormous paws in the air, rubbing her back against the crusty permafrost, scratching a four month itch. Her muscles feel cramped and weak after such little use. It has been four months, buried in the embankment with her young; four months that have been all about them. She takes these first moments only for herself; the glory of being free in the fresh Arctic air and chilly sunshine.
Back atop the embankment two tiny heads poke out of the hole. They blink and whine, knowing they must follow, but for the moment taking in the sights around them with paralytic terror. They have never seen nor imagined a place as amazingly vast and empty and large and cold as this could exist. Their whole lives have been each other, Mama and the cozy, dark burrow. Their first steps are tentative and clumsy and they whine in anger and frustration as they slip and slide, their paws not big enough to be snowshoes, their claws still fragile and tender and so new.
At the bottom of the embankment, Mama hears their fretting and makes a low rumbling bark in her throat to signal them. They must follow. It’s the first true test of what will be many in the months and years to come. She cannot scramble to the top and collect them. If they don’t follow, they will starve and die.
When their next steps are met by even more slipping and sliding, the whining cubs eventually tumble down the hill, propelled by instinctive need and terror, but also by the sheer force of gravity. Their tiny forms collide with her massive one, and they hurriedly scramble atop her warm solid mass and begin to nurse.
As she feels her young feed, she lifts her shaggy head and sniffs, taking in the surroundings. She has a nose so sensitive it can detect a seal taking a breath at an air hole from many miles away. She can also smell if any of her own kind is nearby as well, for they pose a danger to the helpless cubs more than almost anything, besides starvation.
Later in the day, the wind shifts and she senses trouble. Something is not right. The air is much warmer than it should be, and the sea, many miles journey to the West seems closer than normal. In a short while she and the cubs must begin their journey to the sea, many hundreds of miles away. It is a long and treacherous jaunt, but she must replenish her fat stores as she has lost more than half her body weight caring for them over the long months of winter. It has been many months since she has had sustenance of any kind. The last of her fat reserves was used to provide milk for the cubs.
They must leave soon if the cubs are to survive. She must reach the sea ice to hunt for seals and with the shortened winters, the hunting season is likewise shortened.
Later that night, with the cubs safely ensconced in the den, she climbs to the highest peak around, literally clawing her way to the icy reaches. She sniffs the wind and chuffs in discomfort. She has an excellent, almost preternatural sense of the weather and its many moods and changes. A storm is coming. A true Arctic blizzard is heading their way. It may delay their journey by a week or more. Though she could brave such a storm, she knows that the cubs would surely perish if wandering and exposed on the open plains. Their journey must wait.
She shuffles down the mountain, back to the den. The next morning, the blizzard is howling outside, and the den is once again enclosed in blackness.
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Two weeks later, their slow, ambling journey begins. The cubs do not know that they will never see the cozy den or the familiar embankment again and that the journey will be perilous and long. They only know they must follow Mama wherever she goes.
Mama wanders ahead, her head tossing from side to side, always sampling the air, testing the weather and being certain none of her own kind are about. A male of her own kind would attack and eat the cubs and she would be near helpless to protect them in her current condition. Meeting one would be disaster.
Their journey is diverted several times when she senses one near. They spend the frigid nights in rocky outcroppings and abandoned caves far from where foraging males tend to wander. Her sleep is restless, her ears always alert. One night, she hears the thudding, shotgun booms of the ice cracking in the distance. The sea shore is much closer than she had anticipated and this worries her. The best hunting is on the ice fields.
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The next day, they reach the ice fields. Her familiar hunting ground is gone. This barren place of cracked floes and icy peaks is not suitable hunting territory at all. Furthermore, the ground is far too unstable and the cubs have not developed the thick, coarse fur that is necessary for them to swim yet.
She has only one chance. Her instinct to feed and her instinct to nurture the cubs are battling within her. Everything within tells her that food lays in the direction of the sea, somewhere off in the distance. They will all die if she doesn’t find it. She does the only thing she can.
She dives. She swims.
