Dawnlark Plains winter waning

Den-digging! Open to anyone from Morningside or Maplewood.

There was an odd feeling deep in Easy's chest. Daddy had put her in charge of something. Her. Not Dawn or Pema or Dauntless, but her.

And she didn't like digging. It was a pain, it was dirty, and the mud got under her fur and made her cold, but he'd given this task to her, and she wasn't going to let him down. She was going to dig until her paws froze off, and they were going to have a new den for Catori in no time at all.

Large, powerful paws scraped against the frozen ground. Easy's breath came out in puffs of silver-white as she worked, digging a narrow channel up into the side of a tall hill. She'd thought a den was something you were meant to dig down for, but Daddy insisted on up. When the snow melted, he said, a den dug downhill would flood. That made sense, she supposed.

But it was still a pain, and she hated it. "Stupid mud," she muttered under her breath.