Dahozhoni Meadow cut my loosened tongue

Recyled and reworked a lonely post of mine, hope that’s cool!

They woke up to thick snowflakes tumbling from a gray sky. Towhee stepped out of the palazzo—Bushtit had wanted to spend their last night in the canyon there—and called for her son to come out and see. She watched his face closely as he examined the flurries in the air, then eyed the dusting on the ground. She expected him to find it magical; it was his first snow, after all.

-Thanks,- he signed after a moment, -I hate it. Can we go back to the desert now?-

Towhee barked out a surprised laugh, then bobbed her head. He had been begging to return to the lowlands for the past few days. She wouldn’t mind slightly warmer climes herself, especially since her bad leg had begun to bother her. She often woke up to numbness, which turned into painful tingling once she started moving. And the damn thing was stiff.

Careful not to let her child see her limping, she guided him up and out of the canyon. They moseyed through Sleepy Fox Hollow, then climbed over the crags on its western flank. When they reached the frozen creek there, Towhee asked to sit for a bit. She wanted to ice her bothersome leg, though she could think of no way to do that without calling Bushtit’s attention to it.

Soon after that, the brittle grass underfoot gave way to familiar sand and scrub. Towhee signaled Bushtit to a stop, fighting a grimace. This was as good a place as any to stop and explore at their leisure. She still hadn’t decided if they would go east afterward to check out some places neither one of them had never seen… or possibly keep going south and pay another visit at Verapaz.

Towhee didn’t realize she’d gotten lost in her thoughts until Bushtit’s flailing limbs called her attention to him. He pointed at a figure running across the meadow like a bat out of hell, kicking up literal plumes of dust in its wake. Orange eyes squinted, she shifted closer to her son.