Big Salmon Lake Dashing Thru' the Snow

The snows were getting deeper. For some creatures this was an inconvenience, a sign that the wintry apocalypse had once more arrived and now it was time to hide in their cave bunkers until spring reared its head once more. For some it was a herald of bitter cold and harder times ahead, pawing through ever-increasing drifts just to find a miserable little withered mouthful of grass to desperately snatch.

And then there was Nynka—Nynka who could smell and track rodents a-plenty in the wetly crunching layers of snowflakes, Nynka whose nearly-pure-white coat blended right in with the chilly winter landscape this close to the ground. Nynka who had discovered that like a bird cavorting and cartwheeling among the clouds, a small lithe weaselbody could go diving in and out among the gentle rolls of the snowdrifts. Woo-ah-haaah! she crowed as she crested one snowbank and dove straight back down into another. Ooh, I'll get you, my pretty, she crooned almost affectionately to the hapless mouse whose burrow she came across only a foot or so down. There's no hiding from Nynka! The brash little weasel came up for another quick breath of air, and impatiently shook the clinging flakes from her whiskers before leaping up and arcing right back under the snow whence she had just come. Nynka wasn't really all that hungry, having recently dined on both a vole and another unwary mouse who might or might not have been some sort of relation to this one, but hey, a free meal was not to be passed up when it went scurrying about in front of one's nose. Speaking of which, Nynka glimpsed the tail of her target briefly before it whipped out of sight around the next bend, and spurred herself onward with a vicious little cackle. Come heee-eeere, little mousie; your brother and child were delicious!

Nynka's malicious smirk changed quickly to a mask of surprise however as, plunging carelessly forth, she found herself suddenly standing on ice and then skidding out of the uncooperative snowbank altogether. Her paws scrabbled instinctively but only managed to get herself turned around a full 180 degrees before she slid slowly to a halt a short distance away. Nynka cursed, glancing back at the snowbank into which even now her prey must be burrowing deeper and further away, but as she moved to bound forward she found herself suddenly leaping back in surprise instead, with her hair all abristle. Her mind scrambled for purchase just as much as her feet for a moment, and then as she managed to get her paws back under her she caught a second, better glimpse of the face that had suddenly loomed before her and given her such a scare.

Nynka's eyes went wide, and then narrow. She scuffled her way forward across the slick surface to glare almost straight down at the glassy-eyed and gape-mouthed salmon hovering down below. Hey, Mr. Fish! said Nynka as she smacked a paw temperamentally down onto the unforgiving surface. (The ice gave a small, ominously creaky little "crack" at the motion, which Nynka blithely ignored.) You almost made me lose my lunch! That mouse better not have disappeared or else I'mma gonna come back to dig out and eat you instead, just you wait! With this threat left dangling in the air behind her, Nynka slipped forward another quick step across the pond, and then gathered herself for another mightily heroic leap back into the beckoning snowbanks whence the apparently-almost-as-slippery little rodents lived.