Hideaway Strath bang the old hollow rubber ball around.

Fig didn't notice when his mother approached. He was too distracted with the limb, which proved to be rather heavy, and rather stuck. He tugged determinedly for a while, then stood back and huffed as he looked it over thoughtfully. He paced around it and grabbed it again, tugging it from a different angle in hopes of getting better results that never came.

After another few minutes, he stood back once again. His frustration was growing, but it felt oddly good. It was nice to be angry instead of sad for a while. It was also nice to have a problem in front of him that he felt he could actually solve, rather than one he had no hope of fixing.

Fig followed the branch off of the path where it appeared to be tangled in some shrubbery. He peered thoughtfully at it, calculating, then steadily went to work trying to dig the tree branch free.