Disclaimer: Ford and Arthur and this journey are not mine. They do spend a lot of time with me, or at least, I force my company on them an awful lot, but contrary to any opinions that might hold the opposite view, this does not make them my property. I am just mowing the lawn in DNA's garden (and not getting paid – I do it for love and rich tea biscuits)

Preparation for a rabbit-skin bag

Ford pulled on a hat. He hated to do it, it crushed his hair and covered his ears so that he couldn't listen out for danger so effectively, and listening out for danger was important and had kept him alive on more planets than he cared to remember. He pulled on a hat because it was absolutely freezing and Arthur had told him something about how you lose most of your heat through your head, so it is very important to wear a hat when it is cold. Ford wasn't sure if this held true for Betelgeusians, but Arthur had been very insistent, and somehow it had stuck in Ford's brain. He pulled on this particular hat because it was the only one he had.

In years gone by, had he felt moved to cover his head in a heat-conservation exercise, he would undoubtedly have used his towel for the purpose. In fact, his towel was keeping his kidneys warm at the moment (Ford wasn't sure about his kidneys – he had never listened in biology classes at school after the point where they had explained what to put where, and his anatomy might well place them, if they existed at all, in his knees for all he knew, but this was another point of order on which Arthur had been most specific. 'Tuck in your shirt, Ford, you'll catch your death,' he had once said, back on Earth, and the ensuing explanation, which had actually been a little sketchy, was lengthy enough to ensure that Ford would never forget it.), and it would have been a miracle of drapery to get it to cover both areas at once, but since he had a hat, it didn't matter.

This particular hat had been made by Arthur, around the time that Ford had first admitted to a deplorable lack of headgear in his travelling wardrobe. It was made of half a rabbit skin, a bit of fox that Arthur swore came from the more fragrant end, and an end-roll scrap of deer hide. It was squat and ill fitting and had bits and pieces flapping off it where Arthur's nettle string stitching left something to be desired, but it did have a bobble on top. A bobble with three rather pointy claws that Ford had found invaluable for opening shellfish, scratching his back and picking his teeth after a meal of dried ex-ungulate.

The hat had been with Ford since a day or so after they had abandoned their second raft and discovered that this new land was a little on the chilly side. He was just about getting used to it, and had to admit that he kept warmer with it on. It also meant that he could convincingly ignore Arthur when he wasn't talking about anything important, on the pretext that the hat muffled all sound. In reality, as they tramped further north, the wind was picking up to such an extent that conversation was becoming increasingly difficult, but Arthur still tried. 'Poor monkey,' thought Ford, and worked through another couple of ideas as to why humans have to keep talking.

As they slipped and scrabbled their way up an unpleasantly steep cliff face, Ford looked round at Arthur. Arthur was not wearing a hat and he looked very cold indeed. Arthur was not wearing a hat because he didn't have one. He had sensibly worn his hat – a charming little woven grass number that looked suspiciously like a lady's wide-brimmed summer gardening affair – across the sunlit paradises through which they had first travelled on leaving the Golgafrinchams, and during both sea crossings. He had explained to Ford, as part of the same explanation that had led to the furry confection currently gracing his skull, that the hat had 'kept the sun off' at the start, and 'protected his hair from the ravages of salt and spray' while upon the ocean blue. Ford thought that it was probably a good thing that Arthur had been forced away from terrestrial commercial television for a while.

Unfortunately, by the time it had done service as bush hat and sou'wester, it looked less like a hat, and more like a bird's nest, and one night on the raft, it was taken as such by a passing gull and removed to a storm-swept ledge to do nursery service for two extremely fluffy, extremely savage chicks, one of whom was destined to deposit its gratitude on Arthur's unprotected head during his return journey. Making Ford's hat had taken him all his time until they had got past the point where he could sit with his plump little bone needle for a few hours and not freeze to death, so he had never got around to making one for himself. There was something about the way Arthur had looked at him as he presented it to Ford, that had put the mockers on any vague (and slightly worrying,) ideas that Ford might have had about refusing it and making Arthur wear it instead.

Ford watched the human pull his animal skins closer around him and tuck a stray foreleg under his dressing gown cord. He shivered and Ford looked around them, squinting into the misty, icy air. It was sort of dark, and had been for hours and hours, but it seemed to be getting even darker now. Time to find shelter. He pulled himself over a rocky outcrop and found himself on a narrowish ledge. It was pathetic, but it had an overhang and a build-up of scratty driftwood and something spongy and marine that suggested recent desertion by birds. Still, It wasn't covered in guano like most of the ledges, and it would be soft and keep the wind off a bit. He reached his hand back over the rock and grabbed at the waving wrist that was all he could see of Arthur. Hauling him bodily up onto the ledge, he pulled him back under the overhang and they huddled together against the cliff-face. Ford reached into his satchel and retrieved some of the fish they'd dried on the mast of their raft. He handed some to Arthur and they ate, if not happily, at least with a healthy measure of self-congratulation.

In fact, with the wind off them and a little creative packing of the marine sponge around their bodies, it wasn't too cold on the ledge. Ford waited until Arthur was safely asleep, snoring quietly on his shoulder, his breath whiffling in the fur wrapped round his neck, and took off the hat. He carefully reached over and nudged it down over Arthur's thinning hair until it felt secure, then he laid his cheek on the top of it and went to sleep, the three claws tickling in his right ear.

A/N: It occurred to me that a bag of the apparent durability of the one Arthur made during his sojourn in prehistoric Islington could not be the work of a beginner in the craft. It stands to reason that Arthur had been honing his skills on other items prior to that particular Agrajag assault.

I'm not sure whether this is going to be a one-shot or end up rambling off on its own like everything else seems to, please be lovely and review and tell me what it ought to do ;-D