Chapter 2

Well, here it is; as promised, I'd like to present to you the edited version of Chapter 2

Nothing remained of the cow moose but an unorganized pile of pink bones scattered about a small portion of the den, these bones also accompanied by a few varying lengths of furry skin. There was also only the tiniest pool of blood on the ground where her body once lay, but that was quickly being lapped up thirstily by four bright pink tongues. Aniu lifted her head and licked her lips with a loud smack, this causing the three pups to only lift their eyes while keeping their tongues busy with the crimson delicacy at their paws.

"Bed time," she informed to the pups, receiving an onslaught of displeased groans from them as they raised their heads.

"But Momma," the solid black Berai begged, "we're even not tired yet."

"Yeah Momma," Shadow Fang backed, lifting his head and licking his lips clean of the blood that caked his muzzle, "the moon only just came up."

However, Berai and Shadow Fang's arguments were quickly made void as small yawns escaped from them for the hot meat in their stomachs was beginning to settle; but they quickly recovered from their physical display of fatigue and regained their energetic appearance.

Aniu let a small smile take her lips and chuckled when she saw this.

"Not tired huh?" she asked playfully.

The two pups shook their heads and Balto joined in the argument by throwing out a "Nope," but that was hastily followed by a yawn on his behalf.

Aniu arched an eyebrow.

"So that wasn't a yawn that I just heard then?" she asked testily, squinting the eye opposite from that of her raised brow.

Balto only shook his head and took a step forward as if to prance about the den as a demonstration of the energy that he still possessed, but when his paw touched the floor of their cave it was almost as though he had set it down on ice, resulting in it rocketing forward and out from under his body causing him to stumble and fall face first into the blood. It instantly soaked into his fur on impact and a substantial amount of it went splashing out onto Shadow Fang and Berai, speckling their bodies with tiny crimson spots. There was a groan from the two as soon as the viscous liquid made contact with their fur and hysterical laughter from their mother, for this was something that she had never seen.

"Way to go Balto," Berai seethed distastefully, using the side of her forepaw to wipe her face clean of the blood.

"Yeah," Shadow Fang answered, shaking his fur to try and free it of the sticky liquid.

Balto blushed, still lying belly down in the puddle and slowly picked himself up into a sitting position where upon he slipped again, nearly falling; but he managed to catch himself and righted his body up onto all fours then walked cautiously out of the slippery substance, leaving red paw prints and tiny drip marks to gauge his progress.

"Sorry guys," Balto apologized sheepishly, letting a nervous grin crawl across his features as he came to a stop and eased himself back onto his haunches in a position that faced his siblings.

The fur on his chest, belly, and legs was literally painted red with the aqueous substance, and was sticking up sporadically in places where it had already begun to dry, causing his appearance to become nothing short of ridiculous. But in light of just how ludicrous Balto looked, his brother and sister remained composed, for they knew what would have to happen now. Aniu, however, regained herself enough to open her eyes, and when she saw her son looking the way he did she fell back into yet another fit of laughter, this time rolling over onto her back because, one: she thought it was the cutest and funniest thing that she had ever seen, and two: his facial expression was nothing short of priceless. Balto didn't see it this way, though, and neither did Shadow Fang or Berai, each one for a combination of their own reasons and for a common interest. Each one sat in a small triangle, running their eyes upon each other wordlessly and awaiting the mellowing of their mother's humor.

Finally that dreaded occurrence became present in Aniu, her laughs beginning to become strained due to the pain that she now felt in her sides, abdomen, and lungs that were a direct result of it. She lay sideways on the ground for a moment, breathing hard and occasionally allowing light giggles to escape her, and then finally picked herself up onto her haunches, raising her head up and then lowering her muzzle down again slightly so that she may look upon her pups. It was then that she realized the gravity of the situation and she sighed.

"Look at you guys;" she mused in an exasperated tone, "you all are a mess."

The pups all lowered their eyes, knowing what was about to happen to them.

"Come here," Aniu ordered flatly.

Balto and his two siblings sauntered languidly to their mother, stopping a short distance in front of her paws. Aniu regarded the three of them for a brief moment and then, with one solid motion, she leaned her head down and took Balto's scruff gently into her jaws and lifted him up off of the ground, bringing him in close to her, and then laid down, lightly depositing the pup between her legs. Balto groaned in distaste, for this was a very humiliating thing to endure, but Aniu ignored him and slowly ran her tongue along one of Balto's sides, running the pink muscle against the grain of his fur, causing his still loose skin to become folded together in a small assortment of ripples in one place near where his mother's tongue would come to rest at. Aniu reached said spot and repeated the process, licking along the same stretch as before, for the first stroke did next to nothing in terms of getting the steadily drying blood out of Balto's fur. Balto could hear sniggering from his brother and sister, but he knew that soon enough it would be his turn to laugh, for it would appear as though they forgot that they would need a bath as well after that little episode, so for the time being their laughter he ignored. Aniu finished her run on Balto's fur and lifted her head so that she could gaze down upon him.

"You should be more careful next time," she inquired to him, causing him to blush and his siblings' hushed laughter to become more pronounced.

Aniu sighed and then went back to work, licking along his body again and then this time using her teeth to comb through the fibers of his fur so as to keep it from becoming clumped together. Finally, after a stretch of fifteen minutes, she finished with Balto, this truly being the longest and most berating bath that he had ever taken; but the result was well worth it. Most, if not all of the blood was now freed from his fur, and his pelt was as smooth as an undisturbed blanket of fresh snow. Balto rolled over from his position on his back, to his chest and then rose to his feet, stepping out over his mother's leg and toward the back of the den in search of nothing more than a soft place in which to curl up, for he was exhausted. However, on his way past his still giggling siblings, he whispered to them.

"You're next," and then he continued on toward the back of the den without so much as a single word or a double take back to see how they had reacted.

Shadow Fang and Berai heard this from their older brother and turned to each other with a gulp.

"Berai, your turn," Aniu informed tiredly, turning to face her daughter.

Berai sighed in embarrassment and conceded to her mother's wish, padding wordlessly to the spot in which her brother recently lay and then lying down herself. Shadow Fang had had all of the fun he could with the situation while it was still Balto's turn, so he merely spectated the event with eyes that grew heavier and heavier with each passing minute.

He didn't even know that he had dozed until he heard his name called firmly, and upon hearing the voice he shot his head up into attention and turned to find Berai standing beside him.

"Your turn," she stated with a yawn and then padded to the back of the den as well, where upon arrival she curled up at Balto's side.

Shadow Fang nodded and staggered tiredly to his mother, finding it hard to keep his eyes open for any substantial amount of time. When he arrived between his mother's legs he simply flopped himself down, too worn out to even care about what went on. Aniu sighed in relief, for this would be the last one, and then began her work, slowly running her tongue along Shadow Fang's back. Shadow Fang felt the caress of his mother's tongue and it began to sooth him toward slumber, though he fought hard to keep his eyes open. In the end, however, sleep took him away and he drifted off into the deep, black abyss of its realm. Aniu noticed this and decided then to call it good, for she had nearly finished with him anyway. She licked him one more time, then smiled down upon him and began to shift her body into a sitting position, her movements being made with extreme care so as to not wake the pup that slept in her embrace. When the desired position was accomplished, she slowly bent her head toward Shadow Fang and gently scooped him up into her jaws, this action failing to even cause the pup to stir. Aniu then rose to her paws and began to slowly make her way to the back of the den, stopping upon arrival and gently depositing her pup with the others, laying him down so that his body nearly touched Berai and Balto's.

Aniu gazed upon her children with a sudden sense of moroseness. Though she was happy with the way things were going, this wasn't the life that she wanted for her pups. She knew that they deserved so much better than she or her mate could provide out in this hellish place that was the Alaskan Wilderness; but she also knew that she could not provide them with a life in a place where they would all be able to at least get a future, for she knew that for Balto, his future there would be almost as bad, if not worse than the one that he had etched out for him if he were to stay with her while this was not the case for the other two; for they were lucky enough to take more after their husky father in terms of physicality. With this being fact, they looked enough like huskies to pass off in town as a stray; but Balto on the on the other hand was different. He looked just like his father, having the same color, same eyes, and the same markings; but Balto had been born with the build of a wolf, that look of which he had gotten from his mother. This being fact, Aniu knew that the three would become divided if she were to let them go and live in the nearby town, but she wouldn't separate the three; they were really all they had. Balto was a light sleeper and he could sense his mother's troubled gaze, causing him to blink awake. With a yawn he lifted his head and looked and up to her, noticing immediately that she was upset.

He yawned and asked sleepily, "What's wrong, Mother? Is everything okay?"

Aniu heard her son's voice and it snapped her from her thoughts, but seeing him resurrected them. He was so innocent; it broke her heart even more to think about that tragic truth on his behalf.

"It's nothing sweetie, just lost in thought," she replied slowly, giving off a halfhearted smile of assurance.

Balto knew better, for he could easily read others' emotions, and carefully rose to his feet, stepping carefully out to avoid disturbing his siblings, and then padded over to his mother's feet. Upon arrival, he

curled up into a little furry ball and closed his eyes. Aniu stood wordlessly for a few moments, simply gazing down upon him for a few moments and then sighed softly; laying herself down in a fashion which placed her eldest son pressed up against her chest and then gently laid her head down on her paws. She closed her eyes for a moment, but sleep simply wouldn't take her, for she could smell an awful storm brewing in the nearing distance. This storm would normally not concern her to this degree, but this would the first time she would have to endure the stress of the unknown that it brought with it; that worry being centered upon the whereabouts of her mate. How she prayed that he was not out in what she could sense was quite possibly the worst storm of the winter.

Twenty Five Miles Out of Nenana

"Ross!" came a strained voice that was quickly carried away in the stiff breeze that whipped across the land like bats out of Hell.

Snow fell from the sky above, but it never made contact with the ground. The tiny crystals of ice whipped and circled through the air sporadically, throwing itself boldly at anything that lay in its path. It stuck instantly to anything that it touched, freezing itself to the faces and backs of the seven dog team that drove their way helplessly through it. Their faces were caked with a thick mask of ice, one that would crack with motion and tug irritatingly at their fur, only to be frozen back in place a few seconds later by ice that was more than willing to fill the voids. Their frosty breaths rose in long puffs of steam from their mouths, but that would be quickly stolen away by the frigid breeze, freezing nearly instantly and depositing itself upon their backs or the dog behind them, resulting in a team of seven icy, dog-like ghosts plodding desperately through the wrath of this squall.

"Keep on there, Ross! Hike!" the frozen-clothed musher yelled over the whistling of the wind, though it did little to carry all the way up to the lead dog's ice filled ears.

"Ross!" the voice called again, this once significantly stronger than that of the musher's.

The normally brown and tan husky paused for a moment and turned to the dog behind him. Though it was hard to tell due to his thick blanket of white, this dog was small but powerful, and had a heavy black coat that ended and merged into gold from his belly down.

"This blizzard is getting worse by the minuet!" the swing dog to his back left yelled above the wind, "Maybe we should look for a place to bunker down! I don't know how much longer the musher or we can stay out here before we freeze to death!"

Ross turned and looked out in front of him, evaluating the situation carefully. He couldn't even see past his own muzzle. All he could see were just millions of tiny snow crystals blowing and swirling before and into his squinting eyes.

"Come on there now, Ross! Move on! Hike!" the musher called again over the roar of the blizzard.

Ross stood motionless for a moment more and thought as he finally came to his decision. Being a well experienced leader, and having run this stretch of forest so many times, he knew they were off the trail, and he also knew that there was no way that they would be able to pick it up again until the storm died down anyway. There was no point in getting everyone killed trying to achieve the impossible.

He turned his head forward once more and strained himself against his harness.

"Come on!" he ordered with a pained groan.

The other six followed suit, getting down low in their harnesses and began to pull with all they were worth; but this task was made extremely difficult seeing as that their brief pause had caused the runners to become locked in the frozen grip of the snow on the ground. The musher yelled out over the storm for his dogs to press on, but they still made no progress, and after only a moment's thought was he able to understand why. To affirm his suspicions the musher leaned his beaver skin and ice masked head out to the side of the sled, running his gaze down to the runners and finding that they were indeed frozen. The musher cursed his luck under his breath and called out to the dogs.

"Gee!" reached Ross' ears and he and the others forcefully lurched their bodies to the right, causing the sled to in turn pivot a slight degree in that direction.

"Haw!" came the command to break left, which they did by throwing their bodies to their west, which then caused the sled to pivot in that direction in a manner similar to that of earlier.

Satisfied that he had succeeded, the musher firmly gripped the handle bar with his nearly frozen fingers and made one final morale boosting command.

"Get on up there guys!"

Though it felt as though they had traveled a good five miles or so, the truth was that they had only achieved half of a single unit of that measurement. The initial adrenaline from his musher's inspirational words had long since faded away into what was now a subconscious and robotic drive. His feet were beginning to fail him and were far past the point of numbing out. The blood that seeped from his cracked pads froze nearly seconds after leaving his body, leaving irritating chunks of blood and ice between the digits of his paws, normally a very painful thing if his feet were not so numb. The blizzard was ruthless and it swallowed them alive in its great white washed hell, beating the very life out of their bodies with its bone chilling cold, cutting wind and stinging snow. And yet, in light of the situation at hand, Ross found his mind drifting away from all of this and back to his beautiful mate and three pups that were anxiously awaiting his return. He could not let some storm take him away from them, and he knew this, but it was beginning to look as though that was an increasingly growing possibility if he didn't get out of this damn weather soon.

"Don't think like that," he scolded in his mind, "You're gonna find shelter and you're going to get home."

Ross' self-talk seemed to give him new life and he let their faces once again creep into his mind, further building this newfound life into a strength that he didn't know he possessed. This allowed him to keep pushing, even though his body screamed at him to simply quit. He refused to give up now. Focusing his mind once again upon the task ahead, Ross dug down deep and brought forth the strength that he was able to summon out of the depths of his failing body. The dogs behind him, however, were not able to attest to his new strength and openly groaned in their agony whenever they felt their leader's pace quicken. The musher did his best to keep the morality up in both the team and himself, but even he was finding it harder and harder to keep his mind where it needed to be and soon found himself seeing images of his family dancing in the ever present crystals that whipped past him.

Soon enough though, even Ross' iron mentality began to break and he once again found his mind wandering, causing him to walk headlong straight into a rock and his team to ram him from behind. The pile up that resulted only made matters worse and only added to the desperation of their situation, and as the musher strained against the wind to their side so that he may unharness his dogs, Ross found himself beginning to lose hope of ever seeing his family again. However, as luck would have it, when the musher arrived to free Ross from his harness, he stood high enough to see over the rock in which his dog had hit, finding that it was part of the outside of a relatively deep crater in the ground, about seven feet near the base of its walls. Exuberant over his find, the musher found new strength begin to surge over him much like it had for Ross a few moments ago, and he used this to quickly unharness his dogs and lead them one by one down into the crater and to the wall farthest from them so as to get them out of the wind. The last dog was lead inside and then the musher ascended the slope a final time, breaking the ice on the tarp that covered his supplies and pulled only enough of it up so that he could find his tent, of which was also balled around a thick bear skin blanket and a coffee tin of hot coals that he had saved from their last campsite. Smiling at his own cleverness, he gathered the items into his hand threw the tarp carelessly back over his sled and then quickly descended the slope into the crater. He reached the lee wall and found that his dogs had already begun to make nests for themselves, and hastily began to set up his tent, a task made difficult due to the fact that his fingers were nearly frozen solid. He unraveled the plastic item and then did the same with his blanket, being careful not to shake the coffee tin too much to assure that he did not accidentally extinguish the smoldering coals that he had inside. Once he had accomplished the task of freeing the tin he looked inside and smiled, seeing the little orange ember still clinging to life inside of its soft bed of tinder and small twigs. He then looked around the quite lengthy span of ice that was the bottom of the crater, assuming that a place such as this would also gather wood inside of it like a grease trap whenever runoff from the melting snow pooled into it. He smiled victoriously when he saw a sizeable piece of a branch sticking up out of the snow a short distance to his left and hastily picked it up into his arms.

Though he had to dig a couple of times, the musher was able to gather more than enough wood to build a fire and as he settled the last stick into its place in the pile that would soon serve as fuel for fire, the man reached to his side and again produced his ember tin, carefully removing said ember inside of all of its wrap and then blew into it, causing it to smoke significantly. After a few more gentle blows, the kindling and twigs suddenly burst into a tiny flame, to which the musher laughed at happily as soon as the sight reached his eyes. He then quickly inserted the flaming mass into the base of the small sticks and began feeding it more as they were slowly engulfed. The musher repeated this process, adding gradually larger and larger stick, until what was once a smoldering ember became a large and roaring fire that crackled over the scream of the wind. The exhausted musher then spent a solid twenty minutes warming himself and after said time was elapsed he looked distastefully to is tent, said "to Hell with that," and wrapped himself up in his bear skin blanket, and simply lay himself down beside the fire, close enough so that he could feel its warmth while far enough away that the heat radiating off of it didn't singe the insulating fur. With a tired grin, he lay his head down on his arms and let his eyelids fall slowly closed.

Hope you guys enjoyed. This one was a lot longer than my original draft; but I'm happy with it, and if you are too, let me know in a review.