From here onward we're going to be getting into some themes of loss, death, and abandonment. Please read at your discretion.
"So what was the problem?" Peaches asked later on that day.
"What problem?" Julian asked, his focus coming back to her from where it seemed to have been wandering between a flock of birds in the sky, the willow trees they were walking beneath, and a song hummed under his breath.
"Earlier with my parents. Uncle Crash said they were bothering you, and then they acted like nothing was wrong when I came. What did they ask you?"
"Oh, that." Julian smiled, flowing into their conversation easily and shrugging. "They just wanted to remind me to watch out for you. And then they asked about the route. I tried to explain it to them, and for a couple of minutes, Manny didn't say anything. I was starting to wonder if they were going to say no because they've been worried that we don't have enough of a plan in place. But then he was fine with it all of a sudden."
"That's weird." Peaches blinked at the barely-noticeable path in front of them. She tried to think of anything, anywhere, that would cause Dad to react that way. The only place that came to mind was back where his first family had been killed by humans, but that would take months to reach. Besides, Julian knew the story as well as her, and they weren't about to go waltzing back there. "I guess they would have said something if they weren't okay with it."
"Yeah, which is probably a good thing. I don't exactly have a backup plan."
"You never do." She laughed at him, running her trunk through some willow strands, enjoying seeing this part of the continent for the very first time.
"If I did, I wouldn't have met you." Julian smiled quietly, unintentionally contemplative.
Maybe Dad's strange mood swing wasn't such a big deal. If it hadn't stopped them, it probably didn't matter why he was acting weird.
"That was the luckiest day of my life." She bumped into him gently, beginning their usual game.
Julian walked into her shoulder in response. "I'm just glad you wanted to do this with me. Not everyone wants to move around so much…ooh, look a cloud shaped like rabbit!"
"I needed something different in my life. I needed someone who wasn't so…well, concerned." She nudged him back. It drove Dad nuts when they walked like this, swelling toward and away from each other lazily. A small part of her had loved it all the more just for that reason.
Julian went from staring at the sky to looking back at her. "I'm excited to do this with you."
"Me too."
000
Manny couldn't believe how lucky they'd gotten.
With free reign and the intent to roam, the kids could have chosen to go anywhere. Including up to the North. In fact, for the last couple of nights, he'd lain awake, certain that they would be heading to the one place he never wanted to visit again.
Instead, it was east. And he'd fumbled to voice his approval quickly enough.
Now he just hoped they'd be safe. Peaches was a tough little kid who'd grown into an equally assured young woman. And Julian…he could probably get by on his personality. Whatever brute strength he did possess he wouldn't use, that was for sure.
Now they were at breakfast, snatching leaves from the tops of the trees. The upper canopy was slowly receding to their appetites, and the midmorning sun added a little warmth to the frosty air.
"Can we please goooo!" Eddie whined from somewhere up on his wife's tusks.
"It's too cold today."
Manny tried not to groan as the twins did laps over Ellie's shoulders and haunches, complaining.
It's too cold today. They'd been repeating that to the possums all morning. Now was not the time for a day trip to the waterfall anyway. They needed to stick around for a while in case the kids needed to come back. Then they could begin to make a new routine.
They had some adjusting to do now, but they'd pull through. Their herd was nothing if not resilient.
At least Sid had ditched whatever mood he'd been in yesterday. And while a part of Manny wondered if he knew what it was about, he couldn't bring himself to ask. It had been years anyway, and it wasn't like it would ever come up again. Besides, he knew his best friend. If the sloth wanted to talk, they'd talk.
And Sid was currently chattering away about trying to get back together with Francine. It didn't sound like it was going to work out, though, and eventually the possums took to asking him sarcastic questions about their relationship and an argument started to bubble between the three of them.
Yes, they'd be okay.
He glanced at Ellie, oblivious, eating her breakfast. Their meeting still seemed slightly unreal with her dropping from the trees, swinging precariously by her tail and asserting good-naturedly that she knew everyone falls out of the tree every now and again – they just don't admit it! And he'd stared at her, trying to process that a mammoth of all mammals had just dropped out of the tree in front of him, trying to understand her talking about her brothers while climbing yet another tree before he even knew what she was doing, trying to ignore how his brain was telling him that she seemed kind and personable. She was…funny. And not in the desperate, half-accidental way that Sid was funny.
The two of them had been traveling for almost a year when Ellie and her brothers came crashing into their lives. Up to that point they'd been slowly following the migration until one day it stopped, settling in the South, the snowstorms dropping in frequency and vegetation surviving just enough to support the plethora of new inhabitants. At that point, the snow had stopped piling up but also wasn't melting. They lived in a world of cold. Ellie's presence had coincided with a warm spell that hadn't stuck.
But their herd's three new members had.
"You think and you worry and where does it get you! Do you ever stop doing either of those things? Wait, don't answer, I already know that's a 'no.'" Manny could still hear his best friend's voice, from all those years ago. They'd grown up together and he was always teasing Manfred for being uptight. He'd always been there for him.
Manny had gone to him when he'd realized he was falling in love. The female that had made his thinking go wild had also made him more cautious. She was…everything. He'd been stunned. That love, that warmth, had set the tone for their entire life together. It was what stung him the most when it all got ripped away. He missed the love and security second only to his wife and child themselves. He missed the parts of himself that felt so full whenever they were around.
"Manny wait, please! You don't have to leave…just stay here with us. Stay, please! You're going to get yourself killed! Manny, please!"
The shouting to return to his friend's protection and care hadn't affected him at the time. What was a friend's feelings to a lost mate and child? It had been easy to walk away. Easy to go against the grain. Easy to let his cynical side hijack everything else.
Ellie, however, wanted to know.
Manny had sensed her suspicion after she and the boys had joined them. It wasn't long before he was tentatively dropping hints. One by one like following a trail, and she'd waited until he'd been ready to talk about it holistically. Had held him while he told the story so that he would know that she was trying to understand.
In fact, once he'd gotten the story out the first time, his former life swiftly became an open topic between them. Eventually he talked about it with Sid and the twins. Sid had already known, of course, but Manny knew he hadn't done a very good job of telling him the first time. Neither of them had dug too deeply into the emotional side of things after what they'd already been through. The twins had been remarkably sensitive about it, too. And Manny was beyond impressed.
It felt good in a way he'd thought impossible when all of his buddies were trying to cheer him up. He'd found others he could trust and talk to again. The tone of their herd had changed with his story. It felt like home after that.
"So we're going tomorrow, right?" Crash was peering at Ellie and trying to get an answer from her.
Her expression remained cool, and they waited the other out, until Manny spoke up. "We'll see."
"I thought we had to be consistent with them?" Ellie smiled, her favorite Manny-ism to repeat back to him.
He smirked at her. "A little fun now and then can't hurt."
"Are you okay?" She grinned teasingly as Crash ran off to rejoin Eddie as he was attempting to completely cover Sid in mud. Not that the sloth wouldn't just enjoy that anyway.
"Just fine." Manny went over and wrapped his trunk around hers. "This is great."
"Breakfast or that mud fight we're going to have to clean up?"
They watched the three boys rolling around and batting at each other for a few moments in silence. The sun was gliding into its midday slot above them, and the whole area glowed where it reflected off the snow and the trampled open patches of bare ground. It warmed Manny's back, and he sighed. "All of it. Us."
000
Julian's spot was a small hovel, well hidden, in a large valley farther than Peaches had ever been inland. Having lived most of her life on the coasts (and apparently the earliest days of it underground among dinosaurs), she was fascinated by how long the land under their feet could go on.
In fact, her legs ached. All day maneuvering through green and wooded landscapes, realizing, slowly and with a growing wonderment, that the mammoth up ahead of her or beside her or running circles around her, was the one she'd be spending the rest of her life with.
They'd spent time together leading up to the wedding. But never like this, all alone, just the two of them, for hours and hours and hours on end. And Peaches loved it with all her heart.
Seeing him so happy and running wild, knowing that he was going to come back and point something out to her or ask her how she was doing or suggest that they stop and watch the sun set for a while, she loved him. She knew that she loved him right then and there. Not at home in the safety of her parent's herd, not on their wedding day, not even that late night that they'd stayed up stargazing as two nervous strangers.
When he motioned her onward, Peaches happily followed, letting him bounce off, leading the way.
And when he showed her the little cave, barely big enough for the two of them, she smiled and let him show her its limited accommodations.
Thanks for reading!