Guess who's getting their butt in gear and getting some words written. That's right! This loch-dwelling monster!

There was a question from a guest reviewer, and I've got (sort-of) answers at the end of this chapter.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading!

"Peaches?"

The silence must have been killing him.

"Hey…Peaches…?"

He sounded a bit more panicked.

"Come on Peaches. Where'd you go?"

There was a gratuitously long silence that even he should have realized was a trap.

"Peaches!"

Julian was spinning in circles, feet sinking into the soft snow. The powder tufted the roots of the trees and sat precariously on the surrounding evergreen branches. Like home. Or at least, the regions they'd called home for the last few years.

But, in the moment, Peaches was too busy listening to her husband huff around down on the ground.

Quick as a possum, she was swinging backwards from a sturdy branch and scooping up a trunkful of snow on the way down. Julian, predictably, turned at the sound, and got a face full of powder on her upswing.

Giggling uncontrollably, Peaches lithely set her front feet on the ground and dropped from the branch. "Hey honey, were you looking for me or…?"

So quickly that she wouldn't have had time to dodge even if she'd known he was going to do it, Julian charged toward her, easily taking her down with him as he tumbled to the ground.

"Oh hey, there you are." Julian smiled down at her, as Peaches huffed and gasped, trying to catch her breath and laughing too hysterically to do either effectively. "Peaches? You okay?"

Of course that just made her laugh harder, wriggling a little bit to try and escape, but Julian stayed where he was, firmly trapping her. "Hey hon, I can't understand you."

"You…you…your…"

"What's that? You're sorry you pelted me in the face with snow?"

"You're…so…" With all her might, Peaches wrenched her trunk free and reached to their right. "Dead!"

She didn't have the satisfaction of seeing Julian's surprised face as the leaves and snow mixture made him cough and shift away from her, enough that she could roll out from under him and immediately pin him into the snow.

He may have surprised her, but she was faster and knew how to move effectively to maximize her impact.

"Told you, you were dead," she teased as Julian groaned from vertigo underneath her. Peaches smiled down at him. "And I love you."

"Even though I'm dead?"

"Even though you're dead."

They'd spent the last few days exploring this lush forest region.

Unlike a week ago, if this was roaming, Peaches could get used to it. In fact, it was everything she'd known she was missing back home. As she gave Julian one last cheeky smile and plopped backwards so he could get up, a small sense of vindication lit in her chest like the start of one of Uncle Sid's fires.

It was small like sparks catching precariously on snow-soaked wood.

She'd known that this would be good. Even with their fight, even with the uncertainty that fidgeted right next to them when they fell asleep at night, and even with the sometimes-exhausting days of rough terrain, it was all something that she would have never gotten any way else.

Julian rolled to his feet, a spring coming back into his step as he righted himself. Then he smiled at her. It was giddy and love drunk. Something that had shocked her the first time it had happened. She'd never known that anyone could look at her that way.

She smiled back, happy.

They were heading loosely northeast. Julian wasn't overly picky about their route, but Peaches got the sense that he was a much better navigator than he was letting on. In fact, on more than one occasion he'd taken charge when they'd come to a confusing fork in a trail or a maze-like series of glacier debris.

"Have you been this way before?" Peaches asked as an exceptionally cold breeze ruffled their fur.

Julian shook his head as he bounced along beside her. "I came from the south when I was heading toward the coast. But I wondered what was farther north. Hey, do you…do you hear that?"

For a moment, Peaches was sure he was about to take belated revenge on her snow and mud combo from early, but then another cold breeze glided over top of them. And she most definitely did hear something.

It was too low to be another animal. And it sent a strange zap down her spine.

"Hang on." Peaches nodded to him and then hurried over to a tree, using her trunk to pull herself high up into the branches.

It wasn't the sturdiest conifer she could have picked, but it got her off the ground far enough to see the black horizon. The line between earth and sky was warped, and for a moment, Peaches stared at it in bewilderment.

That wasn't good.

She knew when she dropped back down that Julian could see the storm clouds in her expression.

"I think it's a snowstorm coming in." She walked back over to him, let him take her trunk in his, as they stared at each other in worry.

"How far away?" He asked quietly.

There was a wide plain between them and it, and Peaches described it to him. She got the sense that it wouldn't take the snow long to reach them.

"We already have cover," Julian said, eyes turning unfocused as he thought. It was a side of him she hadn't seen before they were married, and it was weirdly comforting to her. "It'll come through here, but we won't be out in the middle of nowhere." His eyes focused back on her. "Okay, when the storm comes in, we'll dig a snow cave and wait it out."

"What should we do now?" There had to be a better place for them to be when the snow did hit. This spot, in a sparse clearing, couldn't be the best place this forest had to offer.

Julian looked at her, and a smile began after a few moments that seemed to say You're getting good at this. "We need to find a place that's already partially protected. The less work for us, the better."

Peaches smiled and nodded, and then they both glanced around them. They'd already spent days here; the mass of trees was huge. All they needed to do was find a collection of fallen logs or some rare clot of undergrowth. It was getting colder than at home, and the leafy trees were much scarcer.

Still, Peaches made her way quickly between the trunks, searching for any place that looked like it could successfully shelter two mammoths.

She was just about to double back and check a different section around their original starting place, when she saw the tracks.

They belonged to a carnivore.

Peaches stopped and stared at them. There were rounded imprints from the pads and the individual fingers. A little harder to see, but definitely there all the same, were the thin slices of the claws. They weren't exceptionally long, but they were claws.

She didn't know much about tracking, but the prints certainly looked fresh. Perhaps they'd wandered into a deeper problem than a snowstorm.

Suddenly, she remembered the sound she'd heard how many miles back. Maybe it hadn't been her imagination or a small animal after all. Maybe she had been right to jump to fear first.

"Hey, I might have found a possible place. Do you have anything over here?" Julian was at her side a few moments later, glancing at her and then down to what she was staring at. "That's a wolf print," he murmured, thinking. "We haven't seen anyone else though. It's all been empty for the last ten miles."

"Actually…last week I heard something," Peaches said carefully. "It was just a sound, when we were…uh, separated for a while."

"What?" Julian's voice was just a little too concerned for her taste.

"Yeah, but nothing happened. It just disappeared."

Julian was frowning at her now. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I honestly forgot about it," she shrugged.

"Peaches you can't just forget things like this. You could have gotten hurt. Something could have happened."

There was a huge rushing sound around them, a heralding as the wind suddenly picked up. Peaches shook her head at him. "I'm sorry, I didn't think anything of it. It was just a noise."

"But it wasn't," Julian spluttered as the first few flakes began to calmly sweep in around them. The blue sky overhead was still mostly intact, but there was a darkness on the edge of the tree line.

And how was she supposed to know that one small, small noise had been something? She hadn't grown up in any areas with carnivores. "Nothing happened."

"If it would have…if it ever does, your parents will kill me." He said it so emphatically, Peaches could feel guilt beginning to take over what was otherwise pure annoyance. And a bit of embarrassment, if she was completely honest.

The storm really began then. In a moment, the sun and bright sky were covered in grey, almost white, clouds. The trees shook as arctic winds blasted between them, stirring up the snow already on the ground and dumping ice-cold, fat flakes all around them.

Without thinking, they both reached for each other, pressing their foreheads together as the tempest spun around them. It was terrifying.

Soon, the snow was halfway up their legs, growing thicker and thicker. The dark clouds had been an illusion. Everything was turning blinding, stinging white.

They needed shelter.

Julian and Peaches looked at each other with wide eyes. "Snow cave."

Julian spun, dragging her with him, and they wove too slowly through the trees until they'd gone about thirty paces. Julian was looking around frantically, before finally turning back to her and shrugging. His potential place was already buried, but with the snow coming in this fast, the drifts they were standing in would only get higher.

Instead, they began to dig where they were, using their trunks to hollow out a drift and pack more snow on top. The winds were driving more to accumulate on the other side, and what should have taken a good half hour of work was finished in five minutes.

They went inside, Peaches packing snow in around their entrance while Julian used his trunk to poke holes around them.

"For fresh air," he said when Peaches glanced at him.

There weren't many times in her life she'd truly felt small, but this was one of them.

"Nothing can survive out here in this. We'll be safe here," Julian whispered after a few minutes. Their quiet little haven soaked up most of his voice, but Peaches still shivered and snuggled closer to him.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It's just…nothing came after me. Dad was always really clear about how fast predators can move. When whatever it was went away, I just assumed it was nothing."

Julian didn't say anything for at least two minutes, and Peaches' embarrassment slowly won out over her annoyance at being chastised for something she'd never had cause to know. Julian's voice was still quiet when he spoke again. "Carnivores scope out areas. If they see prey, they'll go back and tell their pack where it is."

There was another somber silence, and Peaches tried to figure out how to respond.

"My family…we were always really free-spirited. And there were some things I had to figure out on my own. Lone mammoths are targets, and I've just…heard stories."

"Were you ever attacked?" Peaches asked in alarm.

"No, no. But I always knew that there was a chance. I almost wish I would have been told that before I decided to strike out on my own. Although, I probably would have done it anyway."

"Sometimes it's better to take a chance." Peaches answered, even though she also wanted to immediately contradict herself. She'd never want anything to happen to Julian. Even the thought made her feel distressed and endlessly, irreparably sad.

Not wanting to play anything safe had been her reckless mantra throughout her teen years. It bothered her to think that she was still like that, deep down.

Julian shifted closer so that he could wrap his trunk around her shoulders. "You know, I'd kind of hoped that maybe this trip would help that. I know that you have some issues with your dad."

"I just didn't want to spend my whole life worrying and hiding the way he wanted me to. The way he does." She reached her trunk up to wrap around his. Peaches could wax poetic for a while, so instead she contented herself with adding. "I want to get the most out of this that I can. I want to figure out…I guess I want to know who I really am. Who I could be."

"Peaches, you're amazing, and I'm sure that if Manny could see you right now, he'd be proud of you."

She smiled. "Thanks honey. I think he'd be pretty proud of you, too."

Julian perked up. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. This snow cave was your idea. You know what you're doing."

"Thanks."

Peaches nudged him. "Will you tell me another story?"

"Sure. Uh…" Julian stopped to think for a moment. "Ooh, did I tell you the one about the tribe of mini sloths?"

"Tribe of what?"

"Okay, so one day I was going through this valley that had really, really high ice walls…" Julian talked quietly, and she closed her eyes, listening and asking questions. They went back and forth for what seemed like forever as the storm grew blurrier and blurrier above them.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Peaches fell asleep.

000

"So they just…left you like that?"

"Yep!" Sid answered, tripping over himself as he rummaged among the bushes. Every once in a while, he'd disappear into them until all Ellie could see were glimpses of grey-brown fur.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, you know." Sid straightened up and looked at her. He grinned goofily. He wasn't in tears or anything like Ellie would have been, but there was a sadness in his eyes that Ellie could have sworn had really always been there. She just hadn't noticed it on her own. "I expected it after a while. But hearing it all from Fred made it seem less like a memory and more like it's still happening to me."

"Oh sweetie."

"But I'm not as bad as Manny." Sid pointed out, diving back into the bush and making the branches next to him rustle as he located the perfect sticks to add to the veritable logs she'd drug from the undergrowth. "I'm not good at living in the past."

Ellie snorted. She knew how that felt. It had been a shock to find out that she wasn't a possum with some depth-perception problems. Rather, the imagined height and weird vantage points stemmed from her being a mammoth rather than a marsupial with poor eyesight and balance issues. Still, she was herself because of her family and the progression of events that made up her life. It was all she could have ever wanted. In fact, she rarely thought about alternatives.

But Sid clearly had some unresolved issues. Ellie sometimes wished that she'd sat him down earlier to talk, rather than letting Manny's dismissive affections influence her relationship with him.

Now, she just glanced at the sky and the wispy, almost sick-looking clouds hanging there. Then she looked back at the bush where Sid was emerging with paws full of small twigs that would help the fire to catch. She smiled at him. "We're your family, sweetie. And we're always here."

Sid grinned back at her. "I know."

000

Sometimes Manny felt as though he had three kids, even four depending on how much trouble Sid was getting himself into at the time.

This was one of those times.

Except it was less annoyance about the antics of his brothers-in-law and more fury that, after all this time, their herd was still getting second glances.

"And then he just started shouting about how you guys should just disown us and be done with it!" Crash was whining. Not that Manny blamed him.

Usually he was on the side of whoever Crash and Eddie's target was. This time, he was about ready to march down to the watering hole and give Fred an earful for butting into his herd and trying to intimidate the possums into hanging out elsewhere.

Manny knew firsthand how annoying the twins could be. But he also knew that much of their worst behavior was reserved for their central herd. They hadn't even been doing anything wrong when Fred had started tearing into them.

He sighed. "Okay, and where do Jace and Brad come into this?"

The twins exchanged nervous glances.

"Right, so this is the part where I need to actually get mad at you two."

"They still chased me." Eddie offered. "Or, er, tried. They thought it was me, but they did chase Crash so it still counts!"

"And they hurt my tail!"

"Look me in the eye and tell me that I wouldn't have chased you after whatever it was you'd been doing."

Both possums looked away simultaneously.

"Are you mad about the fire, Manny?" Crash asked quietly after the mammoth had been shaking his head for a good five seconds in silence.

Manny looked up at them. He knew that the twins often felt left out here. With Peaches gone, he supposed there was no one to keep them out of trouble, or defend them, quite the way she could. He couldn't blame them for sticking up for themselves after all the melodramatic crap he'd pulled in the past on his friends, family, and any strangers unfortunate enough to cross paths with him.

"Just…help me get the rest of the lake cleaned up tonight, and we'll call it even, how's that?"

Both possums seemed to light up, and even though Manny knew that their "help" was going to be nothing more than an assurance that more would go wrong, he just nodded at them.

"Deal!" The twins said at the same time and then went scampering off, weaving through Ellie's legs as she returned with Sid. Her trunk was full of firewood which Sid directed her to put in roughly the center of their clearing. They'd been planning on holding off on the fires for a few days, but it was getting colder. Their neighbors could get over it.

Ellie caught his eye as she dumped the haul at Sid's feet. "I'm surprised they looked so happy."

"We'll talk about it." Manny said. He'd heard Sid's side of the story – Crash and Eddie had decided that his talents were best used lighting mud balls on fire to show Fred "how annoying they could be if they really wanted" and Sid had been hesitant to help until the muskox had started making fun of him for his mismatched family – and it all sounded like, for once, they weren't the ones causing problems.

At least Sid had seemed to brush it off after that. The sloth had been unpleasantly annoying for the last half day and was even more determined to involve "his best buddy Manfred" in his daily schedule of mud-seeking and berry-eating. It made Manny feel good to see him back to normal.

"Sure." She nodded, eyes taking on a cheeky glint. "I'm just saying that I'm not even that happy when we get done talking."

"Hey, if you want to get Fred to pick a fight with you, maybe we'd get this one to leave us alone for five minutes." He motioned with his trunk just as Sid yelped and tripped backwards over his tail.

He sat up and frowned. "Hey, if you guys want alone time, all you have to do is say the word…"

"Great, bye!"

"Manny!" Ellie quirked both eyebrows, silently commanding him to take it back.

He frowned at her.

"It's fine." Sid rose to his feet, brushing at his fur. He tilted his head up to look at the sky, and Manny looked up too, suddenly noticing how dark it was already starting to get. Great. A storm was rolling in. "I'll be at the waterfall if anyone needs me."

"Be careful, and no jumping off the top." Ellie reminded him. No one was so stupid as to do that, but both mammoths still thought it best to remind the less consequence-minded members exactly how sharp those rocks at the bottom were.

Sid was gone before Ellie had even finished her sentence.

"So about the possums…"

"Manny, I think Sid was really hurt by what Fred said to him." Ellie was looking at him seriously.

"Okay. Did he say something to you?"

She gave a short sigh before saying. "He was telling me about his family today. About how much Fred's attitude reminds him of his relationship with them. I didn't realize how many times they tried to ditch him."

"He'll be fine." Manny said, mostly because he'd seen "upset Sid," the one that was really, really upset before, and this was nowhere close to it.

"No, Manny, you need to talk to him. I mean it. Either you do it, or I will."

He didn't get the chance to ask where this was coming from or why she was forcing him into a task that was surely going to end with him pissed off and Sid blabbering endlessly. There was a soundless tremor under their feet, and the world seemed to stop.

"Uh…what was that?"

Manny just stared at her with wide eyes. Overhead, the angry sky was steadily growing darker. They both knew exactly what it was.

Another tremble and the trees shook a little more.

"Earthquake." He didn't need to say it, but he hadn't had time to react the last time this had happened. Even though there was no chance of plummeting into the ocean this time, the memory still terrified him. He'd almost jumped to them, almost, but Sid had grabbed onto him in fear at the last second and they'd sunk another few inches away. The gap had been impossible to begin with, looking back, but even Manny had known that he couldn't get across once it had fallen that much farther. Now, he needed to reassure himself that he was one step ahead this time.

"It's okay; it wasn't strong." Ellie said carefully.

A third tremor hit, and thunder grumbled down at them. Despite the looks of the sky, it sounded far away. Somehow, that was even scarier.

"We're gonna be okay." Ellie was looking at him like she knew what he was thinking.

But in that moment, there was a more urgent thought that was painfully occurring to him. "What about…Peaches and Julian?"

Ellie just stared back at him, as if she hadn't thought of that.

"What do we do?"

"Honey, I don't think…they're gone. There's nothing we can do."

"But…"

"Manny. We are here and they're somewhere else. This was the decision that we made together, and…it's going to be okay. Stay here. I'll round everybody up." Ellie nodded to him, bracing herself against yet another rumble beneath them. An echoing one came from the sky right after it.

Manny watched her go, trying to formulate a plan and inadvertently scaring himself more and more and more.

Their daughter was out there somewhere, probably feeling these tremors too or possibly going through something even worse, and they weren't there to help her. There was no way they could even get there.

For the first time, their family was separated, on purpose, and there was a disaster, probably, on the other side of that ominous horizon.

They were all powerless, and for Manny, it hadn't sunk in until right then.

000

The storm buried them.

Neither were sure how long they'd been in their cave, but it took ten minutes of caving snow down on their heads for sunlight to bleed through.

Peaches got out first and then pulled Julian out after her. She gave a little tug on his trunk once he was free. "Hey, we did it."

He grinned. "We did. I…uh, like this teamwork better."

"Me too."

Once he was sure she wasn't offended by the comment, Julian looked around them. "Now we just need to figure out what to do about that carnivore."

They stepped away from their shelter and looked around. The sun was shining aggressively, as if in retaliation for getting covered by storm clouds, and all around them, trees had been leveled. Most of the forest behind, and everything in front of, them had been torn apart.

Snow covered it all.

Dumbfounded, they both stumbled over the drifts toward the start of the open plain. There, in the snow, were more tracks. The carnivore's tracks, still wolf it looked like, made circular trails up to the tree line. At the same time, a smaller, more petite set of hooves followed a similar pattern.

Both animals' tracks came from across the plain and led back that direction as well.

"I uh…think we may have bigger issues."

Well, our dynamic duo is definitely getting closer to something.

A guest reviewer asked about the dino birds. While I will forever question Blue Sky's decision to introduce a subterranean dinosaur paradise to the ice age, it did give us Buck and it is canon. I know I said that there are some canon elements that I'm ignoring altogether (the also-questionable meteor thing for one), but Buck is going to have to equal dinosaurs. I also don't think that the dino birds were objectively bad villains, but their part in the plot was so rushed that it didn't matter what they did. Anyway, I don't want to give too much away, but I think it's safe to say that we'll eventually be seeing some familiar faces.

Please R&R, thanks!