Sooo, I did the thing again. The one where I write the chapter and then fiddle with it for, like, two weeks before posting. But I'm kind of liking where this is going. I have a loose plot outline in my head, and I'm pleasantly surprised that Jackson has invited himself into more aspects than I'd originally planned for him. Good job Jackson; go-getters make good pack leaders.

"No more solos. Buddy system only," Diego said from his place a few paces ahead of Jackson, addressing the majority of the pack in front of him. "And triples if possible."

There was a massive, shared groan from the twenty-odd sabers standing in the clearing. Many of them had been shifting on their paws for the last ten minutes, unhappiness giving birth to fidgeting as Diego cut, rearranged, and otherwise completely changed everything about their normal lives.

That's what they seemed to be thinking anyway, from Peaches' perspective. She was standing off to one side, watching Diego go over new procedures.

It had been three days since the attack, but it seemed like a lifetime.

The news had eventually spread that she and Julian were connected to Diego's story and were staying with him and Shira. Their friends' specific, well-thought-out questions were worse than their earlier ignorance. Because Peaches couldn't tell them if her father and uncle had returned the baby. She didn't know how they felt about Diego. She just…didn't know anything. And with things growing more intense with the pack, she didn't really want to bring it up to Diego when he asked if there was anything else they needed. Shira could definitely tell that something was wrong, but she hadn't pushed for answers yet. Peaches and Julian agreed that it was only a matter of time.

Now, Diego was calmly addressing the mass of living annoyance and anger in front him. His posture was relaxed even if his tone wasn't, and he'd probably hate to hear it, but he seemed to be in his element here. Jackson – who was at best surprised with some of the changes, at worst angry about them – was watching him with placid attention.

"Units will stay together unless there's an emergency and we need to readjust. We've set the rotations so that everyone gets a rest and nobody gets shortchanged…"

It was a thorough plan. Or seemed to be. Peaches wasn't much for strategy, but when Diego had swiftly explained it to her before the pack's meeting, everything seemed reasonable. Jackson's composed face in the background didn't give anything away, though. Peaches had assumed he was on Diego's side, but watching him now, his stiff posture suggested that he was merely following his leader. Which might make winning herself an ally more difficult than she'd anticipated. She'd arrived unannounced before the start of the meeting – unaware that there was one – and had bumbled her way into staying. There hadn't been time to pull Jackson aside before everything got rolling, and now she watched his reactions and rehearsed her request in her head.

"We need to be tighter," Diego was saying. "Patrols are sloppy, and unorganized. The majority of sabers in this pack don't work together. It's only a matter of time until someone else gets hurt."

Another ripple of anger.

"There are too many of you not to run a better schedule. You may live here and not somewhere else, and your pack leader may give you more freedom because of that, but this is still your territory. Act like it."

The ripple burst into a wave of muttering.

Jackson waited a fraction of a second for them to quiet down, just as Diego did, before saying, "You know your groups and your rotations, let's get moving."

To her surprise, most of the sabers got up and left with the dismissal. Albeit left as in stormed off. But nobody was charging over to start a fight or an argument. In fact, many of them slowly began making their way into their assigned clusters. It was kind of amazing to see them clear out that fast for how pissed off they obviously were.

"What do you want Isaiah?" Diego asked over his shoulder, watching the rest of the sabers leave before turning around.

Peaches blinked and then looked down and to her right to see a saber that definitely hadn't been there a few minutes ago. He didn't even glance at her, instead standing tall and meeting Diego's scrunched up expression with an impassive, proud one of his own.

"I'm here to see Merle. I take it he's resting right now." His muscled shoulders shifted as he took a few steps forward, and Peaches immediately got the sense that he wasn't like Diego and Jackson. Not at all. He was…scary.

Not that it came as a surprise. While Diego had been talking to Merle that first day, Shira had told them all about Isaiah. He was the leader of the neighboring pack, a collection of eight sabers that were not a part of the hunting agreement. His territory was the boundary line between their mixed living situation and a return to real-life, predator-prey relationships.

"He's staying with Brian right now." Jackson, at least, seemed to have remembered that Peaches was still there because he'd angled his body so that he was kind of in front of her. But neither really looked at him or her. "Diego is taking over until he recovers."

"I'm the new pack leader." Diego echoed.

Isaiah blinked. Then blinked again. Then looked at Jackson and back to Diego. Then back to Jackson. And burst into laughter.

In a moment, the tense set in Diego's shoulders loosed and he rolled his eyes. But his face stayed scrunched up in annoyance. "Again, what do you want Isaiah?"

"I came to see if Merle needed any help." Isaiah laughed, barely bothering to collect himself. His taunting smile stayed. Shira had also told them that he and Diego had never gotten along, and both liked to pretend it was because they didn't like each other. If Dad's relationship with Uncle Sid had taught her anything, it was how to spot affection in the snark.

Peaches could see it now. Both sabers were glaring half-heartedly at each other. "Well I don't need your help, so go home."

"So…you've found the attacker then?"

"So…you waited a few days to come and find out?"

"Forget you."

"No, forget you. I am sick of your bad attitude. This is going to be hard enough, and I don't need you coming over here to check up on me."

"Well based on my hysterical laughter, I figured you knew that I didn't know. You really are stupid. I can't believe Merle would…"

"Did you need something?" Jackson leaned towards her quietly as the two sabers launched into a sarcastic, ridiculous argument that seemed to be covering the entire history of their relationship.

"Um, yeah, I wanted to talk to you." Peaches lowered her voice too as Jackson turned to look her in the eye. He raised his eyebrows at the fact she'd come for him. That wasn't exactly an encouraging start. "I need your help."

"My help?"

She quickly explained, again, about Buck and how she'd spent the better part of the day before looking for him.

"I think he went home," Jackson said when she finished. He didn't look pleased at having told her that, and she wanted to believe it was because he did like Diego and wanted to support him. But then she frowned at him. He was her ally. Even if he didn't know it yet. He actually looked chagrined at the change in her expression. "I'm sorry, Peaches."

"How do I find him?"

"You don't," he shrugged. "Diego meant it when he said we don't know where he comes from or where he goes when he leaves. We patrol this area constantly, and no one has ever found his entrance. Ever."

"Well apparently you don't patrol it that well." She almost regretted saying that. Jackson's sad face was very emotionally persuasive. She told herself she didn't feel bad. "Do you know anything?"

"When Buck leaves he's as good as gone until he shows up again." Jackson hesitated just long enough to tell Peaches he didn't think he should be saying what was coming next. But he did anyway. "He smells…weird to me. He smells too much like plants, more than the other herbivores that live here. And there's a dryness there too…I…." He trailed off, and Peaches waited for him to go on. Because there was more. She could hear it in the silence. But Jackson just shut his mouth and looked up at her angrily, like she'd pushed too hard and now he regretted what he'd said.

That did make her feel bad, but she also knew that she was one of the only animals that understood how bad this situation could get. "Jackson." Peaches waited until they'd locked eyes before continuing. "You saw what happened to your pack leader. I don't want that to happen to anyone else. Please."

He was angry-silent for a moment. She couldn't tell if he was more irritated with her or himself for getting them into this conversation. "I could try to figure out a way to get my packmates to keep an eye out. You know, on the down low." He finally grimaced.

"Sounds like a reasonable request." Peaches nodded and offered him an apologetic smile. "Thanks Jackson."

"You're welcome." He nodded back once, and they both glanced over to where Diego and Isaiah were still talking. The two of them must have gotten the insult-slinging out of their systems because they looked actually serious and concerned. Their heads were together, and their voices had lowered.

They watched the sabers for a moment before Jackson looked up at her. "Did Shira and Diego tell you? That the triplets are coming back?"

"Yeah, they did." Peaches turned back to him as well, a thrill going along her spine and down into her legs. This was one meeting she was actually dreading.

"They should be here in the next couple of days." Jackson eyed her expression.

"Yeah." She tried to keep her voice perky, but it wasn't convincing. For some reason Peaches had assumed Shira and Diego were childless rather than empty nesters. Julian seemed to have guessed before she did, though, because he had been way less surprised when they casually mentioned that their kids should be returning from their own little roaming trip soon.

She squirmed a little to get rid of the manic, absurd feelings that had come with the news. Jealousy that their kids had been allowed to travel away from home without more than non-guilt-inducing goodbyes and an, "I love you." Irrational anger that Diego wasn't just…hers. Fear that the family they'd just tumbled their way into wouldn't, ultimately, want them to stay. Intimidation because everything she'd heard so far from their neighbors was either glowing praise or specific, nitpicky complaining about one of the daughters. They sounded tough, sarcastic, and overall in control of their lives. Basically everything Peaches wasn't.

"Shira said we're welcome to come, but I don't want to barge in on their family time," Peaches whispered back after a too-long silence.

To her surprise, Jackson didn't answer. He simply burst into laughter. It was loud and kind of frantic and totally different than everyone else's reactions and comments. It also made Diego and Isaiah break out of their conversation long enough to look at them. For the first time, Isaiah looked directly at her.

She knew the moment he decided that he didn't know who she was because his slightly worried expression hardened into an emotionless void. "I see Brian has added to his herd. I'm sure you know where the boundaries are. I don't care that we've met, I don't care that you live here, if you come into my territory you are prey."

"Noted," Peaches answered. His mood shifts so far left her less than surprised at his sudden attitude change. She gave him a small smile anyway. "And I'm not part of Brian's herd. My husband and I are here visiting."

"Where from?" She hadn't expected the interested look that his eyes picked up, and she fumbled a little to describe their journey and the home that they'd left. He nodded along, every once in a while twitching his ears at something she'd said, and looking vaguely amused once she described the stretch of coast and inland forest that they'd settled in the last time they'd moved. Once she was done, he said, "My second in command is traveling through some of that area on his way north to gather information about their climate. But he's alone, so large game will be out of his abilities."

"And sabers usually don't waste time on anything smaller than a deer. Or smellier than one." Jackson added firmly from beside her.

Peaches took his cue to move on and changed the subject to the other piece of information she was still trying to wrap her head around. "That's right, Brian wants everyone to come for some kind of a meeting."

It seemed like that was all she'd been hearing about. Everyone was worried about the weather, and it sounded like most herds and packs within a two- or three-days' walk were all experiencing the same relentless storms and dipping temperatures. Brian had invited them to come for a meeting so they could talk through their options and try to figure out this strange, sudden problem. While it sounded like it was creating a bit of a headache for the locals, Peaches could understand why they needed to come. The sense that something was wrong kind of lived in the background, present everywhere they went and in every conversation they had.

Day by day, strangers were finding their way to the area to talk about the problems they were having at home. Most opted to stay within the pack and herd's territory, but some were uncomfortable with the sabers wandering around and instead settled on the fringes of Isaiah's territory. Peaches tried not to think about the saber in front of her happily picking off the newcomers.

"We'll see how that goes." Isaiah glanced at Diego in an obvious way that implied the other saber knew, or maybe shared, his opinion on the matter. Then he turned back to Peaches. "Stay out of my territory."

He left without a goodbye.

"He likes you." Diego said mere seconds later, probably still within earshot of the retreating saber. He looked like he was in a better mood than when the meeting had started. "We're meeting the kids in a couple of days. We'll talk more about it once they get closer."

"Sounds," miserable, "good."

"I think we need to do some drop-in checks." Jackson said, pulling the attention away from that pitiful answer. "Merle sometimes trusts us to follow orders a little too much on some of the more mundane duties."

Diego nodded at him. "I can believe that. Let's do some rounds too. I want to see if there are any spots we're not canvassing well enough."

Jackson's, "Yep," was conspicuously toneless, and it was hard not to grin at how easy this may prove to be. She'd have to not rub it in his face as a thank you.

"Well, I suppose I…should be going. Good luck with everything." Peaches backed up a few steps, ignoring Jackson's quick look that seemed to say, Come on girl, be cool.

"We'll see you two later." Diego answered in a firm voice. He was trying really hard to make time for them despite the chaos. Another wave of confused feelings went through her, and Peaches just gave him a distorted smile in answer.

Jackson just nodded at her one more time. She waved her trunk at him once, in acknowledgement and thanks for what they both knew he was going to have to do under Diego's nose, and hurried away to start a new search of her own.

000

They went to the waterfall the next afternoon.

Manny claimed it was so that he could get the last of the berry juice out of his fur, ruffling his thick coat in grumpy annoyance at its mention. But really it was because Crash and Eddie wanted to burn off some energy, and the rest of the herd really needed to go somewhere other than their small clearing and the area surrounding it.

Whatever disturbance Gary claimed that everyone else was afraid of didn't keep them from running into multiple familiar faces on their way there. Manny put his trunk around Sid's shoulders when Francine flounced by without looking their way. The sloth slumped further than his usual poor posture the rest of the way to the lake.

But he perked up when they reached the water's edge, and before Manny or Ellie could yell out a reminder to be careful, the sloth and possums were going their separate ways. Sid out to the ice to skate around, the possums to climb the slick rocks and logs at the water's edge, creating slides everywhere they went and generally trying to be in multiple places at once.

Manny and Ellie stayed back and watched them, the silence uncomfortable and loaded. For as much as he loved his wife, Manny wasn't going to be the one to break it. She was always better at it than him anyway. Her comforting words, or occasional forceful ultimatums, always seemed to strike the right tone to start them off.

So he waited.

They were standing side by side, both apparently waiting for the other to find a comfortable spot to lay down. Again, Manny waited, trying to resist the urge to glance at her. But after two minutes their standoff began to feel more ridiculous than anything else, and when his eyes did dart her way, she was already looking at him.

They both looked away.

Fine. She won. Manny looked at her properly this time. "There's nothing we can do right now."

The words surprised even him. An echo of what she'd been repeating so far, and more than true. When she looked his way, he could see the tenuous look on her face. She believed it. Or she wanted to at least. But he'd been right to assume that she was also struggling with this.

"I don't know what else we could do." Manny added quietly once they'd stared at each other for a moment.

"Me neither." She murmured back, tears rimming her eyes as she reached her trunk towards him. He took it and stepped closer. There was a sad silence, and for a moment he just let himself feel it. There was nothing they could do. They were no longer in charge. The kids were on their own. And even though he'd watched his daughter swing confidently, feet-first into a self-described captain, he wondered for a moment if Peaches could handle this. He was even more surprised when the immediate, unconscious answer was yes.

"Manny…I want to talk to you about Sid." Ellie's voice was muffled for a moment as he finished riding out the surprise at his confidence.

"You…what?" He asked when he finally thought it through to the part where she said Sid. She wanted to talk to him about Sid?

"Well…I've been thinking about this for a while and, and I just think that you need to talk to him more."

He was too slow to completely hide his laughter, and it came out as a choked snort. "I think he does enough talking for the both of us."

"And that's my point." She maneuvered lithely around to face him, dropping his trunk as she turned. "He seems so sad sometimes. There's obviously something going on. I know he misses his family, and I just think that you should ask him about it more. Me talking to him is one thing, but you know him better than I do, and he's closer to you."

He was close to Sid. And he could guess exactly what the sloth was sad about, even if he hadn't actually witnessed this particular instance. But he didn't know how to tell Ellie that it was more than likely just grief-driven mood swings. What Ellie was seeing was obviously nothing. "We're his family."

"I'm not sure if he knows that." She answered seriously, as if Sid would ever question it.

"Trust me, it's fine." He tried to make his voice more reassuring, adding, "Guys don't talk to guys about guy problems. We just…punch each other on the shoulder!"

He demonstrated with a gentle, well-placed nudge on her shoulder and smiled widely. She stared back with a flat look that looked all but impressed. "That's stupid."

"To a girl." He coaxed. "But to a guy…that's…that's like six months of therapy!"

Silence and a deadpan expression. Probably to give her time to perfect the twenty-minute lecture that was about to follow.

"Sid will talk to me when he needs to."

"No, he obviously won't. I don't think I've seen you two have more than five serious conversations since we met. And I'd be willing to bet three out of the five were him talking to you." She was wearing that angry face she got when a situation was both upsetting and confusing to her. "I can't believe that you don't even notice when he's upset! Can't you tell that something is bothering him? Unless you somehow magically already know what's going on."

He sighed. This was getting way too close. "Ellie, it's fine. Please just trust me?"

For as much as he felt a twinge of guilt whenever their idle conversations came and went around this topic, he didn't think that now was the time to tell her. With the kids and the strange storms…he didn't want to make her more upset. And despite what she thought, he didn't need Sid wandering over while they were trying to talk and having to deal with a full-blown meltdown on the sloth's part. He wasn't in the mood today.

Besides, Sid had made it very clear years ago that he wanted to be the one in charge of when they talked about it and when they didn't. And after everything his best friend had done for him, Manny was more than happy to repay the favor by letting him have his way. In truth, he was a little surprised that Ellie had never figured out the difference between Sid's compulsive need to tell them everything else and his sudden, jarring silences.

Then again, maybe she was finally picking up on it. Of course it would be now, at the most inconvenient time. Not that the rest of his life wasn't already like that.

"I trust you." She started, and he already knew, he knew, what she was going to follow with-

"ELLIE! MANNY!"

The possums' voices were panicked. And they never yelled for the both of them. Both mammoths immediately turned away from each other, looking around for Crash or Eddie or some other obvious problem. But there was only Sid, standing still in surprise a little way out on the ice. Their eyes met, and then Crash and Eddie were yelling their names again from somewhere farther away, maybe behind Sid judging by how muffled it sounded.

But their, "Help!" was loud and clear.

Ellie took off first with Manny right behind her, running the edge of the lake, trying to stay on the hard-packed, old snow rather than on the ice-covered patches. Sid was fairly fast on the ice – pretty much the only time the sloth was fast – and he skated and fumbled his way toward the towering, frozen flow of the falls.

It was so cold that most of the water had frozen by now, and what little was coming down was a dull roar from the back side with only a few sprays and trickles on the front. And that seemed to be where the possums' voices were coming from.

They called intermittently, hesitantly, as if afraid to shout too much in their fear. And they sounded terrified. Manny didn't think he'd ever heard them sound like this. He ran just a little bit faster.

They reached the far side of the waterfall at the same time, skidding to a stop on the lake's edge about twenty paces away from the small, cave-like area behind the falls. The possums were looking out at them from the entrance, and Crash motioned frantically with one of his paws for them to come closer. Eddie simply turned and went farther inside.

Sid came sliding to a stop just outside of the cave mouth and glided a few paces to peer inside. Manny watched him stumble back a moment later, tripping over his paws and landing on his butt in the sunlight. He pushed himself up with his front paws, staring frozenly at whatever they couldn't see inside.

Ellie was already making her way across the ice by the time the sloth had sat up, and Manny hurried down after her, trying to catch up to her unafraid and determined strides. He trailed her all the way over, and both mammoths stopped a few paces later when they entered the small ice enclosure and saw what the possums had found.

The saber was unconscious and lying flat on his left side. His head and neck were curled inward toward his chest, and his massive, clawed paws were spread next to him.

The roaring of the water around them seemed to get louder for a moment, and there was no question of what had happened to him. The top of the waterfall was slicked over with ice, and there were large holes at the top where the still-flowing water came down. If he'd slipped on the bank, especially during the night, he might not have been able to keep himself from falling through one of those right down into the water.

There were no visible injuries on the exposed side of his body, but the drop was long, and he'd probably passed out on impact or shortly after. In the next moment, Manny was taking in the exact placement of his body and shortly realized that he must have been conscious enough to haul himself out of the freezing water. Ice had formed around his outline, and the water left in his fur had frozen the tips of his coat a brittle, opaque white.

Now, Crash and Eddie were looking back at them with wide-eyed, innocent worry. Waiting for them to know what to do.

"This is bad." Sid lisped, looking frantically between all of them and wringing his paws. He'd climbed back to his feet as the others slowly worked through their surprise.

"You found him like this?" Ellie asked.

Eddie explained how they'd spotted him as they were trying to figure out how best to climb the frozen part of the waterfall – exactly what Manny and Ellie always told them not to do – and they hadn't known what he was at first. When they were sure he wasn't going to pounce forward and try to eat them headfirst, they'd called for help. Neither seemed all that scared, merely excited by the events. And worried. Which was different than usual, and Manny's heart sunk a little at where he could see this was going. Because it was becoming more and more obvious that their terror wasn't for themselves.

First thing was first, though. "Has he moved since you found him? And are we sure he's not dead?"

"He's not; he's breathing." Eddie cast a glance at him.

"We tried to pull him farther away from the water, but he's really heavy." Crash shouldered his way past his brother. "We couldn't even lift his head."

"You shouldn't have gotten close to him." Manny glanced between the saber and the possums, trying to figure out which was going to cause a problem first. Probably the possums. "And you should have come to get us immediately."

"We didn't want to leave him here by himself if he was awake." Eddie said, real concern in his voice for once. Sometimes it bothered Manny how mature the brothers could be. "Now what do we do with him?"

"Do you think his pack is around here somewhere?" Crash volunteered, looking around as if they'd missed some sabers lurking in the shadows.

Eddie nodded, looking around too. "Probably. Aren't all sabers in packs?"

"Ooh, not if he went solo."

"That would be super cool. He's probably, like, a lone rebel."

"Yes, all sabers have packs." Manny snapped.

"And they probably are around here." Sid added nervously.

"We need to help him get back to them!" Eddie's face brightened.

"They'll probably attack us." Crash added, but his tone was anything but fearful.

"But not if he tells them we helped him-"

"Let me see him." Ellie shouldered her way forward, splintering off their spiraling conversation. Before Manny could stop her, she ran her trunk across the top of the saber's head and down his neck to one of his shoulders. He didn't move a muscle. When he still didn't move a few moments later, Crash and Eddie took that as their cue to approach him as well.

"He's really cold." Crash said after a minute of inspection as he poked at his spine.

Eddie was examining one of his paws and struggling under its weight. The two were roughly the same size. "Yeah, like freezing. I wonder if he'll have amnesia or something."

"I wish I had amnesia." Crash announced as he plucked at the frost in the darker scruff along the saber's neck. Ellie swatted him away as she continued to check him over.

But Manny was watching Sid. Their conversation seemed to have distracted him for a moment, but now he was definitely sinking into the reality of what was happening. Standing off to one side and leaning slightly away from the scene, it was clear he was trying unsuccessfully to distance himself. His eyes were narrowed, and he was looking suspiciously at the carnivore's prone form, as if expecting him to wake up and attack at any moment.

Manny glanced at the saber again. This one was a brighter orange with greyish-white coloring in the usual places. He looked pretty young too. Probably just barely an adult.

Ellie pulled her trunk back with a motherly frown. "He doesn't seem to have anything broken, but we need to get him warmed up."

At that, Crash and Eddie looked between her and the saber, as if not quite sure they'd heard their sister right. "So we're keeping him?" Eddie's eyes lit up when his sister didn't immediately go back on her suggestion.

"What?" Sid yelped.

"No one is keeping anyone." Ellie said before Manny could. But it was more exasperated than reassuring.

"Aw!"

Come on!"

Ignoring their whiny protests, Manny glanced down at Sid's tense body. The sloth had gone back to staring at the saber in stunned, furious silence. But he didn't join in the complaining. He wouldn't have meant it anyway. He knew they couldn't leave the saber here. They all did. Manny reached out, but as soon as the tip of his trunk touched the sloth's shoulder, Sid turned and ducked underneath it to stomp his way back outside.

"Let's just all get out of here." Manny said before Ellie or the possums noticed. He stepped forward and gingerly wrapped his trunk around the carnivore's middle. He could tell about how much he'd weigh just by the look of him – more than it seemed like he should – and he wasn't surprised when he had to put in extra effort to heft the saber over his shoulder blades.

Sid was waiting for them outside on the bank, and he wouldn't look at Manny. But he did fall into step beside him as they carefully made their way back to their clearing.

The strange sounds Gary had described made sense now. They'd lost track of the intruder because he hadn't made it through the area. And of course their herd would be the ones to find him. An unconscious, injured, saber. Just their luck. He probably did have amnesia to top it all off.

The walk back seemed to take forever, and Crash and Eddie were uncharacteristically silent. They spent most of the time on Ellie's back, talking quietly and quickly into each other's ears. As if that would make it less obvious that they were scheming.

When they reached their clearing, the possums dropped to the ground and quickly moved out of the way so that Ellie could carefully reach up and take the saber off of his back. Manny heard her grunt when she had to bear the brunt of his weight.

He helped her get him settled in a spot that none of them ever slept in.

"Sid, can you make a fire?" Ellie asked once they'd gotten him down. Manny glanced backwards to where she was looking.

For a moment, with his arms slouched at his sides, the sloth looked like he was going to tell her no. But then he rallied without meeting her eyes and nodded. He turned immediately and made his way into the trees.

After a few failed tries at getting the saber to lay on his stomach, they gave up and let him flop on his side with his legs fanned out the way they'd found him. In the clearer lighting, there was definitely a bump on his head. Doubtless he'd be bruised in multiple places under his fur. If he lived.

His breathing wasn't exactly shallow, but it wasn't peaceful either. It seemed like his lungs were just going through the motions more than anything else, and he literally hadn't moved yet. Manny didn't know that much about injuries, but it didn't seem like a good sign that he was still out cold.

And they had no idea what was going to happen when, or if, he woke up.

"Ellie." Manny kept his voice at a low murmur as the twins ran around picking up ridiculously small twigs for the fire, trying to help too. When she looked up at him, he allowed himself to be openly worried. "Be careful. Please."

"I will be." But she smirked a little, like she'd more than expected his word of caution, and went back to checking the saber over. When she carefully picked his head up and put it at a less neck-pain-inducing angle, he looked away.

Sid returned with his usual armful of sticks a few minutes later, and he dumped them in the usual spot. His eyes trailed from where the sticks were to where the saber was, and after another moment of deliberation, he collected them once more and brought them closer to where Ellie was fussing. She gave him a warm smile when she saw what he was doing and went back to her nitpicking. But Manny continued to watch Sid. The sloth glanced at the saber a few times, but it was quick each time, and he always seemed more comfortable once his focus was back on the rocks and sticks.

Manny knew that Ellie wanted the two of them to talk more, but for him, this was what taking care of Sid looked like. The sloth liked to talk, and he liked to share his emotions. Most of the time. But it was important to Manny that his best friend knew how to take the space and time that he needed to sort out his feelings rather than brushing them aside. He wanted Sid to be quiet sometimes and to know that, that was okay too. While Manny couldn't take credit for much in this herd, Sid's slow, agonizing transition into a more emotionally well-rounded sloth was something that he was obscenely proud of. Even if glimpses of those changes were few and far between.

When Sid caught his eyes, Manny nodded emotionlessly to him. Sid nodded back a little too quickly, but his shoulders relaxed as he finally got the kindling to catch fire.

Off to the side, Crash and Eddie had slowed down and were keeping a safe distance from where Ellie was finishing up checking the saber. She looked up at her brothers and smiled, as if any of this was a good thing, and then stood up. "We'll need to make sure that the fire stays going all night long guys."

"We'll have to take watches." Manny corrected as she made her way over and settled down next to him. He'd been foolish to fall asleep so easily the last time. Then again, his family hadn't been involved. At least, that wasn't how he'd seen Sid yet.

"He'll need someone checking on him and making sure he's okay if he wakes up." Ellie agreed pointedly, yawning and smiling like she'd outdone him as the possums and Sid went back to what they were doing. "Wake me up when it's my turn." She poked his leg with her trunk for good-humored measure and snuggled in next to him. But, changing her mind, lifted her head to look him in the eye with that all-business look he'd learned to fear. "You two will have a conversation before this is all over."

When she glanced at Sid, Manny did too. He was diligently adding more kindling in a human-tent pattern to keep the flames high and bright. Predictably, he didn't notice them looking.

Manny huffed. He had forgotten about their earlier conversation, but apparently she hadn't. He frowned at her stern expression. "I'll think about it."

Her eyebrows raised a fraction.

"We'll talk about it later."

They went a little higher.

"Trust me, he's fine."

One cocked above the other, and he knew if he took one more conversational step, she'd unleash whatever it was she'd been about to say earlier on him. He briefly considered letting her have at it. In a way, this was worth an argument to him. But then he remembered the carnivore lying a too-short distance away and relented.

A single nod, and she was satisfied. He watched her lay her head back down and close her eyes. Then he looked once, quickly, at Sid and the saber. The former was diligently ignoring the latter, and Manny supposed they would have a conversation about this. It was probably inevitable. If Ellie got her way in the process…well, she usually did. And she was usually right in the end. So, win, win.

Crash and Eddie were oblivious, as always, to their conversation and the overarching tension, and they played until the sun was long gone behind the trees. Then they found their usual spots, in a choice branch location according to Eddie, and were snoring in a ridiculously short amount of time. Sid was a little more on edge, but the sloth's go-to was to fix things with copious amounts of sleep, so he eventually made his way over to his spot – deliberated for a moment and scooted a little closer to Manny than usual – and was slumbering soon enough.

That left Manny awake, alone, and still in moderate shock. The fire crackled and jumped, and he laid in the silence, thinking. The saber across from him still hadn't moved, but the condensation on his fur had melted, and it was an even brighter orange than it had been earlier. It also somehow made him look even more injured and vulnerable. Any mammoth in their right mind would take the opportunity and end this now. But Manny had always lived with the sense, especially after what happened up north, that this was the real difference between carnivores and herbivores. Sabers killed to eat because they had to. While Manny could believe more than a few of them were just bloodthirsty in general, he'd had the opportunity to learn for a fact that it wasn't true for them all. And herbivores lived a comparatively more passive life, only taking the violent route to defend against threats. Right now, this saber simply didn't have the option of being a threat.

When he came to, he'd no doubt cause some problems, but Manny wasn't afraid of a single, injured carnivore. If anything, he was more afraid of the rest of his herd's reaction when the saber figured out he wouldn't be able to push them around and insisted on leaving. Ellie would doubtless make every attempt to get him to stay, and Crash and Eddie would all but hang on him until he got fed up. Manny would probably end up chasing him off, still injured, back to his pack.

There'd be a discussion and some emotions he didn't want to deal with, and they would decide if they needed to move on or if it was safe enough to stay. Maybe they'd even be able to get him to hint at how many of them there were around here. Manny wasn't sure what his limit was anymore, now that he wasn't living alone in a nihilistic fog and looking over his shoulder every minute or two for danger. But even with two mammoths, they probably couldn't take on more than five or six of them, especially with Sid and the possums as liabilities.

This was, overall, a massively stupid decision on their parts. Sabers always meant danger. They'd essentially just guaranteed trouble for themselves. But, even knowing that, even after all of this, after all these years, Manny knew they couldn't have left him there. Not again.

The impending pack/herd meeting that the characters keep referencing is loosely inspired by Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series. The books are set six thousand years ago in Europe, and the characters live in clans. At one point, before the events of the series, there's a clan meet that the main character attends with his father. I tend to think of my story's meeting as being a similar gathering of animals.

(I also highly recommend the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. It's a fantastic middle grade series (and still totally worth a read if you're older than a middle schooler). The sheer detail of Paver's worldbuilding is so impressive, and the characters are deep and well developed. I cannot overstate how wonderful these books are.)