Chapter 13 – Warm Welcome

Clockwerk was awake, but only just. He had no idea of what his surroundings might be, and even less of an idea of why he should care. He was sure of one fact, however; he seemed to be floating, and this troubled his tired conscience greatly. His icy, broken mind slowly began to take in what his frozen, useless eyes could not as he pieced everything that had transpired over the past month back into place.

'Ice… Block of ice… Food and father… No… No father… Food…' His mind was running as clearly as he could force it too, but the long exposure to the elements that his body had been subject to had taken its toll.

'Cat… Where?' His eyes, though frozen shut, managed to scrunch together as he pushed his mind passed its limit. He was remembering finding something, no, some being in the hollow that was almost his grave. His brow relaxed as his mind was finally taxed beyond its limitations. His grip on the world lessened, and he fazed himself out of it.

…

The two bears who had found the owl carried him, as well as another shapeless object, through the icy torrent of wind outside of the cave until they came to a small hollow in a crag of rocks blocked with a dull, wooden door. One of the bears carefully released his grasp on the strange bird and fiddled with the bronze lock until it opened with a click that was lost to the deafening winds. He threw open the door, stirring up a flurry of snow that had gathered on it in the process, and then lifted his odd finds as he helped his brother carry them into the warmth of their home.

…

The owl shivered and flexed his tired muscles in an attempt to shake the frost from his bones. The brothers had been working tirelessly in an attempt to save the battered creature, and had come close to abandoning him on more than one occasion, but the tired specimen always seemed to defy the odds and come back from the brink of apparent death. The bears had worked in shifts for the better part of a week, slowly coaxing the bird back to life. It was now the morning of his seventh day in the bears' hollow, and Clockwerk shakily held a steaming cup of dark, earthy tasting liquid in his claws. He was seated on a small wooden stump in front of a fire that gently smoldered in an alcove that had been hewn out of the side of the natural rock of the interior of the bears' cave. The room he sat in was of roughly round shape with little odds and ends strung to the walls as means of decoration. It was a homely affair, and it was hard to imagine that just outside of the warm rock walls existed a raging torrent of ice and death. Clock took a sip from his stone cup and grimaced slightly as a flavor not completely unlike dirt and iron washed over his tongue. In bringing the beverage up to his mouth, he noticed his ragged claws, or at least what was left of them, as well as the bloodily scarred points at which they connected to the rest of his leg. He must have made an awful sight, but he did not care so long as he was alive and ticking.

The hollow thought of a cat, a large cat, suddenly crossed through his mind again as it had done several times over the past few days. He still couldn't quite place why he thought such things, and he banished it once again from his mind. He did allow one thought to invade him, though; the thought of a certain family of raccoons.

The Cooper clan and his own had a rivalry that dated back generations, and this expedition to the arctic was a result of it. One of the stupid rodents, the name of which eludes his cold mind, was planning a trip to this unforgiving land in a bid to cement his clan's name in history, but Clock's father, Laark, wanted that honor for himself. One thing led to another, and suddenly the owl had found himself, as well as his father and ten men, aboard a large iron-hulled ship that was on its way to the frosty, unknown lands of the north.

"Blasted animals." The breath that carried the shaky words from his mouth curled into a display of steam over his cup, and then disappeared. He began to laugh.

It was a crooked, wheezing laugh that echoed lazily around the room. The pure hatred behind the disgusting sound seemed to drive out what little light was afforded to the room by the fire and replace it with an icy grip of shadows. The effort of the gesture brought him into a fit of coughing, and he took another labored sip from his cup.

'You are pathetic,' he heard the familiar voice of his father say to him from somewhere across the room.

'You are weak,' echoed from near the fire, again in his father's voice.

The presence of his father, let alone two of them, seemed to offer no trouble to his mind. The acceptance of such a fact confused him for a moment, but he didn't quite seem to know what he was going to do with this information. Honestly, he didn't care.

"You are well?"

The presence of a very real voice coming from an easily identifiable source pleased him as he turned around to meet the eyes of a large bear that had quietly made his way in. The bear turned his head slightly downward, breaking eye contact with him.

"Yes."

"This is good. My brother has gone to forage what he can from the grips of the ice. Stay and drink. Will be back soon."

'Simple minded idiot' once again chimed in the voice of his father, this time from directly behind him. 'Kill him.'

Maybe it was his stomach talking, but Clockwerk seriously considered the command. He flexed his talons against the cup that he was holding, and made an unsettling scratching noise against it as he did so. The bear in front of him visibly winced, and then turned to leave.

Clockwerk took another sip of his drink, finishing it.

"Simple minded idiot."

A/N:

Sorry.