He soared above a world where life was scarce—a world tilting toward a starker state of scarcity. His four-legged friends had suffered already through the long winter. His mind switched to a scene of serenity, of a scientist diligently sorting through pollen sample from an ice core—but, no, in actual fact he was walking among a field of vanished flowers wondering what to call them.

A crackling bang, low, muffled and distant came to his ears. The shuddering of the earth worked its way up through his feet into his core, where his kidneys jiggled in their suspended state and his liver convulsed, prepared for something that it was anticipating and he was not. His heart began to race, but already was regulating its beat to conserve its considerable power. He recalled being told that normal children did not have this sense, and that it was his secret, a very important secret. His friends bunched up around his naked legs and hips, the two youngest snuggling against his feet. They all whimpered and whined about him, looking up into the unnatural blue sky—and it came.

A great distant billowing darkness bloomed above the distant horizon of low rolling hills. The cloud—no, something more—plumed skyward as much as it crept across the world like an unwelcome blanket. His friends were terrified and nuzzled him with inconsolable whines. The sun shinned weakly and distant in the east, over his right shoulder. They howled, howled to the dying sky as their urine pooled in the blood-smeared depression in the snow-covered turf around his kill, warming his feet with their fear…

….They had walked long, far and upward among the trees, he and the The Man in the Gray Suit, until they found him there, the big angry raccoon that had scared the old lady’s dog down in the picnic table place. They now barely heard the distant ‘woosh’ and rumble of the cars and trucks on the highway below. The animal had hair bushing up on its back as its little eyes blazed in anger. The Man in the Gray Suit had promised the lady that the insane raccoon—who had stolen her sandwich—would no longer pose a danger to her or her dog, though the sandwich was certainly beyond help..

The Man in the Gray Suit looked at the animal and spoke in his soft, deep voice. “Posie, the animal is sick, and must be killed to end its suffering and to keep it from sickening others. You are eight years old Posie; a big boy now. It is time.”

A click sounded behind him and he smelled it, smelled the steel. Somehow, when steel moved, he could smell it. The Man in the Gray Suit then placed the open knife into Posie’s little hand. The feeling of the blade in his hand ignited something within him and he darted with a squeak of a miniature growl for the animal, which lunged sideways at him, salivating around the mouth as it barred its teeth more in warning than for effect. Posie could sense that the tormented creature was off balance. So he darted sideways, pushed off the base of the out of place garden tree, and leaped over the hissing hairball as he plunged the knife downward into its neck.

The animal lay sadly as the crunch of the man’s feet sounded closer; the voice so much bigger than the man and so much calmer than the words. He stood above and talked Posie through the process of skinning an animal, and of making certain this animal’s saliva and innards did not get on his hands.

Posie learned that in a survival situation he would not have time to properly process the skin of an animal for clothing. He learned also, that if he found himself away from shelter in winter conditions that the skin of a freshly killed animal, if simply worn with the fur outward as the animal had, would first provide warmth from the wet interior. But, like putting on a warm damp shirt and going out in the cold, the dampness would eventually betray him and steal his body heat. In such a situation, as demonstrated with the raccoon’s hide, one made a moccasin for the foot with the hair facing inward.

He winced when the animal shivered as he began to remove the skin, not having been completely dead. He felt the shiver now, felt the anguish of the small ravaged mind as The Man in the Gray Suit stepped forward thoughtfully and snapped the shivering neck between his thumb and forefinger…

…But still the animal shivered up against him, even beginning to whine. No, it was many raccoons—no, larger.

He woke groggily from his trance, petting his whimpering friends as they howled outward and away, rather than up into the sky, a sky that was now sunless and ashen and raining sizzling stones that smoked through the snow and hissed against the bunched shoots of the thick grass. The sky to the north was ever darkening, the sky above growing taller and darker, as if the atmosphere had been pierced and the void had invaded stars and all. Behind him was his bear hide. As he turned to locate it he noticed that the southern sky was yet its normal gray, not the bright blue of some little time ago, and not the creeping burning soot out of the north.

He turned to step over to the hide and they surged around him trying to stay close. He thought about the direction he was headed, bent to hoist the heavy bear skin over his shoulders, flesh, fat, fascia and blood outward and thick hairy coat against his skin. He then looked around to see all of his friends pointing nose southward, eyes glazed with purpose. He jogged forward through the snow beneath the darkening sky above, and they followed, each and every one spread out to his flanks, their great muzzles just behind his hips, seemingly determined to run to the imaginary destination he had silently suggested.