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“It must’ve been young,” I pointed out, seeing as it wasn’t the biggest fox I had seen wandering around.

“Yeah, well…considering they don’t live that long anyway, this one probably had only one year left.”

Foxes in the wild only got to about three years old, which wasn’t in fact long at all. Still…I never wanted to see one dead at our camp.

“I’m gonna skin it when we get back from Jason’s and if you want, you can have the tail. Add it to your collection,” he suggested.

I looked up at him and shrugged. “It’s dead anyway, right?”

The blood on his face was dry, but it didn’t seem as if he had been spending too much time gutting the fox yet.

The blood on his knife was still wet and dripping down the blade.

“Definitely dead. Go get ready. Papa wants us to be back before dinner so we can help him put up the toilet next to the cabin.”

At least there was one thing I was excited about.

Finally getting some privacy to change my pads.

And everything that went down last night, dream or not, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

*

Having a quad would’ve made a few things easier out in the wild, but since Papa didn’t own one, and probably never would, I had a hard time getting off it after Fennec parked it next to Jason’s cabin.

I was holding the chainsaw in my arms and Fennec had the wood grinder in his lap while driving, which made it hard for me to hold on to him as he drove recklessly through the forest.

There was a path, but he liked to take shortcuts which made me duck more than once to not get hit by branches.

“We should’ve taken the helmets when we got the quad in the first place. I could’ve fallen off.”

“But you didn’t,” he muttered, getting off the quad himself and shooting me an annoyed but at the same time emotionless look.

I rolled my eyes at him and sighed, turning away from him to place the chainsaw on the bench next to Jason’s front door, then I knocked and waited for him to open.

Sitka’s barks were what we heard first, then Jason opened the door with a deep frown on his face.

“Down, girl. Told you not to get this agitated. You’ll throw up again.”

“Is she okay?” I asked, petting Sitka’s head and letting her lick my hands.

“She’s not acting like herself lately. I need to get her to the vet in Fairbanks. Might as well stay there for a few days in case one of you wants to join.”

“No,” Fennec and I both replied. “But you’ll come pick us up for Christmas, right?” Fennec added.

“Yeah. I’ll be back mid-December and then take you guys with me. Done with the cabin? Took you a while to build it.”

“Papa built it on his own mostly,” I explained.

“Gotta come up there and see it for myself. Need anything? You can take the quad up there again. Can’t imagine how hard it is to walk through the snow for hours,” Jason said.

“We’ll walk. We’re used to the cold,” Fennec explained, setting the wood grinder next to the chainsaw.

“Figured. You kids are just like your father. How’s he holding up?”

“Better, now that he has his cabin. I knew he wouldn’t make it one more year in that tent,” Fennec said, laughing.

“He’s getting older, boy.”

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