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Twelve was miserable, and more so than usual.
In addition to her normal insomnia-fueled foul mood, she was now cold; and damn if it wasn’t cold up here, even more so it seemed than it had been in New York. In that wretched city there were at least enough fires and bodies to keep warm, but here there was nothing separating her from the bitter chill of winter.
The skinny coyote woman had always been sickly, due to her lack of proper nutrition as a pup, and so instead of a winter coat coming in thick and warm, she instead looked like a half-molting bird. The only thing keeping her from freezing to death were the clothes she had procured for herself; a deer-pelt suit where the fur had been turned inward, and the leather portion out; it had a hood, which she was so thankful for it almost made her come back to Christ... almost.
She had also wrapped her hands and feet in rabbit fur-lined strips of leather, but it did little to keep her fingers from tingling. Some of this she had fashioned haphazardly for herself, and the rest she had managed to trade for; her personal stash of liquor was now depleted.
It was mid-day when she left the relative comfort of her shop to head to the lake for water, two buckets tied to Orville’s fur saddle. The troughs were freezing over, and so she had to make this trip twice a day to make sure the horses in the stockyard didn’t get dehydrated. The lake was still too large and warm that any serious ice had trouble finding a hold. Usually a couple kicks and fresh water was there for the taking.
The sky was pregnant with snow, but luckily none was falling yet. She and her mule hurried along, going at a brisk pace; the quicker they got this done with, the better.