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The storm had finally abated, drifting past Nova Scotia to torment elsewhere. No longer was the outside world a blank cloud of white that could not be broken even to the keenest eyes. Oak could see the apple orchard from the porch, and the forest further past. His limbs trembled with pent-up energy waiting to be relinquished. Staying cooped up for days had not been very much fun, although he had liked spending time with Momma and Cypress, as well as the older Sadira-Marino girls, Amata and Cambria.
He inhaled the frigid air that stung the inside of his nostrils and burst off the porch, landing in a deep snowdrift. He walked awkwardly towards the forest, huffing and snorting with effort as he struggled through the snowy depths. Once he was at the edge of the wood, the boy looked over his shoulder just to make sure he could see the Manor in the distance, as if that omnipresent whiteness would return in a split second. The Manor stood tall, and Oak felt silly for worrying. He wove through the trees, cerulean eyes inspecting the branches, their position on the tree, the space from one to the other. One of the trees' branches began just at his eye level, perfect.
Oak grasped the branch with his hands and let his feet walk up the trunk. He swung over and pulled himself up to stand using a branch from above. In moments, the deft tree-climber had ascended to halfway up the large pine. There he paused, wishing to step away from the trunk and peer through the green needles to see how far up he was. That was a mistake. The end of the branch he stood on was weak and unable to support his weight, and all of a sudden he was falling, his head, limbs and tail crashing against the branches on the way down. He landed with a loud thump, his entire body stinging with pain. Lying still, he thought he could smell blood. Oak touched his fingers to his forehead and saw that they were stained deep crimson. Already in shock from the fall, he could not handle his head bleeding. The world went black.
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