The first thing he noticed was the wind, loud, but oddly, he couldn’t feel it on his chitin.
The second thing he noticed was the cold. He felt it everywhere. It was like some towel that someling sprayed cold water on and draped over him. It was even a little wet to complete the experience.
The third thing he noticed was how he couldn’t move anything. Something kept him from moving his legs, wings, neck, head… he couldn’t even open his eyelids.
He felt oh so tired, though. Maybe he should just… rest for a… little… wh…i…l…e….
A freezing drop of water splashed onto one of the softer, more sensitive parts of his chitin at the base of his neck, waking him back up. An unconscious shiver managed to dislodge a bit of whatever was keeping him trapped, and a strong shake of his head freed him from his frigid prison.
Finally opening his eyes, he could see a blank expanse of white. Looking from left to right changed nothing, looking down provided the same view, and looking up finally gave a different color: gray checkered by moving white spots. It really wasn’t that much different.
It took a while, but he was finally able to dig himself out of the snow he was buried in. Now, he needed to leave the crater he was in, and the best way to-
A jolt of pain broke his train of thought as he extended his wings, and he looked back at them. With horror, he saw that the previously ragged wings were barely more than stubs. While he could regrow them with time and energy – rough-housing often tore a wing at the hive – he wouldn’t be able to fly anytime soon with how bad they looked. With a sigh, he started carefully climbing/digging his way out.
He slipped a few times on his way up the crumbly and squishy snow walls, but when he finally managed to get out of the hole that he made on his landing, and saw nothing but snow in every direction, including up if the snowflakes and snow clouds counted.
It was then that it sank in: Thorax had no idea where he was, outside of far away from anything and anyling he knew.
He had no idea how far he travelled. The falling snow made it impossible to see anything far away, and difficult to see anything that wasn’t close. The only landmarks he could see were the crater he made, long out of view, and the prints he was leaving behind, which were being slowly filled in.
He wasn’t even sure what he was walking on. To be more precise, he wasn’t sure how far down it was before the ground became solid again. It could be just a hoof length or two under the snow, or he could be walking on top of some massive amount of ice, with snow just dusting over the top like a thin layer of barren dirt, as it was near the hive.
He belatedly added to the list of possibilities that there could also be a thin sheet of snow suspended over thin air when a hoof broke through snow and found nothing underneath, and in his surprise lost his balance and fell into the hole. Thankfully, it wasn’t that deep, so all he got was a light ache in his jaw when he landed on it.
“Why does this always happen to me,” Thorax moaned.
He got up and looked around the small cavern he dropped into, taking note of the floor of dirt with some grass here and there as well as the walls made entirely of compressed snow. There were also a few passageways that led to somewhere else, and what was down one of them caught his attention: a group of small, white-furred foxes, staring at him with some shock.
He said with a calm, quiet voice, “Don’t worry, I don’t mean you any harm.” The snowy foxes still fled down the corridor into a small branch partway in, likely their den.
With a weak sigh, he looked back up at the hole, and the snow slowly drifting down. While it was surprisingly warm in this cavern, considering it had snow for walls, it was rapidly cooling with that sudden opening. However warm that nearby den was, it wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant soon.
However, he had no idea how to patch that hole, and he was too tired to think something up. This was also the only shelter he had found so far, and not even the Queen would know when he would find another in the snowfall. Coming to a decision, he laid down in the entryway to the foxes’ corridor, back to the outside in the hopes of the chill keeping his wings numb, and let himself drift off.
Soon, his snores filled the otherwise silent caverns.
Something tickled Thorax’s nose. Something light and fuzzy was pulling him from his sleep. Well, unless one of the other changelings of the hive were pulling a prank on him… again…, everything that happened wasn’t some strange dream he was having while camping out outside of Canterlot’s walls and shield.
He slowly opened his eyes and blinked a few times to clear them, as all he saw was white. A little more time to wake up along with refocusing his eyes let him see the differences in texture. There was the flat white of snow at the front, which were the walls, and some fuzzy white downwards. That’s right, he fell asleep in that entry way, and he had his back to the chamber he fell into. His wings didn’t ache much, though he didn’t know if that was from the cold or because they were healing.
Lifting his head a little bit, he could finally get a good look at why his underside felt so warm. The little foxes were all huddled up against his stomach, except for one bold enough to nap under his chin. That one’s tail was the culprit for his ticklish nose. He kept himself from chuckling at the adorable sight, not wanting to wake them up.
Whatever warm feeling he felt froze solid when he finally bothered to look down the corridor again and saw the cold, angry glare of a fox that was much larger than the small ones.