Stump tucked himself tightly alongside the hollowed out wall of the makeshift den he had dug along the beginnings of the tunnels. He could still feel the nipping teeth of the chill leaf-bare breeze each time it slipped past; but the temperatures were far from dire from within Burrowclan’s dens. Ruffling his fur preemptively when he heard the beginnings of the whistling winds sucking through the burrows, Stump grumbled underneath his breath and squinted his eyes to a nearly-closed position as her crammed his forepaws more tautly against his chest and the beginnings of the curve of his belly. It wasn’t his first winter, but the dour-faced tod could say with certainty that he hated it just as much as the previous leaf-bare that had gripped the territories in its maw.

Stump had never liked the cold. Cold weather had been the start of most of his misfortune in life—as far as he could tell. It had been the cold that resulted in his biological mother’s litter being of poor health; it was the cold that sapped the life out of his real mother, and it was the cold that continued to see their bellies less than full each night of the harsh winter.

”Load of rat shit, that’s what it is...” Stump grumbled in a low tone to himself, attentive eyes shifting from here to there—eying the deeper shadows farther inside of the dens and what moonlight filtered into the burrows from the outside world. It might have been a pretty night... were it not for the angry winds that whipped and clawed through the foliage. ”Starting to seem like The Council might be a bit mad,” the three-legged tod huffed with a sardonic laugh following the thought. Shifting in place with a grumble, Stump shook his head and turned his attentions back to the entrance of the burrows. He was on sentry duty tonight—not that any predator would be facing the breeze in search of them in their burrows... Wonder if things are any warmer in Lakeclan or Fieldclan, he thought, staring outside of the tunnels.

”Night patrol should be back soon, right?” Stump shouted down the tunnels farther into the burrows, ears perked as he listened for a response from one of his clanmates as his voice echoed off of the walls.

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