Icy Beginnings

As Kiba watched the feline's eyelids get heavier, he noticed that his own were as well. The cat turned away from a nearby window, curled up tighter and fell asleep. Kiba was getting tired as well. He allowed himself to rest his eyes and lay his head down. "It would be good to get some rest" he thought as he slowly fell into a gentle sleep.

Kiba stood in a long hallway with doors every few feet, and it seemed to stretch so far in each direction that he couldn't see the ends of it. The hallway was very clean and was white in color, devoid of any expression. It seemed cold wherever he was, and the hallway was dim. Kiba was confused and quickly became afraid. He couldn't remember how he ended up in this place or why he was there. He had the thought of trying to go through one of the infinite amount of doors in the hall, but then quickly became discouraged. "Which one?" he thought to himself, "there's so many, what if I go through one and it brings me nothing?". He sat for a second, paralyzed by how little he knew about what was going on. But worse, he realized he was completely alone. No one was there with him to help him find his way. No one to interact with meaningfully while on his journey seeking answers. Kiba remained sitting and became sick to his stomach at this realization. Then, suddenly, he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was the cat, standing in one of the doorways. She walked over to him and the closer she got the less dim and dreary the hallway became. Gradually it became lighter as she approached him, and when she got to him, she licked him gently on the ear. The cat then turned around and walked back over to the door, looking back at him as if signaling that it was the right one to travel through and that he should follow. Kiba felt so relieved when he was the cat. He felt like he had been alone for an eternity before she arrived. Now that he was in her presence he felt calm and reassured. He still didn't know how he got where he was or why, but for some reason because she was there that didn't bother him much. He would find out eventually, and the cat would guide him in doing that. He knew that, and it made him feel comforted. He followed the cat through the doorway, and slowly as they entered whatever room was next it became brighter and brighter. Then he woke up, and realized there was light coming through the windows. It must have been dawn. He got up and stretched slowly, yawning as he did so, and noticed the cat was in the middle of uncurling herself and doing the same. Evidently she had woken up just before him. He was happy to see she was there, and he was indeed not alone. He whined at her and yawned again to let her know he had just woken up, and then looked at the door and whined, so that she would know he was ready to go when she was.

The cat stood up and looked at Kiba for a second before giving him a lick on the ear and jumped on the next bed until she was on the ground near the door. She looked over at Kiba to make sure he was coming, so he jumped down and followed her out into the hallway. Kiba noticed that the air didnt burn as it had before, and felt almost as normal as the air further in the structure. The feline looked back at the wolf, waiting for him to pick a destination. So, Kiba walked down the hallway to a doorway that had caught his interest due to it having a slightly different shape than many of the others, making sure the cat was right behind him as he walked. Inside the room were more of the strange panels they had seen earlier with the pictures on them, except these had strange shapes on them that he could not distinguish. He looked around at the panels, and his eyes went across one that gave him a strange feeling. He squinted at the one particular panel, and suddenly felt like it was telling him something. Somehow he felt like he was gathering information from these shapes on the panel. "Old world......environment...unsustainable.....evacuate...", he was only able to gather bits and pieces but through some phenomenon he did not understand he could tell a little of the words these shapes spoke. "Was the old world's environment not able to sustain itself and had to be evacuated?" he wondered to himself. He turned and looked at the cat with a look of confusion on his face, wondering if this strange phenomenon was happening to her as well.

Kiba watched the cat as she studied the panels carefully. She was looking at individual panels for far longer than one would normally if they weren't gathering anything meaningful from them. "Was it happening to her as well?" Kiba wondered. Kiba studied the panels further, and noticed that a common theme appeared in many of them. Many emphasized the impact fighting, particularly among the humans he presumed, had regarding the destruction of the environment and the old world. "Those humans, they never learn" he thought. Kiba looked over at the cat and whined, then looked back at the panels with a look of disappointment. Maybe she would understand his signal and know that he understood what these panels spoke of. He wondered if she understood as well, and thought of how he would even be able to tell if she did.

Kiba saw the cat look at the panels and growl in annoyance. "Well, that answers that question", he thought "now I know she sees it just as I do". He looked back at the panels and continued studying them. It was mostly the same throughout the room: fighting, war, destruction, unsustainable, evacuation. Kiba felt a disappointment towards the humans, not anger or annoyance but just pure disappointment. After all this sort of thing shouldn't be all that surprising with how they were. He walked along the room viewing the panels as he moved closer to the doorway. Then, when he was next to the door, he sat down and continued looking about the room. He would wait for the cat to finish observing the room until she wanted to leave.

The cat scanned the room once more and looked at one particular panel with some names of some frozen species and some information about the old world on it. She looked at that panel for short time, and then turned and looked at him before suddenly walking rather quickly out into the hall. She looked as though she had had a thought, and had something in mind as she walked. She then sat down in the hall waiting for him. Kiba got back up and walked over to her, and saw her eyes moving repetitively as she looked at a particular room down the hall. Clearly she was interested in moving in that direction, and so Kiba began walking down the hall towards it.