After we prepared the meat, I gathered the bones and useless parts and took them outside, burying them with the moss from earlier. When I came back, Dallas was cooking slabs of it over the fire that I kept going. He looked up at me when I came back in, a huge smile on his face. I couldn’t help it-I smiled back, even though there was still a chance that I would try to eat him. “If you want to go ahead and get the deerskin, I can do that,” I say, anxious to finally have some clothes. He nods with understanding, getting up and handing me the stick the meat slab was impaled with. “I’ll be back by nightfall,” he murmured. “If I’m not, then there’s been a problem.” I nod and watch him walk out. I don’t recover the entrance; he’ll need to find his way back.
It took me until he returned to cook just half of the meat. He shot back into the cave, a slightly worried look on his face. I get up and instantly cover the entrance. He’s got a huge roll of deerskin bundled under his arm. “How did it go?” I ask anxiously, setting the meat to the side. “It went better than I expected. We should probably lay low for a while. Oh, and it started to snow again,” he reported. I lean against the cave wall. More snow. It was never going to end. He dropped the deerskin by the bed and moved to sit next to me, picking up the meat I’d laid down and continuing to cook it.
“You know, before this snow started, I’d been reading everything I could get my hands on. Some of it mentioned this happening, and they were written, like, thousands of years ago.” I open my eyes and look at him. “What’d they say?” I ask, sitting up, my interest peaking. “That it would start with three years of winter, then the gods would have this huge giant battle.” I nod. “I was reading about the end of the world from a really old book, but it was different. It was talking about four horsemen,” I say. His eyes light up. “I read about that one too. War, Death, Famine, and Pestilence.” I nod, feeling my own face light up.
“Did your Apocalypse have a specific name?” I ask, curiosity tingeing my voice. Green eyes met silver. “Ragnarok,” he said.
