Bright

Chapter 4

"Alright, Welsh, where now?" Natasha asked the snowy owl as he flapped his wings on her shoulder. We had been walking for around an hour and a half and were approximately two and fourth miles away from the North Pole. We had walked at a slow pace at first, but then gently sped up, wanting to get to our first checkpoint by mid-afternoon. We had reached it, but the sun was dipping dangerously low to the horizon, telling us that it was almost night, though the sun would never be out of sight. The small campsite was simple, just a shallow dip in the snowy tundra. In the center was a small fire pit, surrounded by frost laced stones. The wood in the center was frozen solid, looking more like icicles. The rest of the camp was empty, looking as if no one had been there for ages.

"Ve follow the Midnight Trail, I have told you! Vhy must you make things so difficult?" Welsh hooted in reply. He shook his snow covered head around to shake the snowflakes off.

"Yes, but what is the Midnight Trail?" Natasha asked him, sounding irritated.

"You vill see it vhen it is time," Welsh answered simply.

"But we need to see it now," I told him.

"If you needed to see it now, you vould."

Natasha rolled her eyes and sighed. "Alright, Welsh, we get it. You like speaking in riddles and confusing the rest of the world, but just this once, could you make sense? Do you want to find the GGP or not?"

"Find the GGP? No. Save Christmas? Yes."

"Tell us what the Midnight Trail is, and then we can save Christmas. Not before."

"Then ve vill vait to save Christmas until you know vhat the Midnight Trail is."

"But how will we know?" I asked, getting annoyed at the owl.

"You vill know."

"But how?"

"If you really vanted to know, then you vould stop asking."

How did that make sense? "Why must you talk in riddles?" I muttered under my breath.

"I do not. I speak plenty vell and understandable. Put you do not try to understand. You look for the simplest vay into and out of things. You vill never learn that vay."

"We're not trying to learn anything right now. We're trying to save Christmas!"

"Put you are trying to learn how to save Christmas."

"Oh," I said, realizing that I was not going to win this argument.

"So, you want us to wait here until someone decides that we need to know what the Midnight Trail is?" Natasha asked, her voice edged with doubt.

"Exactly," Welsh said, blinking approval. "Put, it is not someone that decides. It is you."

If it were up to me, we would have known a while ago, I thought.

We waited in the camp for another hour or so, until Natasha told us that in Michigan, the sun would have been down for about thirty minutes. She told us to get some sleep, so we would be rested for the next day. Welsh perched on one of the sticks, and almost immediately fell asleep. Natasha curled up in a bed of snow, her muzzle hiding under her paws. Soon I could hear her snoring, too.

I pulled my poncho liner from my rucksack, and stuffed myself in a sleeping bag. I was still freezing cold, and I shivered uncontrollably for a long while. When I thought I was about to freeze to death, Natasha blinked open one eye and looked at me. She stood, and walked heavily over to me. Quickly, she wrapped herself around me, heating me with her body and warm fur. Soon, I drifted off into a disturbed sleep.