Tiger Winter - 4. Snow

First snow fell on a Thursday right at the end of October. It was only a couple of centimetres of soft white powder that turned very quickly to grey slurry in the streets, but to Emmett, it was still first snow, and it was a brilliant excuse to be happy.

He’d only had one short tutoring session that morning: going through a dissertation copy with a slightly worried third year student who wanted to study caribou but was scared of anything with antlers. On leaving the university campus he decided to see if Zeke wanted to have lunch.

Over the past two months, he and Zeke had seen a lot of each other. Mostly they went to Zeke’s place, because while Emmett’s bed was bigger, Zeke liked his own television and his own sofa. They went out too; drinking and flirting, Zeke dragging Emmett out onto the dance floor so he could grind his hips against his boyfriend’s crotch. They made it home, only partially clothed, on dozens of cab rides. Emmett put up with rubbish girly-TV because Zeke was always happier afterwards, confident and easily satisfied, and that made it all the more delicious for Emmett to keep him on edge all night and screw his boyfriend every way he could think of. It was wonderful, fun, brilliant, and Emmett loved the time they spent together. He was also hungry, all of the time.

Not since the first week he’d first grown into his fur had Emmett been so hungry. It had taken him seven days to work out how his new body worked, how his metabolism had changed now that he was a polar bear through and through. His father had helped, piled food into him, but Emmett had stopped eating when he was no longer hungry and then woken up with his insides trying to eat themselves. Once he had worked out that if he ate a lot of protein and fat slowly over a couple of hours, his insanely high metabolism would break it down and give him a layer of stored fat over his muscles. Over a day or so it would fade out, and then he would eat again. With a giant meal in which he consumed roughly forty-five thousand calories, Emmett finally discovered how to keep himself from being hungry.

But Zeke liked his muscles, the deep ridges of his abdomen, and had frowned and poked at the fat layer with a little frown the one time Emmett had gone over to his after consuming his usual salmon, seal and three meat dinner. After that he had tried to work his minimum calorie requirement in around his boyfriend’s date schedule, but it wasn’t keeping him happy. Zeke seemed to be able to exist on the tiniest amounts of take out, white wine by the large glass, and kisses. He liked to go to the gym, something Emmett had managed to make sure he didn’t do too, by arranging imaginary lectures and tutorials on the evenings when Zeke was busy sweating in front of a full length mirror. Emmett could not survive on small amounts of takeout, and while Zeke loved the way his starvation diet made his boyfriend look, trying to eat enough to survive and keep Zeke happily satisfied weighed on Emmett’s mind. His brother had noticed: accused him of getting “too thin” during their last Skype conversation, and Emmett had hated himself for it.

He ate caribou jerky from his pocket as he walked to the mall: he’d managed to find a supplier online who made it in a traditional style and would send it to him by the crate-load. He’d started keeping stashes in most of his coats and a drawer full in his desk, it helped take the edge off, and stopped his stomach rumbling, but it wasn’t a replacement for actual food.

Zeke was in the mall, in his office, glancing over some papers, when Emmett knocked on the door. The office had been rather out of the way and hard to find, but Emmett had expected the office of Head of Public Horticulture would have more plants in it. There were none, save a small and gently flowering pale pink and white orchid in an oriental style ceramic pot on Zeke’s desk.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Zeke looked up, “I thought I was going to meet you in the food hall?”

“I wanted to see where you worked. ” Emmett stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and tucked his elbows in, a nervous habit he had adopted the first time he’d ever knocked over a priceless antique in a friend’s house. “It’s nice.”

“It’s boring,” Zeke shuffled his papers, locked his computer screen and came out from behind his desk, “c’mon.”

Emmett had expected there to be more plant-related items in the office of a man who oversaw the health and care of hundreds of flora. When he asked Zeke about it the slender young man smiled.

“I don’t look after plants Emmett, the people who work for me do.”

“You don’t miss it?” Emmett was surprised. He wasn’t a plant person, and didn’t really understand the fascination lots of people had with growing wild things inside their houses. But his step-mother, in a departure from all logical sense, kept cacti and desert succulents, and caring for the little hot-climate plants made her incredibly happy and content. People who didn’t like plants didn’t tend to work with them on a daily basis.

“No. I never liked getting my hands dirty. Not like that,” Zeke smiled, “I like my orchid though.”

“So, no risk of you helping us plant out the garden in the spring?” Emmett touched the soft red leaves of a decorative maple tree which stood in the centre of a small stone walled bed. “So where shall we eat for lunch?”

They ate inside the mall, because one look outside and Zeke frowned and said he didn’t want to go sliding around in the snow.

“I can’t believe you walked here from the university.”

“It’s not cold. You’ve lived here through a winter before, right?”

“Sure, doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Zeke griped. “Snow is for children, and even they only find in fascinating for the first week or so. Then it just becomes an annoyance.”

“I love the snow.”

“No one actually likes snow, babe. You just think it’s pretty.” Zeke ordered a Thai salad, and Emmett started longingly at the Cajun barbeque grill stand across the food court while he waited for his steamed dumplings.

“You know where I’m from right?” Emmett frowned, “I went to Northern Lights High School. It snows eight months of the year and there are no roads out of town that aren’t built out of ice. I take my little brother fishing on the ice every time we’re home.”

“Good god, why?” Zeke gaped at him, “no wonder you came to the city to get away.”

“That’s not…never mind,” Emmett looked down at his empty tray and his stomach rumbled.

“You can’t still be hungry?” Zeke reached across the narrow counter and poked Emmett’s stomach, “why don’t you come to the gym with me? Must be lonely going by yourself.”

“I told you, I don’t go.”

“Uh-huh,” Zeke didn’t believe him. “I have to get back. Will I see you tonight?”

“I have to prep equipment for a demonstration lecture,” Emmett lied, “I’ll come round tomorrow and bring Greek food?”

“Alright,” Zeke kissed him lightly, “have a nice afternoon.”

Emmett watched as his boyfriend walked away, and for a small moment he regretted the fact he wouldn’t be getting lucky: Zeke did have a fine and beautiful arse. Then he took a deep breath, grinned, and headed across the food court to the friendly Cajun guy who ran the barbecue stall. He had more than twenty-four hours before he’d be getting naked with Zeke again: there was plenty of time to eat.

*

“Hey Huan-Yu,” Emmett grinned as he entered the kitchen, arms laden with shopping bags, “did you see the snow?”

“Yes?” the panda frowned at him, “and your reaction to this was to buy all the food in Toronto?”

“Ha!” Emmett covered the whole of his side of the kitchen, well over half the available surface, with his collected goodies. “I’m not seeing Zeke tonight.”

“You really do eat the most ridiculously large amounts of food. I wonder where you put all of it,” the diminutive Chinese man hefted a salmon almost as long as he was tall. “You get stuff like this back home?”

“Oh yeah, and they get even bigger too.” Emmett began to pack away his groceries. As well as four large salmon, a pork belly, a rack of beef ribs, and enough chicken bits to put a branch of KFC out of business for a few days, Emmett had also brought home a selection of imported warm-weather fruits. When the snow hit, Emmett celebrated with oranges and peaches by the armful, but it was the only time he ever really did. He hadn’t managed to get any more seal, which made him slightly sad, but he had enough ingredients to deep-fry the chicken pieces in spices and breadcrumbs.

“I take my brother ice fishing on Hudson Bay whenever I go home. I promised him another trip at Christmas: he’s really excited already.”

“That’s a nice thing to do. You two are really close, right? When did he get his fur?”

“He was like my other brother, Logan: early. He got his pelt when he was nearly thirteen. I was fifteen, pretty standard.”

“So, are you really all just big and white with big black eyes?”

“And are you cute and cuddly like the panda’s on TV?” Emmett arched a near-invisible eyebrow, “how long have we lived together? A month? I can’t believe I’ve never seen you in your fur.”

“Well, you’re always with Zeke.”

“Not always,” Emmett shot back.

“What do you see in that guy? Even I think his taste in television is awful.” Huan-Yu gestured with a bottle of aloe vera juice to Emmett’s huge pile of meat and fruit. “Make your giant dinner. I’ll see you in the living room.”

Emmett had gotten much better at washing up and clearing the kitchen as he went along. He didn’t like doing it, but he figured that on the rare occasions Huan-Yu did eat more than a stick of cucumber, the guy deserved to have a clean kitchen. It was his house after all, though Emmett was certainly putting his stamp on the place.

Half an hour of cooking, frying and clearing up later, Emmett carried his platter of thirty-thousand odd calories of deep-fried chicken into the lounge and nearly dropped the plate in surprise. Huan-Yu’s clothes were neatly folded on the armchair, his juice bottle empty, and a mid-sized black and white panda sat on the wooden floor in front of the television, scratching his chest with one paw.

“Well hey,” Emmett put down his dinner and smiled, “aren’t you striking?”

“Haarmm.”

“Indeed,” Emmett couldn’t help but grin, and walked around the coffee table to measure himself against the bear, who turned to stand on all fours. Huan-Yu was a lot smaller the black bears Emmett had met, and tiny compared to himself. He had the classic black and white markings, his fur short and velveteen looking, but his eyes were the same soft brown he wore in his human skin. “Very lovely, you should be proud. May I?” Emmett held out a hand, palm up, and shivered in delight when Huan-Yu leant into him.

There was always something wonderful about being near another shifter in their fur. Regardless of species, age, gender, sexual orientation, or friendship, being together was something they all craved. There wasn’t a shifter alive on the planet, from a bear to a bunny rabbit, who didn’t want the contact of another person who understood them for who they truly were. It was ultimately the best thing about going home, because no sooner would Emmett arrive than he would pile into the fur of his brothers, his father, his grandfather: family and species and love all coming together to set his heart on fire. Every shifter wanted that, and who they got it from wasn’t necessarily important. Huan-Yu was no different, and Emmett found himself happily scratching behind the panda’s cute dish-shaped ears.

“I can certainly see why human’s think you guys are super cute and cuddly: you’re so soft.”

Huan-Yu grunted at him softly.

“No, polar bears aren’t soft. I’ll show you,” Emmett’s stomach chose that moment to grumble loudly, “after I eat.”

Emmett’s quick survey of Huan-Yu’s movie collection, hidden away in the thin cabinet below the television, had revealed that his housemate was a big fan to films where people flew through the air. A lot of them were popular Chinese kung-fu movies, but there were Japanese samurai, western films made in the style of the previous two, anime with fantasy creatures, beautiful princesses, and giant robots, and CGI animations too. The one thing they all seemed to have in common from the screen-cap images on the back of the DVD cases was that each featured some sort of moment in a bamboo forest. Emmett chose a disc at random, and was soon plunged into a world of incredibly complex plots and fast moving subtitles that he couldn’t keep track of while he ate. Huan-Yu had seen it all before, and laughed his little throaty bear-laugh while Emmett ate his deep fried chicken and gnawed cartilage from the end of thigh bones.

By the time the film had entered the eerie-music and wailing cat-voices of the bamboo forest scene, Emmett stood to clear his plate and returned to the living room with a big glass of water and a ready smile.

“I’m not soft. Polar bears have hollow fur-fibres to keep us warm. You don’t have those same kind of a guard hairs.”

“Roompt,” Huan-Yu expressed gently. He didn’t care.

“I’ve not done this for anyone in a long time.” Emmett stood behind the couch, on the false assumption that it would cover his modesty in a general manner, and hung his own clothes neatly on it as he got naked. He yawned, stretched as he closed his eyes, and there was a sensation of lightness and pressure, a blue-white glow like new ice inside his head and behind his eyelids, and then he shook out his fur and blinked at his companion.

Huan-Yu paced around the coffee table and looked up at him from his suddenly low height. Emmett grinned, his black gums and pink tongue splitting his otherwise perfect white fur.

“You are huge.” Huan-Yu’s bear voice sounded formal, and he spoke much more as though he was translating as he went. Emmett had never really wondered if different bears spoke different versions of ‘bear’, because he’d only ever met with other Canadian bears, even though they were different species. “And yellow.”

Emmett looked down at his rich pelt and sighed. The yellow was brought on by not spending enough time in his fur in the snow: the rest of his family didn’t have the same problem, and Emmett knew that as soon as winter set in properly and there was more darkness of which to take advantage and more snow to roll in, he would start to go a lovely pure white again.

“So what d’you think?”

Huan-Yu cocked his head to one side, an ear swivelled round to regard his housemate carefully. A moment later there was a soft green sensation, and Huan-Yu reached for his cotton robe. Emmett tucked his feet under himself and lay down as the Chinese man came towards him. Huan-Yu touched the fur between his ears gently.

“Spiky… but nice. I bet you don’t shed at all.”

“Huurnt,” Emmett shook his head.

“Lucky! Every spring: black and white fur all over the place. For a week clearing up around here is hell.” Huan-Yu settled down to the sofa next to Emmett’s furry bulk and scratched the back of his skull as he turned back to the movie. “You spend a lot of time as a bear in your room, don’t you?”

“Wroal.”

“I hear you moving around in there. You know we can spend more time down here too,” Huan-Yu smiled tightly, “lonely is not a good thing, even for a polar bear.”

“Haarow?”

“Now, hush and watch the movie. Big fight scene coming up.”

Emmett finished watching the kung-fu extravaganza in his fur and thrummed deep in his throat when Huan-Yu ruffled his ears. His housemate had read him much better than Emmett thought possible. Looking sideways at the Chinese man, Emmett was concerned about how little he knew about the only shifter outside of his family he had ever lived with.

While a girl on-screen in a rich and overly long silk brocade robe painted calligraphy in near-silence, Emmett nudged his housemate with his muzzle.

“Haaan hrrroau?”

“For fun?” Huan-Yu arched a dark eyebrow at him, “I like opera: Italian opera. La Bohéme?” Huan-Yu sighed at Emmett's blank expression, “it’s by Puccini. It’s about people with no money falling in and out of love. Someone dies at the end.” Huan-Yu waved a hand dismissively, “plot’s not so important in opera, or kung-fu films. The point is the music, the ambiance, the subtle beauty.” He smiled the soft and beatific smile of someone for whom life was a smooth and easy affair, “like numbers. I love numbers, I love my job. All those figures lining up in neat columns, and making patterns as they are subtracted from one other: ordered and beautiful, ever incrementing in accounts, or delightfully random in serial codes and key-passes. Regardless of what you’re doing, if you include numbers, it’s progress. They are so satisfying.”

Emmett snorted.

“You don’t think so? But you deal with data in your research surely.”

“Huurn,” Emmett nodded, but got up from his prone position and went to the low, black bookcase. Though there was no real order to his collection, most of the documentation on the lower shelves was research related. He nosed around, and delicately pulled out a thick leather bound book with his teeth. He placed it on Huan-Yu’s lap with a thud.

The Chinese man opened it and ran his fingers delicately across the pages.

“Maps?”

Emmett grinned widely.

“They’re pretty.”

The book was one of Emmett’s favourite, a copy of another older version which he kept in pristine condition. This reprint however was heavily annotated in a variety of colours in Emmett's tiny blocky script, complete with migration routes and wind currents, navigable waters and animal’s tracks. There were world maps, old fashioned plates showing northern American and all the States. Beautifully tinted topographical landscapes of every wilderness from Toronto to the Pole, over which Emmett had marked places he’d been as man and bear, animals he had followed and hunted, and birds he had watched and traced with their electronic tracker tags. The furthest northerly map with a location marker on it showed Ukkusiksalik National Park in Nunavut, and Emmett huffed gently as Huan-Yu touched the place with a forefinger.

“That’s a long way North.”

“Haarroawr: grrun haaw wrooam.”

“Figures: you are a polar bear after all.” Huan-Yu shut the book with a soft snap, “you know if you go too far north, you’ll end up falling off the edge of the planet right? Just kidding.” He got up and to Emmett’s delight, placed the book back neatly on the shelf. “This was fun. Good night Emmett.”

“Huuarnt.”

“Sweet dreams, snow-bear.”

Emmett watched his housemate go with a smile, and resolved to thank The Great Spirits for helping him find such a good person with whom to live.

*

“Tents?” the student looked him in horrified fascination, much like the expression worn by small rodents before they were torn through by the talons of a silent and deadly owl.

“Yes,” Emmett paused for a slightly longer than necessary, the folded up tent threatening to unroll itself from his grip, “this is a problem?”

“We’ll freeze to death!”

“The temperature will only be around minus three during the day, dropping to minus ten at night. You will not freeze to death.”

“But it’s a tent!” The other students were quickly dividing into three packs. Those who were scared like the speaker of the cold and the idea of sleeping in it; those who weren’t, and were eager to hear what Emmett had to say; and those who were wavering between both standpoints but looked at the tent like it was some kind of foreign and unknowable object. Emmett did sometimes wonder what sort of student, upon reading the course description, decided to enrol into the university on these select courses if they had no interest in experiencing the wilderness.

“Yes, and people have lived at the North Pole in much less than these tents will provide,” there was a collective sigh of relief from the students, “on the other hand, if you can’t put one up properly and you don’t understand how to make a decent bed inside, then you will regret it. Partner up, grab your tents, and let’s pitch!”

Each lecturer took responsibility for ten to fifteen students on the trip, and while Emmett did a lot of the big surviving in cold weather and animal tracking lectures, physical practical preparations with the students were the duty of each individual lecturer. Emmett had claimed the students to whom he delivered his migration data lectures and taken them outside the university buildings to the quad, where he chivvied them along as they struggled to put up the tents in any sort of efficient or successful manner. After ten minutes he stopped the group, made each of them pack the whole thing up into the bags, and went through the process of building his own tent as slowly as he could reasonably go while explaining what went where and in what order. In four years he hadn’t had a group who seemed quite as disorganised as a whole.

There was maybe one decent tent builder among the lot, a fresh-faced eighteen year old called Liam, who built the whole thing in fifteen minutes while barking instructions to his tent-buddy, who simply stood and held the poles in a sort of daze.

“Thomas, I swear you are no use at all!” Liam sighed, grabbed the last pole and handed his friend a large rubber mallet. “Hammer the tent pegs in.”

Emmett had provided his students with thick stainless steel ice and rock-breaker pegs with high visibility neon orange caps. One could, and Emmett had, secured a tent to the sea ice in a blizzard with them: but the group of three girls were having issues in the comparably soft earth.

“Emmett!” they called in unison.

Emmett wandered over to where Taylor and Grace were standing on and holding the poles of their tents to stop it from flapping about, and smiled at Bree who held up peg and mallet with a worried expression.

“I can’t make it go in the ground.”

“Right,” Emmett took the peg from her, “pointy end down, thirty degree angle towards the tent, and…” he whacked the peg once with the mallet and it sunk four inches into the grassy lawn, “pegged. Do all the pole bases first and make sure you stretch out the tent so it doesn’t sag in the centre, then two of you can do the guy ropes while the other packs the gear into the tent. You don’t wanna leave your bags sitting in the snow.”

Emmett surveyed the field of orange domes popping up slowly but surely as the students managed to get the hang of them. The Mountain Hardwear EV two and three person tents were easy to put up compared to others, with quick-snap poles and a single shell system which clipped simply but securely into place. He could pitch one in four minutes flat, not that Emmett actually stayed in one himself. He would bring his prized leaf-green Hilleberg Tarra for the camping trip, like he did every year, and snuggled up in the strong double-shell, remembering the times he and Rye had taken it out with them into the wild winter and weathered near-arctic storms under its sturdy canopy. Sometimes even polar bears wanted a bit of shelter, and there had to be advantages to being human too.

Eventually the five students’ tents were up and Emmett walked around them inspecting how well they had been constructed. The good thing about the trip was that it was a base exploration trip, which meant they only had to put up the tents once when they got there.

“That’ll fall over in a stiff breeze lads,” Emmett shook his head at Theo and his group of complete tent-novices. None of the three boys with their hipster neck-scarves or artfully styled hair looked capable of surviving on anything less than hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets. “Look at mine and figure out what you did wrong with your guy ropes: very wrong as it happens.” He walked over to the pair of girls who had actually been capable of following the instructions, and had been amongst the group who didn’t look like they were scared of the prospect of snow. “Very well done, you two.”

“Thanks Emmett,” Brooke smiled at him, “when we camp in Killarney will we be able to see the animals from our tents?”

“You think so?” Nora sounded equally excited.

“Aye, I would reckon you’ll wake up with hoof prints around your camp for certain.”

“What about wolves?” Felix hadn’t gotten the hang of college life and kept raising his hand when he asked a question. His tent-mate Zack hit his shoulder in embarrassment. “If the caribou are walking around our tents won’t the wolves come looking for them? And find us?” he gulped audibly.

“Felix, a wolf has no interest in risking its life to try and kill you. Apart from paw prints in the snow if you’re near a den, you’re not likely to see one at all.”

“Wolves are way more scared of us, than we are of them,” Nolan agreed with his lecturer, “I wouldn’t worry.”

With a polar bear camping alongside them, Nolan’s statement was even more true than it would normally have been. Wolves were smart self-preserving creatures, and they didn’t have a good history with any polar bear, let alone shifters. Wild carnivores were very, very careful when one of the most powerful creatures on the planet walked among them. There weren’t a lot of animals capable of hurting Emmett – or wanting to.

Once everyone was happily set up and confident in their tent building skills, Emmett hefted his knapsack and gathered them into the centre of the tent-ring. Sat cross-legged on the ground, it was an informal and chatty sort of atmosphere as Emmett began to unpack his gear. The students seized notepads and phones in order to make notes.

“The importance of good sleep cannot be overstated. Absolutely cannot. It is the most important thing. And while there is a lot of equipment you can use to keep warm, I have a lot of tips for you as well.” Emmett began to lay out his cold-weather camp bed, “eat and drink before you go to bed. Your body will burn sugar while you sleep and keep you warm. Sleep warm and sleep dry,” Emmett counted out his sleeping items as he spoke, “thick and fluffy socks, you wear a new pair just for bed, fresh feet is always best; a hat, wool knits are best, bed hair isn’t sexy but you won’t wake up with a headache; fleece onsie’s are out, as are cute but impractical flannel pyjamas. You wear long thermals, long johns or similar, under something warm, loose and breathable; synthetic polar fleece is good, avoid anything that crinkles or has big chunky zips or toggles: they’ll annoy you while you try and sleep. It is a whole lot easier to stay warm than it is to get warm, so change into your sleeping gear and then put your chunky waterproof outer layers on if you need anything around camp. And go pee before you go to bed.”

“Really Emmett, you need to tell us that?” Grace sighed derisively.

“And you don’t want to get changed into all your warm dry sleeping gear and climb into bed only to find that you need to go to the bathroom twenty minutes later,” Emmett replied sternly, “on the other hand, if you do need to go in the middle of the night: go. Holding on will make you cold.”

“Really?” Nolan sounded shocked, “huh…”

“Indeed. So, all dressed up for bed, but now we need a bed to get into.” Emmett knelt up and began to lay up the bed in order. “If you want to stay properly warm, you need two bed mats. Now, the foam one goes underneath, right against the tarp floor of the tent. The thicker it is, the warmer it’ll keep you: these mats are pretty cheap and second-hand ones will do you just as well. The second mat is the one which is going to keep you both warm and comfortable. You might think it’s silly, but what you sleep on is way more important than what you sleep in.” Emmett pulled the plug on his self-inflating therma-mat. It was water proof, seven feet long, and became four inches thick when it fully expanded. “This style of mat is a lot more expensive. This might be the first cold weather camping trip you go on, but it won’t be the last. Since we take all the first years out at some point, you might have some luck buying or borrowing stuff from the second years who haven’t taken research majors. You don’t need a self-inflating mattress, but they are sort of useful.”

The students took copious notes as Emmett talked them through buying a decent sleeping bag. Two years ago he had a student turn up with a standard rectangular bag with a thin layer of poly-filler stuffing and Emmett had balled the kid out for twenty minutes before trading in his own sleeping bag in favour of lying to his students and sleeping in his fur. The best sleeping bags were mummy-shaped and fitted with hoods; natural down fillings were warmer but heavier, and if the bag got wet it would be functionally useless for days, potentially weeks. Emmett recommended to the students they buy a bag rated for between minus ten and minus thirty degrees with synthetic layered filing which would keep them warm. Then he pulled out a thin fleece sack.

“What is that?” Theo asked.

“This is a bag liner. You put it inside the sleeping bag and sleep in it. It’s soft, heats up quickly, stops your sleeping bag getting dirty and greatly increases insulation. If the sales guy offers you one when you buy your sleeping bag; take it. And I don’t often say that.” Emmet smiled, “so that’s your bed set up. You sleep with anything you don’t want frozen, like your electronic devices, and the underwear you want for the following day. If you fill your water bottle with hot water from the stove before bed then not only will it not freeze, but it’ll also act like a literal hot water bottle, and you can stay all toasty.” Emmett got up and the surveyed the university lawn. “Take the tents down, and then I expect you’ll be going shopping.”

Emmett ended up walking into town with a few of his keener students. Both Liam and Felix wanted to buy sleeping bags which would see them through a lot of work, since they were signed up to half a dozen other expeditions, and Felix was hoping to specialise in studying cold weather flora habitats. He took them to his favourite and best equipped outdoor store, and while the boys picked out hiking socks and looked through the catalogue of sleeping bags available to them, Emmett chose a new pair of binoculars.

His old ones had lasted him ten years or more, but on the last expedition they had been dropped, lens down, and while they were not shattered, the seal was gone and one glass disc was permanently fogged: it was like trying to use an awkward telescope. Emmett bought a chunky pair in bright yellow which were waterproof and floated, just in case he took them swimming in the lake, and had orange coated lenses to protect from sun and snow-glare. He left Felix and Liam arguing over to pillow or not to pillow, and walked home through the thin remains of the slushy snow.

Huan-Yu was on the phone when he got back, cradling the device between ear and shoulder whilst he stirred dry tea leaves in their container. The conversation was going on in Chinese, but Emmett heard his name mentioned as he opened the freezer in search of the thick hunk of seal meat he had been saving. He was thin again, his stomach rumbling almost constantly, and Emmett weighed up the pleasure of eating with the likelihood that Zeke would call him in an hour and request his company, along with the pleasures that brought. His boyfriend liked him thin, and Emmett liked to keep Zeke happy – it was very rewarding.

Just as Emmett had decided to eat regardless and started up the gas hob, Huan-Yu said something which tonally sounded like ‘see ya’ and hung up. He was smiling.

“Chatting with family?”

“Yeah,” Huan-Yu handed Emmett the large frying pan which hung on a hook behind where he was standing. “My little ‘cousin’.”

Emmett remembered the conversation they’d had over their first meal together.

“The one from the tiger family?”

“Yes. Can he come to stay with us? He’s been travelling, and his mother said he had to pop in on family once he’d been gone for a year. He’s in California now, so coming up to see me seemed like a smart move.” Huan-Yu looked sheepish, like he expected Emmett to say no, “he can stay in the little room across from yours.”

“Sounds fun.”

“You don’t mind sharing your bathroom?”

Emmett grinned.

“I have three siblings, and a father who suffers from a lack of personal space. I’m sure I can handle one tiger.”