Skeletal Hill what lay beneath

He had gone South, and now it was time to travel North. As Chan walked through the thick forests of the valley, he was often distracted by one land feature or another. As long as he kept the range within sight, he felt confident, as though still tethered to his home pack just by the sight of the snow-choked peaks. Yet somewhere along the journey, he began to realize that he couldn't remember how far he'd gone the one way, if he was done backtracking and now gaining new ground. The snow hadn't been so heavy when he'd started, and now that it thickly coated everything, his memories were less helpful than he would have hoped. When his mismatched eyes sought the mountains, he realized he wasn't certain which dipped housed the Lost Lake.

Maybe it was time to return to the range.

He had almost decided on it, when the snow beneath his paws shifted suddenly. The icy snow sloughed away in great chunks as his careless step had triggered something of a miniature avalanche, and soon he was up to his stomach as he tried to fight being carried down the small hill with it all. His limbs started hitting things that were hard, sometimes sharp. It felt like branches, and some gave way beneath his weight with a muffled crack. Was he on a brush pile? He'd seen some gathered at rivers and fallen trees before, but never stacked so high as he must have been. His own efforts unwittingly kept the tumbling going, and in a few short moments he made another wrong move and ended up on his side sliding all the way down.

When it all finally stopped, the poor child was half buried, but not just with snow and litter as he expected. With a groan, Chan began pulling himself out of the drift, but then his mismatched eyes recognized something poking out from the white.

It was a skull, shaped much like he would imagine a wolf's to be.

With horror, he looked more closely at what was around him, discerning the white of winter from the pale yellow of animal remains. It hadn't been a hill nor a brush pile. He had been walking upon a massive collection of bones.