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I shut them and counted to three.

Opened.

Rolled to my knees.

Stood using the fence.

No montage. No sudden reserve. No clean rush of determination.

Just an ugly series of movements performed because lying down had no useful outcome.

My body had become another animal in crisis.

Assess.

Cold. Exhausted. Ambulatory.

Treatment.

Keep moving.

I moved.

The wind carried a sound.

I stopped.

Nothing.

Then again.

A bark.

Sharp. Repeated. Furious.

"Biscuit?"

The name tore my throat.

The barking stopped.

For one dreadful second, I thought I had invented it.

Then it came back twice as loud.

A dark shape broke out of the white at knee height.

Biscuit hit me hard enough to stagger me into the fence. Mottled slate and copper beneath snow, gray muzzle lifted, one ear up and one folded, barking directly into my face as if volume could correct every choice I had made since yesterday.

"Oh, thank God."

I dropped to my knees.

That was a mistake. Biscuit immediately began circling, barking, nipping my coat sleeve, unwilling to permit rest. I put both arms around her neck anyway.

She was warm beneath the outer wet.

Solid.