The Ice Cave Monster is a very low-level monster with a strong appetite. It spends most of the day eating to store up a lot of energy for itself to resist the cold.
Most of the time they eat fish from the glaciers and some floating algae, but their favorite food is the young monsters.
Under the water, the ice cave monsters have almost no natural enemies. If they were not attracted by their cubs and jumped out of the ice, and then were eaten by the monsters with their cubs, they would have multiplied and become an infestation long ago.
Such a slippery and fast-running monster hiding under the ice would be unable to move when it encountered a delicious cub, so Mary followed Muri, and almost every time she passed by an ice cave, she could see a fat monster jumping out of the ice cave.
They offered to deliver meat to your door, they really wanted to eat the delicious food without caring about others.
It is precisely because of the existence of such ice cave monsters that monsters with their cubs who have a hard time living and cannot find enough food will try to hunt it.
But in the end, whether the Ice Cave Monster will take away the cub, or the Monster with the cub will catch it and have a meal, it all depends on whether the Monster with the cub can move faster than the Ice Cave Monster.
An ice cave monster jumped out of the ice cave and showed its sharp teeth, trying to drag the "cub" back into the cave, but unexpectedly this time the "mother with cub" was so fast. A huge bear paw hit it in the face, causing it to bounce far away on the ice.
Because of its fat body, it couldn't stop bouncing on the ice and slid all the way to another ice cave. The ice cave monster that escaped death turned over and hid back in the water.
Muri was furious and immediately wanted to dive into the water to compete with the other man. Mary held his waist tightly to stop him and calmed down the young and energetic bear.
"Okay, okay, we've caught two, so we can make capes. Let's go back and make new capes!"
“Ouch!”
"Muri, let's go back. I'm so cold. I'm almost freezing to death—"
Finally, he gave up the idea of jumping into the water to chase the ice cave monster, but he was still angry on the way back. Mary looked at him and felt that if she hadn't been next to him, he might have rolled on the ground in anger.
He is still a very young bear, and in this world he is familiar with, he is far from being as steady as he pretends to be in the human world.
Mary really couldn't walk anymore. Muri was holding an ice cave monster in one hand and couldn't hug her, so he squatted down and let her lie on his shoulder.
Lying on his shoulder, hugging his neck, and covering myself with his thick blanket, it was like a warm and safe nest in the wind and snow.
Mary leaned over to his ear and continued to comfort him, "Next time we can go catch the ice cave monsters again. You take me with you and we can catch as many as you want." Te didn't mind being bait.
Murray said, "No more arrests."
Meili stroked the white hair on his neck and talked about other topics in a gentle tone: "This place is really interesting. There are things I have never seen before."
Murray turned his head to look at her, "Really? You like it here?"
"I like it." Meili was sincere. Compared with the human world, she liked the animal world, which was also full of killing, more. Because human desires were far more numerous and complex than those of animals, and the things they would do were more frightening.
For more than ten years in her previous life, because of her mother's identity and her own experiences, she had to stay away from the crowd. She was even afraid when she saw people, fearing that she would be caught, beaten to death or burned in the next second. She hid herself in loose clothes and hats and got used to living away from the crowd.
The brief beginning of her arrival in this world also made her feel terrified. She also couldn't feel at ease in this bloody and chaotic world.
It was so good now, without anyone else, and no longer having to endure the pain day after day, as long as she worked hard, she would have the hope to live well, which was the life she longed for the most. Even if there were some minor disappointments, it only made it more obvious how rare it was to be happy and satisfied.
She thought about it and touched Murri's neck again.
No one treated her well before, but now she has. She didn’t know who to care about and treat well before, but now she has.
Muri didn't know what the person on his back was thinking all the way in silence. When he heard her say that she liked it here, he happily carried her back to the lighthouse, helped her deal with the ice cave monster, and rubbed two pieces of skin while waiting for her to make him a new cloak.
Meili processed the meat of the Ice Cave Monster. Its meat was different from the meat of other monsters. It had only a thin spine wrapped in a large piece of fat. The oil filtered from the fat had a faint smell of seaweed. She stored the oil and considered going out tomorrow to find more things to fill the house.
She decided to live a good life here, but she still lacked a lot of daily necessities. Murray had lived too casually before, and she would take good care of him in the future. Even though she was still weak compared to him, there was always something she could do, and they would take care of each other.
Life in the polar snowfield is peaceful. When Meili went out to explore with Muri for the first time, her hands and feet were swollen and red when she came back. After warming them by the fire, they gradually became itchy and very uncomfortable. But she still endured all kinds of pain and initially adapted to the wind, snow and extreme cold here.
She followed Muri farther and farther away. In addition to the ice cave monster, she also saw many other different kinds of monsters that she had never seen before. This new world was far beyond her imagination.
In the distance, there was a blizzard, and in the blizzard there was a migrating monster of gigantic stature, its mountain-like body daunting to approach.
Meli stood next to Muri, watching the huge monster opposite her go away with the wind and snow. The shock in her heart took a long time to subside.
Over time, she discovered that there were many animals living on the snowfield, and even plants were surviving tenaciously under the snow. It was not monotonous here at all, it just needed people to discover its secrets.
The huge monster skeleton was scattered on the ground, half of it was buried by the snow. The monster had been dead for a long time, and its flesh had been eaten away layer by layer, leaving only a pile of white skeletons.
Murray pulled the frozen skeleton out of the snow and took it back to burn, and Meili followed him to pick it up. She picked up a rib and suddenly found that there were white plant roots growing on the ground covered with bones. If you didn't look closely, you would think it was snow.
Murray also saw it. He pulled out a white grass root and chewed it, then pulled out another one and stuffed it into Mary's mouth.
Mary took a bite subconsciously, and a light sweet taste filled her mouth.
"It's sweet!" She smiled. A layer of white frost almost formed on her red face due to the cold, making her smile seem a little stiff.
Muri put down his skeleton, opened his gloves, rubbed his bear paws, and rubbed his two furry bear paws on her face, just like rubbing fur normally.
Meili was rubbed all over her face by him, and couldn't help laughing. When he let her go, her face was red, but she felt much better.
Exhaling a breath of hot air, she handed the sweet grass root in her hand to Muri, "Eat it." He preferred sweet food.
This "surprise" made Mary develop a habit of exploring the snowfield. It was her pleasure to find edible and useful things and bring them back to fill the lighthouse.
The little bear, who used to be very lazy, also began to find it interesting. He had lived here for more than ten years, and for the first time he discovered that there were things on this snowy field that he had never seen before.
For example, the various grass stems under the snow have well-developed root systems that often extend far out, with dozens of them forming a network and connecting them into a piece. Many of them are edible, because they need to accumulate strength in winter and wait for the arrival of warm days, and most of them have abundant juice.
In the past, Muri would rather eat and sleep than dig snow, so he never realized that these grass roots were so delicious in winter.
"Next year, when the temperature rises, the snow will melt and flowers will bloom here for more than ten days." Muri recalled previous years and casually described the short polar summer to Mary.
He didn't think anything of it, but Mary was looking forward to it.
They walked quite a distance, and on their way back to the lighthouse, it was completely dark.
As the polar winter progresses, the sun appears less and less. In the early morning, it hangs obliquely on the horizon, but by noon it is not seen rising in the sky, and it sets very early.
All day long Mary felt as if she were sinking into a sunset, and she had never seen anything like it before.
Murray was already familiar with this and could see even in the dark, so he dragged the bones and debris he had found and walked back with Mary in his arms.
On the way, Mary discovered that there was suddenly light in the dark blue sky.
The light was like a soft ribbon or a fairy's gauze skirt, swaying from afar. The blue-green light bands crisscrossed and slowly filled the sky.
Mary's eyes widened, she stood up from Muri's arms and stared at the scene in a daze.
What a beautiful scenery.
"What is this...?" she murmured.
Murray was used to it, so he watched for a while and said, "This is the tide."
When the polar tide comes, it means that the real winter is about to begin, and the monsters will become more and more restless day by day.
The beautiful green ribbons soon swayed across the sky. Mary was still not satisfied and kept looking up until the last trace of green disappeared before she nestled back into Muri's arms.
“It’s really beautiful.”
Murray: "Every year, when winter is almost over, there will be purple ones."
Meili felt more excited. She wanted to see the purple tide at the end of winter, just like she was waiting for the short-lived summer flowers in Murray's words.
She thought that if life had many small expectations mixed together, life would have meaning.
The night she saw the tide, Mary was awakened by waves of earth shaking and the howling of monsters.
She sat up nervously and looked at Muri next to her, "Muri, there are a lot of monsters outside."
Murray rolled over and opened one eye. "They are moving away from the pole because of the tides."
Seeing that he didn't care, Mary knew it should be okay, but the howling sounds all around her kept her awake, so she simply wrapped herself in a blanket, climbed up the narrow stairs to the small platform on the top floor, and looked out of the window.
There was a green tide of light in the sky again, and countless large and small monsters appeared on the ground overnight. They were like a herd of migrating wild horses, galloping over from afar, passing the lighthouse and rushing towards the outer edge of the polar region.
This lighthouse was almost submerged in the herd of monsters!
The torrent of monsters flooded the lighthouse, separated when about to hit it, and reunited after passing by. Meili leaned against the window and watched with bated breath, not knowing whether to look up at the sky or at the ground.
After a long time, the large group of monsters went away, leaving only a few scattered monsters behind.
Finally, all the monsters left and the snowfield returned to peace.
"Ah—" Murray shouted at her from below to go back to sleep.
Mary rubbed her hands and ran downstairs wrapped in a blanket.