A great, fireball sun rose up from the young horizon. It revealed all that was left of the world after the last storm. Great snow drifts that had risen halfway up most tree trunks was now subject to the torture of a new day; the first day of spring in years. The sun cast its revealing glow across the land, and tracks that had been paved lightly across the snow’s surface were lit with the fire of morning. Green buds on the tortured plants hung, dripping with drops of melted snow as they leaned heavily on black branches. Off in the distance, great, purple mountains rose as if to stab the sky, and at its highest point, the mountaintop receded into a black cloud from the previous storm. The stirring of creatures rose upon the air as they scurried from their holes to shed what was left of the last, long winter. But though the morning was great and glorious, beckoning to all, very few were alive to witness it. Amongst the living beings, a great saber-tooth padded softly through the angel down.

Snow specks were tossed up lightly as the rippling figure strode across the snow. Its fur wavered and flowed like water in the wind as it trotted aimlessly along. But, something wasn’t quite right with the beast. If a closer look is taken at the great, prehistoric dweller, a dark, sullen look can be seen, fluttering across its brilliant eyes. A slight heaviness can be heard as it ambles across the snow, and the great teeth that jut from its maw are almost dragging tracks in the white powder. Its relatively short tail has no movement whatsoever, and hangs limply from behind. Its fur-line ears lay flat against its great head. The great beast is the sole survivor of its kind, the last to leave its mark upon the troubled Earth.

The beast slowed now, and took to a melancholy step. The snow was slowly becoming thinner as the layer gave way to actual dirt. The great cat padded across it, past small clumps of new-found grass. The sun rose higher behind the beast, and its warm glow slowly melted to gold, and the overcast snow, once blue in the early morning light, turned to silver as it crept toward that glittering white which defines snow so clearly. The cat’s shadow became darker, and more crisp as morning became day. The cat continued to pad along. It was as if the only way to escape its troubles was to keep traveling, and moving forward until it had either forgotten its better sadness, or fallen in upon the Earth so that she might take back one of her children.

The cat seemed to think of this, and stopped, still within sight of the snow. It turned its head, glancing down its side, and into the purple mountains. The black cloud was no longer hovering above the mountaintop; it had crept into the blue sky, and lay like a dense fog behind the mountains. The cat thought he could see sparkles of snow as they floated and dashed to the ground. The cat made a deep noise in its throat, as if to whine like a dog or a wolf, and closed its eyes while it heaved a great breath. The Ice Age was now behind the cat, and it swiveled its head around as it padded off in the distance.

No other animal was yet to be seen, though the cat had heard the familiar rustlings of them. It was all the same to the great beast; if they weren’t going to be the ones to witness the first day of spring, then let them rot in their burrows and caves. Let them freeze in the drifts of snow, or drown in the unforgiving arctic chill of the melting waterways. The cat seemed to lift its head, and smile at the blue sky. The dark sadness fluttered out of its eyes, and the dweller of the last Ice Age padded out into the new spring day with a frisky trot. The cat begun to realize now, it was hungry. Surely some slower animal hadn’t escaped the cold, and their carcass now lay half frozen in a pool of its own blood. The cat stopped and sniffed. A wonderful smell of something fresh played upon its nostrils, and the cat took into that direction, towards the first day of the rest of its revived life.