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Jenny, a silvery-white Siberian tiger, squinted into the glare reflected off the snow by the sun.  This was her time.  Early in the morning, when no one else was up.  Perfect.  No one would bother her, no one would tell her where she could and couldn’t go, and, if she got back in time, no one was the wiser.

Now, where today?  She’d already been to the forbidden ice caverns, lakes, and valleys.  Ah, yes, the cliffs.  Never been there before.  Stories were all that ever came from the cliffs.  And, of course, the corpses floating in the sea below.  She grinned.  She loved that kind of thing.  She shivered slightly in the cool air.  Not that she was cold, of course, but rather that she imagined her own corpse down there, in the frigid water.  Not exactly encouraging.  Wonderful.  She loved that, too.  Anything scary, forbidding, or chilling, was her bag.

She started to trot off in the direction of the cliffs, when something behind her made a noise.  She whipped around, half expecting her mother to be glaring at her, but no, there was no one.  She mentally slapped herself for foolishly thinking it had been her mother.  She hadn’t seen her mother since she’d decided to run off and live with another group of Sibers.  These cats were as adventurous as she, although they, unlike her, their second youngest member, had their limits.  They would never allow her to go to the cliffs alone.  Or even in a group, for that matter.
Then there was the noise again, behind her, as usual.  She turned slower this time, a mistake.  For as she started to turn, she was suddenly shoved to the ground viciously by an unseen horror that was laughing maniacally.  Or was it maniacal?  No, it was playful.  She knew this ‘horror.’  She threw him off and pounced on him.  Then it was her turn to laugh as she stared down into the grinning face of Tyler, another Siber.

Tyler was the youngest member of their little adventure group, barely weighing in at just above his juvenile stage.  Unlike the others, though, he hadn’t left his parents.  Rather, they’d left him.  Not by choice, though.  Tyler was an orphan.  His parents victimized by the little creatures that stood on their hind legs and carried little sticks that made the most awful sound Jenny had ever heard, and, well, killed cats with the sound.  It was a mystery, though, exactly how it was done.  And why.  Something about ‘fur coats’, and ‘money.’  But whatever the reason, Tyler’s parents had been killed, and Tyler was not.  Tyler, with nothing else but his friends to live for, was the most fearless of them all.  He was also, consequently, the most mischievous.  Hence the reason he’d pounced on Jenny.  But she didn’t care.  There was something about his juvenile mischief that she liked about him.  Too bad he was too young for her.  She’d hinted a few times, but to no avail.  He just didn’t understand.
“Hey, where’re you going so early?”  he asked innocently.  He also had a nasty habit of being able to be awake whenever she wanted to do something, so he ended up giving her the choice between letting him ride shotgun on her little adventures, or he’d enlighten the elders of the assembly.  So, usually, his evil little plan worked, and he came along.  Not as if he were a hindrance, of course.  More often than not, he was even vital.  But she always reflected on the possibility that if the gang found out that she’d been taking him to these dangerous places, then it would be her hide, not his.
“I was going for a swim,” she playfully snarled at him.  He smiled.  He had no illusions about her intentions.

“Right.”
“Seriously.”
“And penguins will fly.”
“They might.”
“And you might actually keep out of danger for a whole day.”
“You’ve got me there.”  She knew that one of these days, she’d go way further than she should, and probably get herself killed.  Oh, well.  No one but her own loss.  She could easily tell, however, that it would devastate Tyler.  She couldn’t get herself killed, or Tyler would throw himself in the ocean.  That was often what kept her working to escape from whatever predicament she was in.  And of course, there was always Tyler, helping her along.
Tyler wriggled out of her grasp and innocently asked, “Where are we going today?”
“I’m going to the cliffs.  And you’re…well,…actually, I guess that no matter what I say, you're coming, aren’t you?”
“I guess so.”  He grinned like he always did when he knew he had her trapped.  Which was every single day.  So he got a lot of practice.
“All right, but you’re not going to die, or I’ll kill you.”
He laughed.  “Alright, if I die, you can kill me.”
“As long as we’re clear on that.”  She sincerely started to walk in the direction of the cliffs.  He walked carefully behind her, stepping in all of her footprints, leaving only  indentations of his own in them.  She watched him carefully.  He always followed right in her footsteps, physically and spiritually.  Every lesson he’d ever been taught had come from her.  Everything he knew, she’d had some part in.  She was almost like his mother, if it hadn’t been for their ages.  It was something she thought about a lot.

But he had no extra respect for her because of it.  “Hello?  Hey, Jenny, are you sleepwalking?  You missed the path.”  She shook herself out of her thoughtful state and looked back.  She had indeed.  Tyler, however, had not followed her past it.  Apparently, he was even more intent on getting to the cliffs than she.  Or maybe he wasn’t busy pondering the possibilities of the universe.  Probably both.  She ashamedly loped back to it and looked at her young companion.
“I meant to do that.”

“Right.”  She continued along the cliff path, Tyler still following her.  Now that they were actually gaining some altitude, the air started to thin slightly and she found herself breathing a little harder.  Tyler, more fit than she, even, was not even panting.  He was trotting.  She muttered softly to herself and trudged onward. She expected the supposed danger to meet them at any moment, and she steeled herself, ready for anything.

Suddenly the ground underneath her shifted and she slid to the edge of the path, not exactly a long trip.  Against her best efforts, she slid off the edge and just managed to get her claws stuck in the rock underneath the snow.  She started breathing again.  She wasn’t going to die, at least not yet.  Tyler peered over the edge of the path, still grinning.  Jenny had done similar things before. This was nothing new.  It didn’t even worry him anymore.  “Need help?” he asked coyly.  No, she’d just hang here for a few moments, she thought to herself.  The view was nice.  He helped her back to the path.

“I-.”
“Meant to do that.  Yeah, I know.”  He shook his head.  Then his entire body shook.  But that wasn’t his fault, it was the ground’s.  Or rather, the ice sliding along the ground.  Underneath their feet.  Not good.  They both took a hint and started to run up the path as fast as their little legs would carry them.  Soon they reached the top.  Or was it?  Well, at least the ground had stopped shifting.  After a short status check, they continued their trek up the path.  This time, they did reach the top.  Well, actually, they reached the unscaleable mountain that marked where the cliffs actually were.  There was also a cave which no one had ever pointed out before.  This, being too tempting to pass up, attracted the two cats, and, intrigued, they entered.

The cave was not a pleasant place to be, smelling of rotting fish and scattered with birds bones.  Here and there, there was a pile of rubble where a stalactite had fallen, and sometimes, there was a skeleton among the rubble, with a rope.  Try as she might, she couldn’t understand what the rope had to do with anything.  She asked Tyler, and he came up with the same conclusion.  They ignored it and pressed forward.

“You know, we could easily die in here.  There’s something evil about this cave,” Tyler pointed out the obvious.  Silently, Jenny agreed with him.  Too evil.  Every so often, they’d hear a low rumble, as if the ground wanted to avalanche again, but they were on rock.  There was no way rock could avalanche, could it?  She shivered at the very proposition.

Quite suddenly and accidentally, they located the source of the rumbles.  It turned out that every childhood nightmare employed by adults to keep cubs where they belonged at night was not such a myth.  There, standing in front of the two terrified cats, was the, well, the yeti.
It wasn’t even close to what their parents had described it, but it was still a very effective nightmare inducer.   Jenny made a feeble attempt to keep from shrieking in utter horror at the sight.  It looked like a huge bear, easily three times as large as both of the cats combined.  Its claws were the size of curved saplings, and his eyes glowed with the fire in the pit in front of him.  At her little squeak, he snorted and looked in their direction.  Hoping his eyesight wasn’t very good, she sat very still.  Tyler had obviously had the same notion.

For a breathless moment, the three creatures stared at each other, the only movement in the cave the flickering of the fire.  Then the yeti stood up, the cave large enough to accommodate this action, and roared.  Unable to hold her position any longer, Jenny tore her eyes off of the beast and bolted back the way they’d come.  Tyler, she hoped, was close behind.  Unfortunately, so was the yeti.
Jenny soon found the opening to the cave and blew out of it, into the frozen early morning air.  Only then did she consider the cliff, too late to slow herself.  She dragged all of her claws on the snow, down to even the rock, but still slid all the way to the edge.  Fighting to keep from shooting off, she fell half over the cliff and stopped.  She breathed a sigh of relief before she realized that Tyler hadn’t followed her out.

Terrified for his fate and hers, she scrambled to get back up onto the ledge, but when she had, she found the thin mountain air had taken its toll.  Unable to move another step, she fell to the snow, accepting her apparent fate.

The yeti soon roared his way out of the cave, but he, probably because he lived there, recognized the cliff and stopped short.  Then he looked down at the immobile Jenny, and laughed.  Then, to her surprise, he spoke.

“So, another little white kitty-cat has come to disturb me?  What is your story?”
Jenny shook with fear.  “We, I mean, I didn’t come to disturb you, we were only exploring.”  She realized the slim chance that perhaps he hadn’t found Tyler.  The slim, slim chance.

“That’s what all the trespassers say!  You, like them, will not get away.  I will punish your insolence in my favorite way.  I will watch you slowly suffer in mental pain, then laugh as you die a sudden and horrible death!”  With that, he threw back his head and laughed and laughed.  She wracked her mind, attempting to figure out what he could possibly be considering.  Unable to escape, however, she allowed him to pick her up and carry her back inside.

She looked around desperately for Tyler as the yeti took her back into the cave.  She didn’t find him, and she feared the worst.  But then, she had her own fate to worry about.  The yeti, apparently aware that she couldn’t muster the strength to escape, just set her on a nearby rock as he prepared for her death.  A million plans for escape ran through her mind, none of them logical, all of them desperate.  She still hadn’t found a solution by the time he walked back over and picked her up, a small bag in his hand.
He carried her back into the main path of the cave, and then set her down on the floor.  She watched as he used his giant claws to cut a nearby stalagmite down to a level surface and set her onto it.  Then he tied her paws together with a rope.  Only then did she notice the stalactite above and consider the possibilities.  She suddenly realized what all the rubble skeletons were there for.  Other unlucky victims.
“Have you figured it out yet, little cat?  I will explain anyway.  See, you are tied up on the base of a stalagmite.  They always have a stalactite above them.  Now, I put deep cuts into the stalactite with my claws,” he demonstrated as he spoke, “and put a wet piece of wood into each.  Now, as the frigid air freezes the water in the wood, the cuts will be widened, until the rock cannot hold its own any longer, and…” he cut off, grinning at her.  She shook with fear as the freezing wind blew into the cave, freezing the wood as it did so.  Her eyes filled with tears as she considered what awaited her.
Then, through her terrified tears, she saw salvation, or at least Tyler.  There he was, behind the yeti, watching her.  He smiled when she saw him and put a claw to his mouth, signaling her silence.  She understood, and sat silent.  The yeti, sensing the awkward silence, became restless and looked around the cave.  Jenny, trying to keep the yeti’s attention, started to humor him and beg for mercy.  The yeti settled and chuckled every few moments as he listened to her pleas.

She, on the other hand, was not listening to her own begs, for she was watching Tyler’s progress as he carefully crept around the yeti’s bulk towards Jenny.  Realizing he had no chance of rescuing her without being caught, he signaled her silence again, and picked up a rock.  The yeti still watched her carefully.  Then, as if pleading not to be forgotten, the rock creaked and snapped as the wood in it froze, then it tilted dangerously to one side and started to sway.

Tyler, unable to stand it any longer, tossed the rock over the yeti’s head and listened as it cracked against the wall, almost simultaneously with the crack of the stalactite, unable to stay up any more, fell.

Three things occurred at once, then, almost faster than Jenny could follow.  The yeti turned towards the sound, the stalactite began to fall, and Tyler leapt forward.  Then Tyler grabbed Jenny by the nape of her neck and took off towards the opening.  The yeti turned just as the pointed rock smashed into the floor.  It splintered and pieces flew everywhere.  Some bounced off nearby walls and stalagmites, but some also embedded themselves in Tyler’s skin.  He cried out in pain and dropped her to the floor, also skidding to a stop.

Jenny suddenly found a reserve strength hidden deep in herself, and, grabbing Tyler’s neck, took off towards the opening herself.  The yeti followed close behind.  She ran out of the opening and, remembering earlier, stopped.  Then she ran back towards the rock wall, hoping to hide in the blowing snow.  But then her reserve expired and she fell to the ground dropping Tyler.  For the moment, they just looked at each other, then Tyler, determined not to let the yeti get Jenny, stood up and looked back at the cave.  Jenny called out to him not to be stupid, be he ignored her.
The next few moments looked as though they had come right out of a heroic adventure story.  Tyler stood as the yeti came out of the cave, blowing clouds of frozen water vapor into the frigid air.  The yeti then gave an earsplitting roar and slogged towards the Siber.  He stood there a moment, then took off towards the edge of the cliff.  Jenny cried out in mental pain as she watched her comrade disappear over the edge.  The yeti, however, did not realize the existence of the cliff until it was too late.  The he fell over the edge and she listened as his cry got softer and softer, then she heard him thunderously crash into the sea below.

For a moment, she just lay there, not believing that she had survived.  Then her heart ached as she realized that Tyler was, well, gone.  She walked over to the edge, considering throwing herself off, but was interrupted by someone calling out to her.

“Hey, little help?”  She looked over the cliff in disbelief, and saw Tyler hanging by a frigid paw to the rock wall.  Tears of joy slid down her cheeks as she hauled him back up to the path, and when she’d gotten him back up, she fell over on him in ecstasy.  “Hey, cut that out,” he said pointlessly, but made no attempt to escape.  Then he suggested that they leave the cliffs.  She agreed and they went down the path.  They encountered no more avalanches on their way down, and when they were back on level ground, they both took a well-deserved rest.  Then the stood up again and trudged back to their little group’s cave.  They slipped inside, surprised that everyone was still asleep, and lay down where they had gotten up from.

Just before they fell back to sleep for the, well, morning, Tyler looked over at her and grinned.  Then he chuckled and said, “Let’s not do that again anytime soon, okay?”
She nodded doubtlessly.  “Definitely.”
 

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