The cave wasn't nearly big enough for five people, seven horses, and a wolf the size of a pony, but there wasn't much anyone could do about it. The storm raged outside for what seemed like days-- it was difficult to tell when was day and when was night, for the snow was so thick that it all looked the same-- and the mortals had to huddle up together, enduring the smell of unwashed bodies, wet horses and, perhaps even worse, wet dog, and smoke. The fire had, at first, been a bad idea, filling the cave with smoke and setting them all to coughing, but both of the travel-wise guards insisted that no human, lacking the thick fur of the more comfortable Deep Kaur, could survive without some source of heat in the numbing cold that the storm continued to blow inside. It was the argument that Catame might not survive much more extreme temperatures that finally convinced Kaur that the fire was, indeed, necessary. A clever spell of her own sent the smoke directly out into the storm, against the blowing of the wind, and they all could breathe freely again, though the smell remained.

On the whole, Daynoren found the situation highly unsatisfactory, but as Kaur told him when he made his feelings known to her not an hour after they'd settled in, there was nothing anyone could do about it, so there was no point complaining about it. Even if there was no point complaining, Day also found that he greatly wanted to. He was always either too hot or too cold, depending on what side of the fire he was on, his clothes and his hair felt disgustingly dirty and didn't smell much better, he was stuck in the cramped cave with all the animals and Dana, who he had not yet forgiven. Perhaps worst of all, Catame looked half-dead and was still feverish.

Kaur assured them all that Catame hadn't worsened any from when she first found him, but she couldn't say he was getting any better. Even Dana seemed tense and worried, which was a degree of emotion than Daynoren had not credited her with and couldn't quite believe when he saw it. Kaur kept Catame close to her, usually huddled up against her fur, because she was the warmest of them all, and she said that she might be able to use the simple magics of touch and comfort to bring him back to health. If that were all it took, though, Daynoren figured Catame would have been well by now-- hadn't he offered the same things many times since he noticed his brother looking ill? Of course, Catame had mostly refused them, but Daynoren had offered. At this point, though, he didn't seem capable of refusing much of anything.

Since there wasn't really anything else to do, most of Daynoren's attention was taken up with watching Catame and worrying about him, and doing whatever Kaur asked of him to try and help him recover. He melted snow over the fire, he packed snow to try and cool his brother down, he folded blankets and cocooned Catame in them or stripped them from him, he even offered his own magical energy in case Kaur had a healing spell in mind. Unfortunately, she said she didn't-- not one she wanted to try using until all mundane methods of healing had failed, anyway. That wasn't fair, Daynoren thought, to have such a spell at her command but to force Catame to suffer rather than use it. He resented that, just as he'd resented Dana refusing to stop and rest for his brother to heal up.

At first, Kaur had treated Dana and the guards with a kind of frosty superiority, as if she, too, felt the adults needed punishing for their neglect of Catame's health. However, once everyone had gotten organized and settled, she and Dana had drawn aside, or as aside as one could get in the cramped quarters, to speak quietly by the entry to the cave. After that, the daemon was much easier with the lady, and Daynoren didn't understand it. Nothing Dana could say would make him forgive her for her lack of care and thought, not when Catame's life itself was what she had nearly lost through those lacks. If Kaur weren't the only one who could ultimately do anything to help Cat, Daynoren would have resented her even more for the betrayal of falling for whatever lie the woman had made up.

As it was, though, he was too busy hoping and praying that Catame wouldn't die to really be as awful to everyone as he'd been tempted to. It was truely frightening to see him, pale and still against Kaur's side or curled up in as many blankets and cloaks as they all could spare, thinner than he had been even a week ago because he had hardly been eating and the fever was eating away at what little fat he had on him. With his eyes shut and his breath coming slow and shallow in sleep, he almost looked dead already. When he was delirious and dreaming was almost as bad, for he moved restlessly, often crying out and not recognizing anyone, not even Day, when they tried to wake him out of pity for his dreaming. Daynoren had seen his brother ill before, but those were usually fainting spells or attacks of breathlessness. Their father had told them that Catame had often had fevers when he was a baby, but Daynoren didn't remember it; still, he couldn't help but think that a baby fevered couldn't be as bad as the innocent, self-aware boy fevered now.

Ever since that brief period of lucidity hours ago, things seemed to have gotten worse, as if to make Cat pay for it. He kept wriggling free of the blankets and cloaks they had wrapped him in, trying to escape Kaur's warmth and shying away from Day when he tried to touch him or offer him water. He muttered off and on in his sleep, but no one could understand it, it was so slurred and soft. Daynoren had asked Kaur whether she, with her sharper canine ears, had understood, but she had only shaken her head gently in what he could only assume was a negative. Perhaps it was just gibberish.

Finally, during what the guards Ruther and Jameth said was the second day they were cramped up in the primitive shelter, when Daynoren was sure he couldn't watch Catame get any sicker, Kaur returned from a brief trip outside with the horses and fixed him with a serious look. Holding his breath, both hopeful and afraid at the same time for what she was going to say, Daynoren waited. Kaur glanced to Catame, then her eyes traveled over the ceiling of the cave, and she sighed.

"We have no choice, Daynoren," she said softly. "I do not like it, but my healing has failed, and I must turn to magic."