Pressure Drop
enforced stillness, pragmatic
Before the wind, the pressure changed. The air above the root cross had a different weight to it — not heavier, not lighter, but wrong in a way that was harder to name.
YY made one fast run west while the sky was still readable. Came back with enough. Then the storm arrived in full — the canopy folded, rain came horizontal, something large cracked somewhere upslope. The root cross held the way it always held.
The eating happened during the wait. Not a good meal, not a bad one — just the kind that fills a gap. The east channel was somewhere under all that water, inaccessible and probably fine.
By the time the light came back through the canopy, the day had been smaller than it started. Not lost. Just smaller.
food up from lull-forage and eating during shelter; health down from cold stillness; attention down from enforced inactivity
state
A severe storm forced YY to shelter at the root cross all day; a quick run in the pressure-drop lull produced enough to eat, but the east channel was lost to the weather.