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Cease Fire

The world was silent but for the moan of the wind and the susurrus of snow blowing across snow. The land was siezed fast by a bitter cold so intense that it made quiet, crystalline sounds, reminiscent of tin-foil being slowly wrinkled if that foil had actually been made out of thin glass. Corporal Voss, spinal gunner of the late Glory's Folly bomber, clutched his arms tightly about himself as he waded through the snow.

He was sorely ill prepared against the elements wearing little more than his uniform and flight suit. He had wrapped his parachute around himself like a cumbersome white blanket but it did little good against the frigid clutch of mid-winter in the heights of the Spershyn mountains. He wondered if he had been the only one to escape the doomed bomber that had disappeared over the crest of the ridge up which Voss slowly climbed.

His lips were numb and his teeth chattered with every lung-burning breath of icy dry air, each heavy plume of mist that hissed past his rime crusted lips instantly whipped away. He could feel the hoarfrost stiffening his hair for he had nothing more than thin parachute rayon to cover his head. The wind had quickly rendered his ears at first numb but they were beginning to feel as if they were afire while being compressed by an inimaginably unkind grasp. He could barely feel the awkward bundle of rayon he clutched about himself with numbed fingers despite the thick gloves.

Yet he struggled on, plowing one leg forward through the heavy weight of powdery snow and then the other. The wind picked the loose powder up flung it at him with furious gusts he struggled step after laborious, numb step. The bitterly cold cloud stung his flesh as if he were being scoured by sand. There was naught he could do but continue on, slow step by slow step, up the shallow but rugged incline toward a bald cut of exposed rock that stood starkly from the endless white pall of heavy snow.

The Glory had suffered a few nasty hits during their last sortie deep into the Cherbyn territories and fallen behind the rest of the wing during the return flight. Their radio, all radar, and ECM equipment had all been fragged by a flak hit that killed the navigator and radio man, both of whom Voss had crewed with for three years. They had been friends.

Then they were gone; winked out like candle flames.

Without the radar equipment the Glory had been forced to fly by sight alone with icy wind roaring through the gaping hole where the communications and navigation consoles had once been. The remains of the two crewmen were still strapped to their seats, overlooking the view through that devastating rent. It was luck alone that kept the plane from being cut in half by the impact.

Forced to fly at a lower altitude by the damage, Captain Eldin had threaded cautiously through the mountains, until one of the engines damaged during the bombing run failed catastrophically. With a deafening roar it came apart, the high speed turbines slicing through housing and wing like tissue. Voss, in his position as spinal gunner, had watched the wing tip upward, flame gouting from the ruins of the engine and fuel cell. It shook the entire aircraft with teeth rattling force before shearing off and tumbling away behind them.

Doomed, the Glory's Folly went into a flat spin, her remaining turbine screaming as if in mourning for its lost twin. Without consciously considering what he was doing at the time Voss had cinched his escape parachute tight, unlatched the roof hatch of his gun blister, and climbed out into the shrieking icy fangs of the wind. His flight helmet was ripped from his head almost instantly and, just before he was similarly ripped away by the howling wind, he saw flames pouring from the waist and tail gun ports. After the lurching yank of his deploying chute settled he managed to turn in the air, watching as his stricken aircraft, with his crewmates and friends still aboard, carom off the crest of the ridge and disappear into the valley beyond.

He distantly heard the grinding crash of impact but no explosion and then naught but the wail of the wind as he spiraled down into a blessedly soft landing in a deep drift of snow.

There was no getting his bearings after that point. He had no idea where he was; if he was on the allied side of the mountains or still in Cherbyn territory. There were no villages visible in the valley he landed in; just endless white through which the thin spires of alpine trees thrust like green fangs. The nearest of those was still some thousand feet or so below him. The crest of the ridge a similar height above, but in either direction the slope was not steep.

The Glory was beyond that ridge; and with her his crew; his battle companions, his family of War, the disparate collection of people brought together by a conflict they had not started nor expected to bring victory to of themselves. Cogs in a vast machine of war, bent on destroying the Dogs of Cherbyn for reasons Voss was not cogent of.

Just because they were Dogs, after a fashion, and not humans? That could not really the sole reason, but Voss suspected it was. They had resources in their Empire that his own coveted but did not truly need. An easy focus for a restless society that needed an outlet, any outlet, to exert itself lest they turn inward as the hard lessons of history had tought. And they were distinctly not Human; thus animals to be exterminated.

Animals, granted, with guns and missiles and brains. Animals with a tenacious will to survive against the might of the Human empire that inexorably spread itself over more and more of the planet, subjugating or simply eliminating any who thwarted them.

But all of that was moot, now. The Glory was a wreck in the winter-clutched mountains and Voss was alone, and miserably cold. If ill luck brought death to his friends there could still be some degree of shelter in the wreckage. Or some salvage that would help him survive just a little longer. He doggedly trudged through the hip deep snow, his feet numb beyond sensation, his boots soaked through and icy wetness permeating his flight suit. He shivered uncontrollably as he hugged the awkward heap of rayon that had brought him safely to earth around his body, its lines dragging in the churned furrow of his passage.

Cresting the ridge through the gouge of naked rock left exposed by the doomed plane's momentary contact, Voss peered into the valley below. A channel of ruined trees and polluted snow led to the corpse of the Glory's Folly a couple thousand feet below. Her remaining wing had sheared off half way down the slope and from its twisted wreckage wind whipped flames flickered. Voss could not see any smoke coming from what remained of the fuselage.

Nothing moved on the mountainside but for Voss, wind, and swirling snow.

He staggered numbly through the snow, staggering in unrestrained hast as he made his way down the mountain until he entered the debris field of the crash. The ragged, dirty furrow had been blasted free of snow and trees leaving a scored gouge in the frozen earth beneath that was easier to navigate but for the bits and pieces of wreckage strewn along its length. Some things he recognized; equipment and gear from the aircraft's exterior like a mangled landing gear or exterior access panels ripped free during the crash. Much of it was utterly unrecognizable, nothing more than hideously twisted bits of metal, insulation, and wiring. He found the forty millimeter nose cannon in a twisted mass like a plate of pasta, testament to the violence of the last lethal moments of the Glory's Folly.

He was thirty meters from the fuselage when a figure emerged from the gaping, twisted hole of a waist gunner's post. Voss froze in surprise, at first thinking that he was seeing a survivor escaping the impossible scene before him. A moment later his surprise became fear, and then fury, when the white-clad humanoid figure's silhouette percolated through his ice-numbed brain.

A Dog; one of the Cherbyn.

It was clad in a light uniform of winter white camouflage and cradled in its arms was the limp, savagely charred corpse of a human; one of the crew.

As Voss watched, stunned mute and immobile, the beast carried the corpse a short distance and, with unexpected care, laid it down alongside five others. All of them were very clearly deceased. Few could even be identified as human beyond their general mangled shapes and the shreds of their uniforms. In the back of his mind that had not been rendered numb by cold he tallied the row of dead against the crew compliment he had served the last three years with.

Including himself the bomber crew numbered eight. Six lay in the snow, leaving Voss and one other unaccounted for. Had someone else managed to abandon the Glory in those precious seconds where reaction outraced rational thought? Or was there another mangled wreckage of flesh and bone still lost within?

When the Cherbyn turned it spied Voss immediately, and froze in place, a brief puff of white mist escaping its muzzle in surprise before the wind stole it away. A long rifle was slung at its side but the beast made no move to bring it up. It merely stopped where it stood and peered across the thirty meter distance between them. Voss, however, did react to the presence of the enemy only then. He hastily clawed at the parachute wrapped around himself, digging under it for the service pistol all crew carried just in case they were forced to deplane over enemy territory. The bitter, icy air clawed at his lungs as he panted and dug for his sidearm.

But, with fingers numbed almost to insensability and heavy gloves almost frozen into desperate claws from clutching the parachute Voss could not unfasten he thumb brake and could only paw at the rime coated holster with growing panic, never taking his eyes from his foe. The Cherbyn, white mist puffing from its partially open maw, deadly long fangs agleam, watched his struggles unmoving. It did not seem indisposed by the frigid bite of the sharp wind, clad in a thin uniform over its fur. With a terrified moan Voss wrestled himself free of the restraining parachute cloth and yanked fruitlessly at his holster. Finally the thumb brake snapped loose and he fumbled the pistol free.

Only to then immediately drop it into the churned earth and snow from numb fingers rendered even more clumbsy by ice-stiff gloves. He cried out and tried to snatch it up, kneeling awkwardly and bending to grab it from the muddy slush of snow, dirt, oil, and fuel. The world swam crazily in his vision as the sudden adrenalized rush of blood coursed through ice constricted arteries. His panic sent the world into gray, and just as black slammed across his vision he spied the Dog swiftly closing on him.

---

Voss awoke in darkness to tingling pain through his entire body with ears and nose burning as if buried in dry, intensely hot sand and a pounding agony behind his eyes. His fingers and toes tingled with a similarly intense burn but no sensation of touch or even the fact that they still existed as a part of his flesh. The pain drew an agonised moan from him past cracked lips that felt as if they had been scourged by the claws of a thousand mice. Somewhere a steady moan rose and fell interspersed with an unearthly, thin keening like a lost animal in the throes of a protracted, agonizing death. A susurrating hiss skittered and rasped all around. Both sources of sound seemed close enough to touch but he could not feel their presence.

The air was almost stiflingly warm and a solid, immobile heat source was pressed close against his back. He writhed a bit, trying to discover why his hands burn so frightfully but a firm, unyielding band pressed across his chest in the dark. Something brushed against one ear and the was pressed into a warm, yeilding surface that only seemed to amplify the searing heat. The throbbing hammerblows behind his temples made every motion dizzying as he groped at the thick, solid band across his chest, unable to feel it with his fingers.

His pain fogged brain finally percolated a single thought through the chaos of his confusion; frostbite. His extremities burned because circulation was returning to partially frozen flesh that was beginning to thaw. That realization did nothing to combat the pain nor still the rising panic of being restrained. Something shifted behind him, a heavy weight falling across his legs, the surface behind him pressed close as both restraining forces pulled him back.

Something else brushed against his upper arm and he realized at that moment that his arm was not covered; his flesh was exposed. But no icy bite nipped at his skin, only a momentary pressure tracing down to a point just below his shoulder at the apex of his bicep.

He was naked, completely.

A prick of pain lanced through his upper arm and he slapped at it futilely but his thawing fingers could feel nothing but the burning, tingling pain of returning life. A warming lethargy stole through him a few moments later, his struggles against the restraints fading, while his panicked thoughts rattled about in his skull.

He was naked, in the dark; blind! With something solid, unyielding, warm yet queerly soft behind him that held him fast!

But why so soft? Not the softness of a smoothly uniform surface but strange and shifting.

Voss knew nothing more as a darkness deeper than the unfathomable night stole over him once more.

---

When he awoke again his headache was much abated. His fingers and ears tingled annoyingly but the burn had faded from them, as it had his toes which now felt as if they were bound. His lips felt painfully cracked and abraided, his mouth unpleasantly dry. The warm, solid presence at his back was still there, but the resistance of the binding across his chest as much less. Nothing rested across his legs.

There was light; dim and diffuse but enough to pick out the general shape of his surroundings. Despite the drastic changes wrought by a disastrous landing he could easily identify the inside of the Glory. It had miraculously come to rest mostly right side up and he realized that he was lying on a heap of scrounged padding from seats and storage racks. He was in the aft crew bay, between the ravaged nav-comm bay and waist gunners' bay.

At his back the Dog lay, pressed close against him; a warm bulk of muscle and fur holding him frighteningly close.

That was the strange, shifting softness that had confounded him before. Fur. There was a great deal of it, and it was distressingly close. It was not the soft caress of a fur lined winter parka, however. This fur covered a very warmly living, breathing body that was pressed frighteningly close against him. He could feel the solid presence behind him from shoulders to ass to the back of his legs; he was naked and so too was the owner of that softly warm fur.

The Dog; the Cherbyn.

The Enemy.

For a moment Voss froze, then writhed in a panic, trying to wrestle free but finding himself weak as a babe. Immediately the restraint across his chest, the Dog's pale furred arm, tightened and pulled him back against the beast's chest. When he continued to struggle a weight fell over his legs once more; one of the Dog's legs catching and pinning him in place.

The inside of the wrecked plane was chill, but only just below the level of comfort and not frigid at all. On a desktop, where he had spent many hours filling out paperwork, a small camp stove hissed quietly with invisible methanol flames. The presence behind him was warm, however, and despite the fact that it was an enemy he had been long tought to fear and loathe he found it easier to just give in to the warmth of the prisoning embrace than struggle free.

To go where, he realized. He was naked, save for his feet which had been wrapped with the shredded, slightly charred and bloodied shreds of someone's flight jacket. He was lost somewhere in the mountains between Cherbyn territories and those held by Man. He could not remember if the tail section had survived the crash but, considering the Glory had slid to a stop nose first and upright he suspected that it had do some degree. The emergency beacon housed within would have begun transmitting the moment it struck, activated by the impact force.

Maybe he had crashed close enough to Human territory for them to mount a rescue.

But in the height of winter, with the battles between both sides becoming ever more fierce with neither gaining ground, he doubted that they would spare the resources.

He slumped, defeated by his weakness from prying the Dog's arm away or kicking its leg - his leg a distant portion of Voss' mind informed him that the Cherbyn was clearly male - away. After he was still a moment the strength of that restraining arm relaxed a little, but it did not withdraw. Something rumbled approbation behind his head, a warm waft of air riffling his short hair.

"Fuck you too, you great hairy beast." Voss muttered, but stopped resisting the warm presence of the Dog. He had come to realize that the damn thing had saved him from a very swift death due to exposure. To what end he did not know but until he got his strength back he could do nothing about either way. So he just let out a huff and relaxed. Eventually, lulled by the slow shifting of the Dog's chest against his back as it - he - breathed and the warmth of contact, Voss slipped into slumber again.

---

The Dog was still there when he came around again, feeling at long last more or less hale. His fingers and toes no longer tingled and the warm presence at his back was not quite so unsettlingly, intimately close. His ears still ached and his badly chapped lips burned with unpleasant sensativity but much of the tormenting agony had passed. His tongue drily probed from within his mouth to brush across his lips and he winced at their tenderness and the coarse, split roughness of severe windburn. Turning his head slightly to take in his surroundings, just a little more illuminated than before with diffuse light leaking in past a tarp hung across the forward end of the bay, he discovered that a large insulating blanket from the bomb bay had been drawn across them both, with his parachute over that.

The warmth under the double layer was almost stifling and he shifted away a bit. The Dog's restraining arm lifted and drew away to let him move. It - HE, pointed out an annoying fascet of Voss' brain - merely rolled onto his side and propped itself up on one elbow to watch him. Trying not to slip out from beneath the warm weight of the voluminous covers Voss shifted about and turned until he was facing the Dog.

From a distance of perhaps four inches, nose to nose, he regarded the Enemy.

As an airman, flying high above enemy forces, Voss had only seen photographs or video of the Cherbyn. They were, as they had ever been perjoratively defined, very dog-like in the face with a long, thick muzzle replete with fur, whiskers, and black canid nose. From beneath its upper lips two distressingly long fangs descended, like those of a smilodon cat but not nearly so huge. The irises monster's eyes were a soft, icy blue set upon a dark cornea with a more intense ring if sapphire just around the dark pupil. Its fur was pale and striated in an almost feline manner. The markings of the species ran the gamut, Voss recalled from images and training tapes, from monochromatic base colors to mixed tones to a wide variety of patterns not found on any wild or domestic canid species.

But in all of the images Voss had ever seen they had never held the introspective, curious regard this beast did. They were either wrinkled with rage or slack with torture or battle induced flaccidness. The gaze that regarded him was neither pinched with rage or glazed with exhaustion; it was alert, probing, curious.

From a distance of only inches from his - what? Rescuer? Captor? - Voss took a few moments to make those comparisons as he tried to push back the atavistic fear that had been hard drilled into him of the course of his twenty years. Humans and Cherbyn had been battling over the Dogs' territories since Voss was a child and, even before the war, relations had never been peaceful.

But, he also remembered, the Cherbyn had not started the war. They only resisted the attempts to seize rich mineral territory desired by the Human empire. Nor had they attempted to expand into Human lands for almost three centuries, quite satisfied with the resources they had available to them and the rich lands they occupied already. Their numbers had never been so high that they had to expand or choke.

Hazarding a nod, Voss spoke; "Voss." He muttered, his throat dry and his voice raspy, wincing anew as his cracked lips shaped the simple word. He coughed and hacked to clear his throat while the tall, triangular ears of pale fur turned to pin their focus on him. "Voss." He repeated.

The Cherbyn rumbled something that came out like a coughing growl from the depths of its thick throat. It sounded, if one was charitable, like 'khofs'. The Dogs lacked the vocal structures of humans and their thin lips did not have the musculature to form words from their deep chested growls. That was why humans had to use complicated computer programs to translate what they said. Much of the Cherbyn language, as Voss' limited education recalled, was visual as well as verbal. Their vocal communication had changed dramatically with the invention of two-way communications that lacked visual components, however, but that still left many layers that humans could not comprehend without actually seeing them talk.

But then, humans also had visual communication queues as well; body language and facial expression.

After repeating that strange 'khofs' the Cherbyn rumbled something else. At Voss' stupid stare it repeated the growl, a pale furred hand snaking up from beneath the heavy covers to tap its own nose. Voss had no hope of even coming close to that deep, throaty rumble so all he could do was shake his head and shrug. To that the Cherbyn simply nodded and sighed, tall ears pinning back briefly and its whiskers angling back along its muzzle. It shrugged as well; a universal gesture of frustration.

Shifting close, causing Voss to lean away in alarm, it rolled up onto hands and knees beneath the weight of the insulating blanket and crawled out from beneath it. In the dim light of what Voss could only assume was some hour of daylight the Dog's fur was revealed to be a pale hue that was very nearly white but mottled with subtle blue-gray rosettes very much like the markings of a snow leopard that Voss had seen images of. Its bushy, dog-like tail was surprisingly thick and long, hanging down just below the back of its knees despite being held slightly outward from its backside.

And Voss discovered that his earlier realization had been accurate; the Dog was indeed male in a canine way. Long legs were slender and high-heeled like any quadruped despite its bipedal stance, with thighs deeper than wide but still respectably thick to support its upright carriage. The stomach was narrower than human norms, but the chest was thicker and deeper giving him broad, square shoulders. The ruff of fur from head to shoulders, almost like a lion's mane, concealed the contours of its neck and the head atop was huge, compared to domestic canines Humans kept as pets, but still in proportion to its body.

Fully upright it stood not much taller than Voss but in overall mass it was probably slightly less. They were incredibly strong despite that lower mass, however, as any hardened infantry solider could attest. When it came down to hand to hand Humans had to resort to mob assaults to take one down. One on one it was most often no contest.

Humans had knives and knuckle blades; Cherbyn had teeth and very respectable claws. In close quarters body armor meant little against a smart predator that would simply strike areas armor did not protect.

Picking his way over to the desk the Cherbyn bent over the camp stove to stir the pot that was sitting on it. That had not been there before, Voss recalled. Had he slept so soundly that the Dog had been able to wake, prepare food, and return without waking him? The realization did not give Voss any confidence in his threat awareness.

Carefully tipping the pot it poured some of the contents into a canteen cup and walked back over, squatting very close to offer it to Voss. At such proximity, with splayed legs, Voss' gaze could not help but take another glance up and down the beast's front. Where his back and tail was rosette patterned white and pale grey its chest was only half so, the spots fading from both sides to white at the center, and his stomach and loins were entirely white.

Pulling his gaze away to the offered cup Voss reached out, surprised to find his hands shaking a little with the bone-deep weakness that suffused his entire body. The smell of the steam wafting up from the cup was rich and wild, redolent of plants and meat. Tilting it slightly he peered into the thin, rich smelling broth. Green things floated about in the pale dark fluid, but also smaller dark bits that looked just as they smelled; like meat.

He recoiled in shock, eyes going wide when that realization struck him.

Meat!

Where the hell would the Dog get meat on the mountains in winter? His thoughts flashed to those six sorry, mangled forms arrayed in the snow outside and his stomach clenched in horrified nausea.

As if reading his reaction the Cherbyn chuffed and shook his head adamantly, one hand raised and pawing up and down in a calming gesture as he rose and returned to the desk. He came back a moment later and squatted again, extending one hand and opening his fingers. Upon his palm was an oblong shape of white, cupped along its length with the pale pink of flesh showing.

It was a rabbit's ear, the base savaged and bloody; most likely from the bullet that punched the poor creature's brains out through the hole it created.

"Thanks." Voss muttered after a few moments, only slightly mollified, and the Cherbyn rumbled something with a nod. "Can you understand me?" Voss asked as he cautiously brought the cup to his mouth. He gasped and drew it away when the hot broth touched his cracked, wind burned lips with a searing bite of pain. Grimacing he fought the pain and sipped ever-so-delicately. He had to clutch the cup carefully in both hands, sitting himself upright and crossing his legs, just to keep his weak, shaking grasp from failing. The blanket slid down as he sat up, but he ignored it for the moment as the interior of his wrecked plane had become comfortably warm even for his nakedness. Yet just beyond the thin, wrinkled hull of the late Glory a steady wind whistled and the hiss of hard-frozen snow was a chorus of angry whispers. The beast did not seem to mind its lack of clothing so Voss assumed it did not mind his own exposure.

Much to its surprise it nodded affirmatively! Rising smoothly it returned to the camp stove to pour more of the pot's contents into another canteen cup before turning the dial on the stove down.

"How?" he asked, the cracked rasp of his voice beginning to fade as the heady brew of warmth and moisture eased the driness of his mouth and throat. Each sip still seared his tender lips but there was nothing he could do to mitigate that.

Coming back to squat again, the Cherbyn held its soup in one hand. The other it put up to cup over its ear, bowing its head with eyes slightly closed as if concentrating. Both ears twitched and swiveled and, after a moment, he touched his temple with a fingertip with an expression that, to Voss, gave the impression of deep thoughts.

"Listening..." He hazarded after another sip. The rich, hot liquid sent refreshing warmth coursing into his breast and belly and it tasted surprisingly good for having been prepared with, Voss assumed, purely native materials. "A listening post?"

The Cherbyn's muzzle drew into a strange looking snarl that revealed more of its teeth besides those two dangerous looking fangs and his head bobbed affirmatively. It also sipped at the soup, rather than lapping at it as Voss had expected.

"There are more of you?" The Cherbyn looked down, ears backing, and shook its head sadly. "What happened?"

Raising its free hand the beast pantomimed a downward angle, waggling his fingers, as if illustrating a plane in a steep dive. Voss simply stared as he sipped, nibbling experimentally at one of the green things floating in his soup. Its flavor was sharp, fresh, and not at all unpleasant in a vegetable way. It crunched satisfyingly as he chewed, though it was slightly stringy. Understanding Voss' incomprehension the Dog set his canteen cup down on a nearby box that had once held a piece of avionics equipment. It probably still did, since it survived the impact. Raising his hand again the Cherbyn repeated the downward, fluttering course, moving his hand over his cup and beyond, over the edge of the box.

"Avalanche? Your listening post got buried?" Again an affirmative nod as the cup was taken up again to be sipped. "You were out, then, and survived? But your garrison did not?" Another nod. Raising both arms the beast pantomimed shouldering a rifle and sighting. "You were out, what, hunting? Shooting at humans?" A nod, then a shake of that huge beastial head.

Voss gaped a moment and then rolled his eyes with a sigh, shaking his head. "Then you're just as trapped out here as I am?!!" With a long sigh the Cherbyn nodded. "Where are we, then, do you know? Human territory, or Cherbyn?" To the first a negative, and the second a positive. "Then why haven't they mounted a rescue?"

The Cherbyn's great head tilted and it gave him a strange look; exasperation. Raising one hand he pointed toward the ceiling, then hugged one arm around himself and shuddered before raking a single finger across his throat. "Radio contact lost abruptly, winter set in hard. They figure everyone's dead from bombing or other disaster?" Nod, and nod again. Voss nibbled contemplatively on a small tidbit of meat, there were scarce few in his soup. It was mostly vegetables and broth, though a rich repast it was after god knows how long being unconscious with hypothermia.

"Well then, we're both fucked." The man groused with a sigh, frowning. Again, insufferably, the Dog simply nodded with a sigh of his own. "No supplies, no comms, buried in a dead plane lost in the alpine winter. Hello there, Enemy Mine." Impetuously he thrust out a hand and the beast stared at it for a moment before reaching out to grasp it. "How long ago did your listening post get buried?"

Releasing his hand after a single shake it held up its spread fingers, pale claws standing stark from black pads. He closed his fist and opened it three times and then just one finger. "Sixteen... days? Sixteen days?!" Voss gaped in surprise. "How the hell did you survive out here two weeks in this mess?"

With a flash of teeth the Cherbyn rumbled a rolling sound, favoring him with another frightening animalistic grin; he was actually laughing. Crossing one arm over his chest he rocked back and forth a couple of times, a motion that Voss immediately understood, then waved his arm expansively in a half circle. "Okay, you were born... here? In these mountains?" The hand paused, held flat out, and waggled side to side like an unsteady boat. "Okay, not here exactly, but close enough. Raised in the mountains, so you know how to survive." Voss was surprised when the Cherbyn offered him a very human thumbs up.

Noticing that he still wore his watch Voss tilted his wrist to read it. Only a day and a half had passed since the last time he looked, a few minutes before the Glory began her death spiral. It seemed like an eternity ago, the warmth and shelter of his barracks a longed for memory. Thoughts of home, his parents, and all the friends back there who were not a part of this futile waste of life, crashed down on him. No one would ever know what happened. It would be a miracle if they even tried to recover the plane, and her lost crew, while the war was still going.

And it had shown very little indication of slowing down any time soon.

"So... it's me and you, then. We survive, yes?" He finished his soup and set the cup down on the nearby box. "Until one side or the other comes, or we hike it out of here, not enemies."

Reaching out one large, claw tipped hand the Cherbyn set his grasp gently upon Voss' shoulder, the beast's great, predatory head nodding.