[Silver]

Just as he had expected, Kaiki did eventually stop running. She was now walking slowly, snuffling through the snow with her snout. She buried her head under one pile of snow, then another. Some of them had leaves in them and others collapsed as she touched them.

“What is it, Kaiki?” Nimbus asked. He tilted his head to one side as if that would help him understand.
Now that they had stopped, he could feel it, too. Something was different about the area they were standing in. He wondered if he should help Kaiki dig or wait until she found what she was looking for. He loathed the idea of returning in cold, wet clothes, but he hated to make her do all the work.

[Silver]

In the end, he decided to help. He dropped down to his knees and started brushing the snow around. Again and again, the areas he was searching were empty. There was nothing there! He was so frustrated that he kicked into the snow.

There was a rock in the snow where he kicked it and he his foot stung with the impact. It was cold and stiff already without the extra pain of being struck. He slumped to the ground and tried to keep calm about everything.

[Silver]

Kaiki came up to him and rubbed against his leg. He idly rubbed her head behind her ears as he focused on forgetting the pain in his foot. It took him a few minutes to realize that something had changed.

“Kaiki!” he exclaimed. “You’re blue!” Kaiki didn’t know what that meant, but she was excited to hear it. She barked excitedly and ran around in a circle.

She was grey just a few minutes ago, but now she was starting to regain the blue in her spots. It was still pale, like there wasn’t enough of the color to go around, but she was at least a little blue. Nimbus almost started crying with joy at the sight of it.

[Silver]

Nimbus pulled his black gloves off and looked at his paws. Unfortunately, there was no color to be seen on himself. He looked all around at his pack, his clothing, and his fur, but he saw no more color. It was only on Kaiki.

A packet fell out of his bag as he was scrambling around, and from it fell some gummy candy he had been carrying around. When it touched the snow on the ground, all of the blue ones suddenly burst into color, but none of the others followed suit.

“Blue!” Nimbus exclaimed. “It only works on things that are blue.”

[Silver]

“Stormy! Stooooormy!” he called. He knew he had asked her to stay put, but he couldn’t resist testing his theory, and he didn’t know many things that were as blue as her.

Stormy had secretly been waiting for his call that entire time. She burst into flight and pushed the trees aside to get to him. She landed on the snow with a solid thump and let the trees spring back into place above her. The trio was showered in snow falling from the shaken trees.

“Stormy, roll!” he instructed. Stormy looked around and determined that she did not have room to roll between the trees. She barked in protest.

“Oh come on, there’s plenty of space. Just do a little roll for me, please?”

[Color Harvested]