Progress is the prime motivation in the dead of winter for Mother Fox. The cold burdens her to continue forward at all costs. It is too frigid to turn back and contemplate. The mountain’s momentum has forced her to carry her pups in the safest place, for the speed is too much for them to bear. A full moon lit the forest for all to see and Mother Fox took a breath as deep as the sea and in an instant sucked up her pups in the attic of her mind.

Darkness enveloped Mother Fox’s little ones, though it was not cold or hard like the burrow they were born in. The pups were content to be safe and warm and felt a sensation of their mother’s pillowy fur beneath their paws.

“Momma, I sure do feel safe and warm in here,” one pup said, cooing and curling up in her mind.

Another one of her pups began prancing about, leaping and bounding and tumbling back down. They were grateful for her and the sacrifice she made to accommodate their company.

“We’ve always run for want of food or fear of the wild,” said the energetic pup. “I’m going to run because I can, because it’s fun, because–”

To the pup’s surprise, she collided with something cold and hard. It was sclerotic and pale gray like death and rigor mortis. Soon enough the little pup began to cry and whine when she found herself to be alone in the caudal end of her mother’s magnificent brain. The other two pups were stuck in the frontal cortex, far-removed from the energetic little third pup. She was hardly the runt of the litter, but because she was born out of the womb last the other young foxes strutted with an air of superiority around her.

Asinus and Maximus were closely bonded, but were bitter enemies, nonetheless. They would fight and claw and inflict pain on each other, trying to impress their mother and convince her of their perspective. Debates between the two elder pups were often trite and rarely of any major significance, as if their squabbles changed the family’s course by any discernible degree.

Provisio, on the other hand, was apprehensive and indecisive. She spent much of her time observing everything transpiring around her and contemplating what she could make of her experiences so far. Her mother Vulpes was committed to progress, forward momentum, and survival. The careful considerations Provisio had a habit of making were of no utility to her mother because time spent in contemplative thought was unthinkable.