Loganoh looked at the sun and noted its position. Then he remembered the position of the moon and the Bright Star last night. He looked at his little sister.
“Arvico. You were born today.”
She huffed. “No, I wasn’t. What a silly thing to say. I was born a long time ago.”
“No. That’s not what I mean.” Loganoh twitched his whiskers and tried to formulate his thoughts. The problem is that Lemmings have no concept of a “year”. When your life span is barely 20 months, you don’t bother counting years.
“What I mean is that you were born on a day like this one, many days ago.”
Arvico squinted at him. “You mean, a sunny day?”
“No, not a sunny day. It might have been a sunny day, that’s not what I’m trying to say.” Loganoh sighed.
“Why do you always breathe like that when you talk to me?” asked Arvico. “It’s rude.”
“It’s just something I noticed. When you look at the sun and moon every day, you realize that their positions repeat. This means that the days repeat. I’ve tried to count them, but the number gets to too high and I forget. It’s hard to count days when they only happen one at a time.”
Arvico giggled. “You count days? That’d be like… counting the herd!”
Loganoh had thought exactly that and pondered it often. “Kind of, but not really. Lemmings are born and die every day, so the number keeps changing. But with days, I suspect that their number is always the same. I think.”
“Our…” Arvico’s hold on the concept of tenuous. “Our days are numbered?”
“What are you two talking about?” Loganoh and Arvico looked over and saw Miriao. She was their Herdlet Mama. “What do you know about the Great Run?”
Loganoh froze. The Great Run had always been a herd rumor, and not a very serious one at that. But ever since his starvation induced nightmare, the thought of the Great Run terrified Loganoh.
“We weren’t talking about that, Ma’am.” Arvico said. “Loganoh was just trying to tell me that there are only so many days and that they repeat. Isn’t that fanciful, Ma’am?”
Miriao sighed with relief and then smiled at the young lemmings. “Well now, do you know that they don’t?”
“But it can’t be, Ma’am. It’s silliness. Just like the talk of the Great Run. That’s not a real thing either. Is it, Ma’am?”
Miriao turned abruptly. “You pups go and play.”
Loganoh sensed something in Miriao’s dismissal. “Ma’am? May I speak to you, please?”
“Fox!” the scream pierced the herd. The cry was made by a Knoght; one of the herd rim guards. Other shouts of “Fox” were passed along through the wide herd. When a Knoght shouts a warning, you had best start running in the other direction. Arvico and Loganoh bolted off together. They were still both fairly fit despite the scarcity of food. Running past slower and weaker lemming was like trying to get through maze. Then another shout from a Knoght was heard: “Foxes”! It was every lemming’s duty to pass along the warnings from the herd rim, but panic was now spreading faster.
“Loganoh, what do we do?” Arvico asked anxiously.
“Just keep running! Don’t look back! Stay at my haunches and just keeping running!”
