Cold War

by Regidar

East River Bearlin Wall

THWAP!

“Ow!” Caramel called out. The colt fell to his rump, blinking the cold ice and snow from his eyes. It began to melt, having come in contact with his warm body, and freezing rivulets of water dribbled down his face, soaking into the wool of his scarf.

“Ahah, got ya good!” cackled his friend Thunderlane from close nearby. The pegasus colt was floating in the air, little wings humming as he packed another snowball. Ever since he had learned to fly a few weeks ago, he had been buzzing about, using every available opportunity to show off his new skills. This had proven useful for ambushing other ponies with snowballs, as he could go where most couldn’t.

Caramel turned around, and looked up him. “Yeah, I guess.”

Thunderlane ignored his friend’s lack of enthusiasm, and did a little somersault in the air. “Ah, this is great! Fresh snow, the whole world looks like it just got frosted over by thousands of pounds of icing! It’s simply incredible!”

Caramel nodded his head half-heartedly. Thunderlane frowned for a moment, but became peppy once more.

“Wanna have a snowball fight?”

Caramel shook his head. “No, no thanks...”

Thunderlane dropped next to his friend, eyes wide and pleading. “Aw, come on! I already fired the first shot! We’re going to war, you’ve got to fight back!”

“I don’t think so,” Caramel said. “I’m just not...” He trailed off. “You win, alright? I surrender, war over; first shot was simply too powerful.”

Thunderlane sighed. “Then there’s no war, and it’s not fun! You gotta fight back!”

Caramel simply shook his head. The pegasus groaned, but was seemingly determined to not let his own spirits be dampened.

“Hey,” Thunderlane hovered back into the air. “You like all that weird poet-y stuff and ‘beautiful’ things, right?” Thunderlane wore a smile of determination. Caramel shrugged.

“Well... here’s something all girly that I’ll share with you, should cheer you up,” Thunderlane told his earth-bound friend. “I love the snow; NOW WAIT, you already knew that. But here’s the kicker...”

Thunderlane paused for dramatic effect.

“I love everything about it; I love watching it fall from the sky, I love waiting for the first snow, I love staring up into the clouds and watch the swirling white surround me...” Thunderlane sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I even like to catch the snowflakes on my hoof and look at their weird little patterns before they melt.”

Caramel said nothing.

“Someday,” Thunderlane continued. “Someday, I’m going to be one of the pegasi that helps bring in the first snow. Guess that’s why I like it so much, pegasus in a small town destined to be a part of the weather team; still, it’s cool.” Thunderlane chuckled at his pun. “Get it, because sn—”

Caramel was no longer paying attention, simply staring at the ground, eyes empty and nose running. He sniffed, and Thunderlane stopped to look at his friend.

“You okay? What, did the snowball give you a cold or something?” He giggled again. “Damn, I’m on a roll!”

Caramel shook his head. “It’s her...”

Thunderlane’s shoulders slumped, and the pegasus rolled his eyes, drooping his face into one of tired exasperation. “Caramel, come on; you’ve got to get out of this slump! It’s Hearth’s Warming Eve! Tomorrow will be Hearth’s Warming, and there’ll be food and cake and presents!”

“I want her back,” Caramel said sadly, staring down into the snow, small tears forming in his eyes.

Thunderlane, as young and brash as he was, wasn’t completely devoid of empathy, and swooped to his friend’s side. “Hey, come on... don’t cry. I miss her too...”

“She wasn’t your mom.” Caramel looked up at Thunderlane, his eyes glossy and wet. Thunderlane opened his mouth, but words refused to come out.

“We can, um,” Thunderlane coughed. “We can... build a snow pony... go see a Hearth’s Warming play...” He tried a feeble smile, but it ended up looking like somepony had just kicked him in the groin. “Wanna see a play?”

Caramel shook his head sadly, staring back at the ground. Thunderlane wilted.

“Want me to leave you alone?”

Caramel nodded.

Thunderlane returned the nod, and slowly took flight. Caramel sat in the cold, the snow falling down harder around him. The day had nearly drained away, and the street lamps illuminated the shadowy world around him. The biting winds whipped around the town, forcing themselves through Caramel. He wore a brown wool coat, and thick woolen scarf, but his flank was unprotected, the saved heat leaving from his body through his backside. Little ice crystals formed in the coating on his blank flanks, and he shivered violently.

The houses, coated in frost, looked almost like snow-covered crystals in the light of the street lamps, kept illuminated by little gems enchanted by unicorns. He had learned this in school, when they were doing community service projects and he had to help change the lamps that had been damaged in a thunderstorm. There had been many adults to chaperone all the colts and fillies, and to help the non-pegasi (and the non-flying pegasi) reach the street lamps.

His mother had helped him up to a lamp, her warm smile and gentle voice repeating Don’t worry, I’ve got you, you won’t fall comforting and reassuring him the entire time..

The tears were flowing freely now, and Caramel couldn’t stop them. He rose to his hooves, and began to trot, moving away from the small town of Ponyville. He couldn’t stay still, he would freeze; he couldn’t stay frozen, he’d be still.

So he ran. He galloped, he trotted, he sped, away, away, away, AWAY from the town where he used to live with his mother. His hooves broke the snow, leaving little hoofprints in the two inches that blanketed the ground. He was on the path that lead out towards the Everfree Forest, the one place everypony warned colts and fillies to never go. He couldn’t see a point in staying where he was any more, he had to leave, he had to get out.

He stopped running on top of the small bridge that crossed a creek that lead to a meadow that lay on the very edge of Everfree. He gasped, his little lungs heaving for air, snowflakes getting caught in his breaths. Leaning on the side of the bridge to catch his breath, he looked down off the side.

The creek was frozen, most likely solid. Most of it was covered with the same blanket of snow everything else was, a little dip on either side to indicate where the banks were. His hooves gripped the frost-slickened edges of the stone bridge as he stared down at the space right next to the underside of the bridge. There was a small place where the snow had been shielded from the frozen stream, and he could see the ice, cold and blue, staring back up at him.

Walking slowly, carefully, he left the bridge, and trotted to the ice, underneath the bridge. He placed a hoof tentatively on the ice, testing it.

Frozen solid.

He placed another hoof on the ice, and then the other two. Carefully, he slid his way towards the underside of the bridge, where no snow at all had managed to make it. He sat down, the cold ice leaching heat from him, and stared out at the town of Ponyville.

It was a mass of light, shining out into the snow that fell from the sky constantly, endlessly. He could see the faint outlines of houses, and maybe even the shadow of a pony if he squinted and looked hard enough. It was so peaceful, so serene, so... quaint.

“What’re you doin’ here?” came a gruff voice. Caramel jumped, hitting his head against the underside of the bridge. He cringed in pain, and doubled over on the ground, clutching his throbbing head. Blinking through tears, some left over from before, some new and brought on from the pain, he saw a pony on the bank opposite from the one he had just come. He wore a wool hat, and strands of a brown mane fell on either side of his face. A striped scarf was wrapped around him, and a brown trench coat wrapped his body to keep him warm.

“Ow!” He looked up at the stallion. “You scared me...”

“Sorry about that,” he told Caramel apologetically. “You looked lost... figured I might as well ask.”

Caramel wasn’t sure what to tell the stallion. He could tell him everything... everything about what happened to him, even though he didn’t fully understand it himself. He could tell him part of the story, and invent a different part, or he could just invent the entire thing.

“I’m out for a walk,” he said simply.

“Without your mother?” the stallion asked.

Caramel stared blankly at the stallion. “Don’t have one anymore.”

The stallion nodded knowingly. “Ah, ‘m sorry; Don’t have one myself, I just hoped you’d have been luckier. No one ever finds me if they’re lucky, though.”

“What do you mean?” Caramel asked, curious. He got to his hooves, slipped a bit on the ice, and skidded his way to the snow bank to just a few feet from the stallion. He grabbed the snow, hugging it, and hoisted himself up onto the ground.

“I’ll show you,” the stallion said, gesturing for him to come with him. “Um... it’s in the Everfree, so if you don’t want to go there, you’d best be on your way.”

Caramel stood in the snow, looking at the stallion standing in the snow. How could he trust him? He didn’t know him, and he had had his trust broken in one of the worst ways just weeks before. He couldn’t take his chances here, there was no one he was having a repeat of what happened before.

“I...” he began. “I can’t.”

“Can’t trust a stranger?” the stallion guessed. Caramel nodded. “Yeah, figured as much. I’ll let you go find it yourself then.”

“Find what myself?” Caramel asked.

The stallion dug around in his coat, and pulled out a folder piece of paper. “Here, go follow the instructions here; you’ll find out what it is soon enough. Don’t worry, it isn’t anything that’ll hurt you or nothin’, you just go and find it. You’ll be better off knowing what’s there than not.”

Caramel looked at the stallion. “How can I trust you at all?”

The stallion smiled. “That’s for you to decide, Nashua’s son.”

The colt’s eyes widened. “How did you know my—” The stallion had already turned away, and was trotting off into the distance. Caramel stared after him, mouth agape, until he disappeared into the snow.

Caramel fumbled with the paper, sitting down in the snow, using his little hooves to open it.

It was a map.

A map of here, to be precise. It was a map of the area, the center being the very bridge he had just been hiding under. The path lead to the little meadow, and the bottom-right corner was covered in the Everfree forest. On the top of the map, there was half of Ponyville, drawn with little buildings and everything. The entire map was covered in notes and little scribblings of writing, denoting certain things as being in certain places, or certain ponies having been to certain places. For instance, the little meadow that this certain path lead to had a note by it that said “build cottage here”.

Caramel scanned the map, looking for instruction, when his eyes landed on a little cave right near the meadow this path lead to, barely in the Everfree forest. There was a little note beside, and he read it aloud to himself.

“Nashua’s son, come here.”

Caramel was standing outside of the cave entrance, icicles hanging from the top of the mouth, teeth of ice that could devour him at any moment. He took a deep breath, then walked inside the cave.

The entire ordeal was frightening, but in a good way. How did he know his father’s name? Why did he need him to come to a cave? What was going to happen? Caramel had to admit, this was all very strange, and he had every right to be wary after... the incident. Still, he trudged on into the cave, working as hard as he could to not run away in terror.

The cave sloped downward, and it ended in a cave wall about fifteen feet in. However, there was a crack in the wall through which a faint turquoise light emanated from. He could only assume that this is where the stallion wanted him to go.

He walked with ease through the opening, and his mouth dropped open as he entered the next part of the cavern.

It was... huge. The cavern must have been five hundred feet across, and the ceiling another fifteen feet up above, stalactites hanging down from above, dripping little droplets of water from the ground above. Looking down, the cave had a large pool, which bubbled as if boiling. The whole cave was rather warm, at least compared to the outside. Caramel began to sweat in his winter clothes.

He was standing on a ledge, maybe five feet across; the ledge continued into a little path, also made of ledges, that continued down to the floor some fifty feet below in a gradual slope. If Caramel hugged the wall, it wouldn’t be too difficult of a journey downward.

The light seemed to be coming from gargantuan mushrooms, their flat caps a mellow blue, and the turquoise light coming from the undersides, where Caramel could only assume millions of spores were hiding. Perhaps they were even the source of the luminescence!

Caramel’s journey to the bottom was uneventful. Once he had his hooves resting on the cave floor, he realized he had no idea what he was supposed to do here!

“Why did I even come?” Caramel muttered to himself. Could it have been the emotional duress of these past months? Finally settling down in a new place, all of the turmoil with meeting new ponies, making friends and enemies, the... incident, and now, what happened with his mother...

Caramel sighed. Here he was, in a giant cave, alone, on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “Should have just gone with Thunderlane,” he sighed to himself, walking towards the pool absent-minded.

”You are not alone here.”

Caramel’s heart skipped a few beats. “Who-who’s there?” he shouted out, his voice echoing around the cavern. His shouts were ill advised, however, and he knew this— the voice was coming from inside his head.

”Little one,” the voice said again. ”I am glad you were able to come. Sit by the pool, and I will tell you fantastical things.”

“Who are you?” Caramel shouted back at the cave.

”If only you are to sit by the poolside, that question and many more shall be answered.”

Caramel hesitated. He had already done so many rash things today, now was the chance to stop... but, the voice wasn’t being inherently harmful either...

Neither was your schoolteacher’s, but we all know how that ended up... a nagging voice in his mind, one that was his own, told him.

“It won’t be like that,” Caramel whispered to himself. “Never again...”

”You have suffered much,” the voice said. “Sit by the poolside, and I shall tell you a story which will absolve you of all ails, even if just for the moment.”

Caramel stared at the pool, and made up his mind. Carefully, slowly, he walked towards the pool, and sat down by it’s side.

”Good.”

“Ah, you made it!” came a voice from behind Caramel, and he turned to look who had said it. It was the stallion from earlier, covered in a considerable amount more mud than he had been before, emerging from a tunnel in the wall behind them. “Wasn’t sure you were actually goin’ to come. This whole thing’s a bit dodgy, isn’t it?”

“Well...” Caramel said, giving the stallion a sideways look. “You already seem to know a lot about me, so I figured, what’s the use in running?”

“Hehe,” the stallion chuckled. “I knew your father, not you. He was a good friend.” He studied Caramel’s head. “You don’t have the gift yet, do you? Suppose not, you’re young.”

“The gift?” Caramel asked, intrigued.

“Ah, I’d just be spoiling it,” the stallion said, waving his hoof at Caramel. “Let’s have a listen to the story, huh?”

“What is that voice, anyway?” Caramel asked. “Where’s it coming from?”

The stallion pointed to the pool, smiling. “Look.”

Caramel watched in astonishment as the pool began to bubble with increased violence. He stepped back as froth spilled from the edges of the pool, and the water began to well up in the center, almost like a geyser. The heat and humidity of the cavern increased, so much so that Caramel felt as though he were drenched despite not having come in contact with any water. Soon enough, a large figure emerged from the water.

It was long, scaly, and had too long necks, which ended in two snake-like heads. It was like a dragon, only smaller, and with, well, two heads. A tail with fins on the end slid out of the water behind it slapped the surface, causing water to splash and overflow on the sides of the pool. Caramel jumped back again as the hot water rolled towards him. The tail sunk beneath the water, and it was simply the two heads, eye closed, slowly swaying, and their necks, extruding from the water.

“Namreblis’retep, the last two-headed hydra,” the stallion whispered. “The most intelligent of its kind, since it only has two instead of five or six.”

“Wouldn’t more heads make you smarter?” Caramel asked, also in a hushed whisper.

“You’d think, yeah,” the stallion said. “But actually, the more heads you have, the more you tend to argue and confuse yourself; so the other hydras’ intelligence is diminished the more heads you have, so they can hunt without arguing all the time and confusing each other.”

”The two heads allow me to think at double capacity without much contradiction, and to generate a telepathic field,” Namreblis’retep spoke. ”Although I suspect the telepathy also has something to do with the fact that I am one of the last, if not the last, royal hydras, unlike my cousins who are of the swamp caste. But I am not here to speak to you of trivialities such as my species; I am here to tell you great tales and stories.”

The eyes of the hydra opened, and the left mouth spoke aloud in a raspy, deep voice. “I am Namreblis’retep right head, Iccic’ybrad; I shall tell you the story of the Snow Angel:

There was once a small pegasus filly, who lived in the very same town you do, although she lived so many years ago that the town was barely grown at all; she loved to frolic in the snow, and she loved to make-believe wonderful imaginary worlds everywhere she went.

One beautiful winter day, she was making a snow angel, when she noticed something in the nearby snowbank. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be none other than a penguin!

“What a penguin doing so far from home?” she asked it.

The penguin looked up at her and replied. “I have been separated from my family, lost in this snowbank in this strange world. Three-fourths of the year, I am nothing, but when it snows, I awake as my usual self. It’s been a lonely existence... will you be my friend?”

The filly responded, “Of course! I don’t have many friends of my own myself, we can be each other’s friends!”

The penguin and the filly laughed and played for many days together. However, in a few weeks when the snows melted, the filly found that the penguin had spoken the truth— he was nowhere to be found.

And so, the filly lived out the rest of the year, waiting for the first snow and for the penguin to come back. One late autumn night, while everypony slept, the snows came from the Everfree (as the pegasi had not yet been given control of weather in this region), and when the filly woke up in the morning, she was very excited to see the snows had come. She returned to where he penguin friend had been last year, and sure enough, he was poking his head out of the snow, waiting for her.

“It’s a shame you only come about for this short time of the year,” the filly remarked. “I wish we could spend much more of the year together.”

“It’s a shame,” the penguin agreed. “But at least we have this time together.”

The filly nodded to this, and the two spent the rest of the snow season playing with each other.

At the very end, as the snow began to melt, the filly approached the penguin and asked him a question that had been nagging her for quite some time.

“Will you ever grow up?” she asked. “I’ve grown quite a bit since last year, so I wonder if you too will grow.”

The penguin shook his head. “You see me as you want to, dear friend. You see me as young, so there I am. Why, I may not even be a penguin, but that’s how you see me!”

The filly laughed. “So, what are you then?”

“That shall be answered another time,” the penguin said.

The next day, the snow melted, and the penguin was gone again. The filly began her process of waiting all over again, content with the time that she had to have with the penguin.

However, that summer, her family brought her the bad news that they had to move away from the town.

“But my friend, the penguin!” she pleaded. “We have to wait for winter, so I can take him with me!”

Her family expressed their regrets, and two weeks later, they moved to the lonesome crowded west, where the snows never fell.

Thirty years passed, and thirty winters were spent pining away for her friend. The filly soon grew into a mare, and one winter, she saved up enough bits so that she could return to Ponyville. The snows had already come, and she went looking for her friend. She had a good memory, you see, and knew exactly where he could be.

The mare had lived a good, long life, and had seen and learned many things, but had lost her innocence and view that she once had as a filly. She no longer spent time imagining herself in fantastic worlds, she no longer played. She had a life she had to live.

When she came across the place where the penguin usually was, there was something hard under the snow. Digging, she shouted out “Penguin! I’ve returned! Thirty years, but I am back!”

She unearthed something in the snow, and pulled it out with her hooves. It was a large rock, roughly the same size as her penguin had been. Having lost the spark of foalhood, the imagination of the young, she saw things for how they really were.

And it was truly terrible.

As the story ended, the head closed its mouth and its eyes. Caramel turned to the stallion sitting next to him. “What was the use of that story?”

“What’ya mean, it was a story!” the stallion said. “Meant for listening to.”

“Right, but did it have a moral or anything?” Caramel asked. “Most of the time, they do...”

“Well, if I’d have to guess, it’s don’t lose your imagination; keep the world magical, even in your old age,” the stallion reasoned, shrugging. “Now ssh! This next one is great!”

The eyes of the head on the right opened, and the mouth followed suit.

“I am Renrel’leahcim, the left head of Namreblis’retep,” it stated in a high, hissing voice. “And this is the story of The East River Bearlin Wall:

There was a great war that took place in the north, between the armies of Stalliongrad and the armies of Germaneigh. Each were armies of ponies, although many of the intelligent bears joined either army, depending on which side they were on. There was one such place, in the heart of Germaneigh, that was highly contested. Stalliongrad was pressing hard into Germaneigh, and threatened to topple their regime. The battles were bloody, and losses were heavy. Bearlin, a capital city of these intelligent bears, which was shared by Germaneigh, was under the most stress. The west of Bearlin was held by Equestria, who favored a peaceful way out, and indeed, were trying to restore the lands to the bears. They had built a wall through Bearlin to keep themselves safe, and the many rivers that ran through Bearlin also helped form barriers.

On the winter before the war ended, a soldier for Stalliongrad was heading along the east river that flanked The Bearlin Wall, when he came across an injured unicorn with the Germaneigh symbol upon his uniform, laying in in the snow, bleeding out. He called up for help, unable to see who it was that had stumbled upon him.

“Why should I help Germaneigh scum?” the Stalliongrad soldier spat. “They murdered my whole family when they invaded our lands!”

“I am not that pony!” the Germaneigh soldier cried out. “Why condemn me to a horrible fate when I have not harmed you?”

“We fight on different sides of the war!” the stallion shouted. “I have been here in Bearlin almost since the day the invasion began, for four long months, fighting into the heart of the Germaneigh empire! How do I know you have not slain comrades of mine?”

“I have only just been drafted into the war!” the Germaneigh soldier explained. “I have just finished training, and on my first day out, I was ambushed by bears lurking near the wall! Please... help me...”

The Stalliongrad soldier cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know that I haven’t killed any of your comrades? I have slain many Germaneigh soldiers.”

“I was forced to fight this war,” the soldier pleaded. “I have never wanted to kill at all, please... save me... look into your heart, and find compassion of any kind, I beg you...”

The Stalliongrad soldier sighed, and walked over to the dying pony. Quickly, he packed as much snow as he could onto the wound, and applied pressure. Taking his coat, he covered the pony.

“It is growing late,” he told the injured soldier. “We will go for help tomorrow.”

“Oh, thank you!” the Germaneigh soldier exclaimed, smiling at the Stalliongrad soldier.

That night was a long one, but they kept each other company. The Stalliongrad soldier told the Germaneigh soldier news of his lands (non-compromising of soldier location, of course), and the Germaneigh one spoke of traditions that his kind had. It was an unlikely circumstance, but they found each other becoming friends.

When the sun rose the next morning, they saw soldiers advancing. The Germaneigh soldier identified them as a Germaneigh Captain and his Bear Archer guards. He singled them down, and they approached.

“I’ve been injured, and if not for this soldier, I would have died,” the Germaneigh soldier explained. “I owe him my life.”

The Captain looked the Stalliongrad pony up and down, before coming to a conclusion. “He is a Stalliongrad soldier. We cannot let an enemy survive to kill us another day.”

With that, the bears shot down the Stalliongrad pony, killing him almost immediately.

“Why did you do that? He saved me!” the Germaneigh soldier cried, falling to his friend’s side. “He helped the enemy, out of his own choice! Out of compassion!”

“Then he was weak,” the Captain said. “He should have taken advantage and killed you on the spot.”

“He was a friend,” the Germaneigh soldier told his Captain. “Through the cold last night, we grew to know each other, and then you just... killed him like that, without even considering what kind of pony he was, without even hesitating!”

“If we did that, soldier, we would hardly be fighting a war,” the Captain told his soldier. “And for consorting with the enemy, you are discharged from the army. Permanently.”

“I would not live in a world where such atrocities are committed,” the Germaneigh soldier announced defiantly. “Where we kill without even considering the merit of the pony, where we... slaughter entire families of civilians! Kill me!”

The bears readied their bows, and fired.

The Germaneigh soldier fell to the ground, dead, body peppered with arrows. The two bodies of the would-be friends froze over the rest of the winter, but their friendship was cemented in death.”

The eyes closed, and the mouth did the same. Caramel watched as the heads resumed their swaying motion.

“It’s a bit heavy for somepony your age,” the stallion sitting beside him admitted. “But... it’s a good story.”

“It’s sad,” Caramel said. “Both were, actually; why’d they have to be so sad?”

“Life’s sad,” the stallion said. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Caramel sighed. “I guess I did.”

”I hope my tales have explained a bit of the world,” the voice of the hydra said in Caramel’s mind.

“Well, they certainly were something,” Caramel said, trying to be polite. “But I have to ask... why are the voices of your heads different than when they speak? And who am I speaking to right now?”

”The heads have their own voices, because they are their own selves,” the hydra explained. “I am Namreblis’retep, and my voice comes about when the two heads work together.”

Caramel nodded. The stallion laughed, and got to his feet.

“Come on, Nashua’s son,” he told him. “We best be on our way.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Caramel said sadly.

The stallion put his hoof on the colt’s shoulder. “I’ve got an idea, Nashua’s son.”

Caramel sat right next to the large snow bank, the stallion having left a good time ago. He had been given his trench coat, but nothing else. When asked for a bit more help, he was simply given the instruction “dig”. When he asked for more, the stallion grinned and said, “The stories should have given you enough.”

At first, he had no idea what to do, but after a while, it clicked. The two stories put together made him understand that while their morals were important, they had something else hidden inside them. They were about about snow, and of course, they must have had something to do with it. There was something more then just snow, it was about living in snow! And, well, dying, but Caramel figured it was best not to focus on that.

Caramel looked at the snow bank, and decided he could not put it off any longer. Digging his hoof into the snow, he began to push it to the side, creating a hole big enough for himself to get into.

The cold snow melted against him, making him wet, but it soon froze again. The colt knew he had to keep pushing on, keep tunneling, until he get a good ways into the snow drift.

After a good ten minutes of tunneling, Caramel knew he had gone far around. Kicking and scraping around the tunnel, he built himself a little burrow, big enough to curl up inside. He threw the trench coat around his body, and curled up. The snow insulated him, keeping his body heat in, protecting him from the snow.

Soon, he had drifted off to sleep.