The weather had turned very cold, and frost flowers had already formed on the windowpanes of the children's room.
Li Juan made a fist with her right hand and slowly pressed the side of it against the frost on the glass. She held it there for a few seconds, and when she pulled her hand away, an imprint remained. Her body heat had melted the frost.
Shaking her hand, Li Juan extended her right index finger and made five dots above the imprint, one big dot followed by four smaller ones.
When she finished, she studied it with satisfaction, then pulled Li Qiang over and asked:
"Qiang, what does this look like?"
Li Qiang had been standing by the door, listening to his youngest uncle tell Grandpa and Dad about the hunt in the inner room. He was reluctant to be dragged away, but his sister still held considerable authority over him.
Looking disgruntled, Li Qiang glanced at the pattern on the window. Nothing came to mind at first, but after another look, his eyes widened.
"Huh? That... looks like a little footprint! Sis, teach me how to draw it!"
"Haha, good guess! Come on, I'll teach you!"
Li Juan wasn't particularly interested in hunting. Before, she had wanted to follow Li Long to catch Gugu Chickens simply because she wanted meat. Over the past two years, she had eaten plenty of meat and grown taller, and no longer craved it as much.
Li Qiang, on the other hand, was still partly focused on Li Long's hunting story, even though he was very interested in the little footprint his sister had drawn.
"There really were a lot of Mongolian gazelles in the earlier years," Li Jianguo recalled after hearing Li Long's account. "We used to go into the Gobi Desert